BIND Group and Petersen Group develop peso stablecoins through separate licensed entities. Institutional use cases include treasury management and onchain payments. Regulatory risk persists after the argt ruling.
Two Argentine banking holding groups are developing peso-pegged stablecoins for the institutional market, even as the central bank maintains a ban on banks offering crypto services directly. The initiatives target businesses that want programmable money for payments and treasury operations.
BIND Group, a holding with over $2 billion in assets under management that owns BIND Banco Industrial, is building a peso stablecoin through BEN, its in-house virtual asset service provider. The conglomerate has also partnered with Circle to give BEN customers institutional access to USDC for payments and treasury use cases, the companies said.
The Petersen Group, which owns several regional banks, is working on a second peso stablecoin through a subsidiary with support from Lirium. Lirium already provides crypto-as-a-service for Banco Galicia and Brubank. That offering, called DIPE, has a completed whitepaper, the Iproup report said.
Both projects share a structural feature. They are being advanced by companies backed by banking conglomerates, not by the banks themselves. The Argentine Central Bank has prohibited private banks from offering crypto-related services since May 2022, so the holdings are building the stablecoins through separate licensed entities.
The institutional sector is the primary target. Use cases include treasury management, payments triggered by onchain events, and collateralized credit management, according to the report.
Decentralized peso stablecoins already exist in Argentina. These offerings carry the backing of established banking groups. The central bank is reportedly considering lifting its ban on crypto offerings, which would allow the holdings to scale the stablecoins to their private bank customers later.
There is regulatory risk. In March, the National Securities Commission ruled that argt, a peso-linked stablecoin, constitutes a security subject to capital market regulations for offering without compliance. The ruling set a precedent for how the regulator views peso-pegged digital assets.
BIND Group and the Petersen Group each said their stablecoins would comply with local rules. The two initiatives mark the first serious attempt by Argentine banking capital to enter the stablecoin space since the 2022 ban.
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