Argentinian startup BitPagos raises $600k in seed round investment

Latin America-focused bitcoin payment processor BitPagos raised $600,000 in its first round of seed funding. Investors included well known bitcoin advocates Tim Draper and Barry Silbert, as well as contributions from venture capital funds Pantera Capital and the Boost Bitcoin Fund. BitPagos participated in the Boost VC accelerator program last year, where it raised over $150,000 to develop its launch product.

BitPagos has offices in both Palo Alto and Argentina, and has announced plans to expand operations into Brazil, Ecuador and Chile in the coming months. The company faces many regulatory, technological and cultural challenges in those markets, although many analysts have predicted that Latin America’s notoriously unstable currencies and high remittance fees might create an ideal situation for establishing a strong bitcoin economy.

The company isn’t directly comparable to a U.S. payment processor like Coinbase or BitPay, as BitPagos focuses on fiat-to-bitcoin transactions. With many in Latin America having no access to traditional banking, BitPagos isn’t able to rely on banking partners in the same way as U.S. or European processors. CEO Sebastian Serrano recently told CoinDesk:

We are one of the few companies trying to do fiat-to-bitcoin payments, and we want to specialze in processing US dollar payments and paying in bitcoin. When you’re looking for a company to do bitcoin payments, you think of our service.”

BigPagos is currently processing around $150,000 in bitcoin payments per month. The company claims that this number is growing rapidly, and expects to be handling $1 million a month before then end of the year.