"Founded in 2015, AirTM is specifically designed to let users in hyperinflated economies such as Venezuela store value in historically stable U.S. dollars.
The company gives users a variety of ways to enter and exit the dollar. For instance, they can send money from a bank or PayPal account, drop off cash at a Moneygram location or zap some zcash (and nine other cryptocurrencies) to AirTM. The company then stores the money as USD in an account on the customer's behalf.
Customers are then able to withdraw the funds, provided AirTM can find a buyer for the original currency. In exchange for the service, the company usually takes a 20 percent cut of the cashier's commission. Users can also convert back into the local currency at the point of payment when shopping at a participating merchant.
No underground operation, AirTM, which last month conducted $5 million in transactions worldwide, is registered as a money services business by the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). As such, the startup conducts know-your-customer (KYC) reviews to comply with anti-money-laundering (AML) regulations.
What made the partnership so attractive to Wilcox was that by the time it began last month, AirTM had already registered more than 168,000 Venezuelans living in the country and as many as 40,000 more living abroad and sending money home.
So significant is the Venezuelan population that those users now conduct about 60,000 transactions per month using AirTM, according to Josh Kliot, AirTM's head of engagement and operations, or about 60 percent of its entire business."
https://www.coindesk.com/anti-petro-zcash-throwing-venezuelans-lifeline/
The company gives users a variety of ways to enter and exit the dollar. For instance, they can send money from a bank or PayPal account, drop off cash at a Moneygram location or zap some zcash (and nine other cryptocurrencies) to AirTM. The company then stores the money as USD in an account on the customer's behalf.
Customers are then able to withdraw the funds, provided AirTM can find a buyer for the original currency. In exchange for the service, the company usually takes a 20 percent cut of the cashier's commission. Users can also convert back into the local currency at the point of payment when shopping at a participating merchant.
No underground operation, AirTM, which last month conducted $5 million in transactions worldwide, is registered as a money services business by the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). As such, the startup conducts know-your-customer (KYC) reviews to comply with anti-money-laundering (AML) regulations.
What made the partnership so attractive to Wilcox was that by the time it began last month, AirTM had already registered more than 168,000 Venezuelans living in the country and as many as 40,000 more living abroad and sending money home.
So significant is the Venezuelan population that those users now conduct about 60,000 transactions per month using AirTM, according to Josh Kliot, AirTM's head of engagement and operations, or about 60 percent of its entire business."
https://www.coindesk.com/anti-petro-zcash-throwing-venezuelans-lifeline/