Argentine banking groups are quietly building peso stablecoins

Two of Argentina's largest banking groups are quietly developing peso-pegged stablecoins, signalling growing institutional appetite for programmable digital currency in one of Latin America's most crypto-active markets.

Grupo BIND, a holding group with over $2 billion in assets under management, is developing a peso stablecoin through BEN, its in-house virtual asset service provider (VASP). BEN recently partnered with Circle, with the arrangement announced on July 14 during Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire's visit to Buenos Aires, covering payments, treasury operations, and broader digital asset transactions within a compliance framework.

Grupo Petersen, which also owns several regional banks, is advancing a separate initiative through a subsidiary backed by Lirium, a crypto-as-a-service provider. That offering, named DIPE, has already matured and has its own whitepaper. DIPE is described as an Argentine peso stablecoin fully backed 1:1, deployed on Ethereum mainnet.

Working Around the Regulatory Wall

The two initiatives share a common structure: they are being advanced by companies backed by banking conglomerates, but not by the banking groups themselves, as the Argentine Central Bank has banned private banks from offering crypto-related services to their customers since May 2022. The BCRA made clear at the time that banks were prohibited from offering services for any digital assets not regulated by the central bank, amounting to a de facto ban.

Neither project has launched yet, and the institutional structure, routed through licensed non-bank subsidiaries, is a direct consequence of that restriction.

Targeting Business, Not Retail

The primary target for both offerings is the institutional sector, with use cases including treasury management operations, payments conditioned on an on-chain event, and collateralized credit management. Neither group appears to be pursuing a retail audience at this stage.

The moves come as stablecoin activity in the region surges. The Digital Chamber reported $324 billion in stablecoin transaction volume across Latin America in 2025, an 89% jump year over year, with stablecoins accounting for over 60% of crypto flows in Argentina. Dollar-pegged stablecoins like $USDC and USDT remain widely used in Argentina as dollar proxies, but these new projects represent a bet that a programmable, peso-denominated instrument can carve out a distinct institutional niche.

Argentina's national securities regulator has also signalled enforcement interest in how such tokens are classified, having identified a peso stablecoin offering as a security being sold without appropriate compliance as recently as March. That regulatory overhang remains a factor both groups will need to navigate as their projects mature.

Sources:
Bitcoin.com: Argentina's Banking Groups Are Quietly Building Peso Stablecoins for the Institutional Market
CoinDesk: Argentina's Central Bank Bans Lenders From Offering Crypto Services
Crypto Briefing: Grupo BIND Partners With Circle to Bring Institutional USDC Access to Argentina