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Linguard Labs takes over El Salvador's Chivo wallet

A California fintech led by former Visa and JPMorgan executives has taken majority control of El Salvador's Chivo wallet and will relaunch it with microloans, free remittances and debit cards.

InvestIn.News NewsDesk · 1 min read
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Picture from Bitcoin.com News for: Linguard Labs takes over El Salvador's Chivo wallet
Image: Bitcoin.com News
Original reporting: Sergio Goschenko, Bitcoin.com News

Key points

  • Linguard Labs announced a public-private partnership on Thursday to relaunch Chivo after the government transferred majority ownership under IMF guidance.
  • Chivo has over 4.5 million registered Salvadorans, and crypto-based remittances remain under 1% of the country's total.

El Salvador's Chivo wallet is under new majority ownership, with Linguard Labs taking control and announcing a public-private partnership to relaunch it.

Linguard Labs was founded by Drew Weinstein, formerly head of mobile innovation at Visa, and its chief technology officer is John Davies, a former global chief architect at JPMorgan. The company said the relaunched Chivo will offer microloans and cash advances backed by income, payments and spending history inside the wallet, with merchants also able to obtain advances to expand their businesses.

Remittances sent from the US to El Salvador will be free under the new management, the company said, reviving one of Chivo's original selling points. Linguard Labs also pointed to cashback-enabled payments and debit cards for merchants that do not accept crypto, opening the benefits to more than 4.5 million registered Salvadorans.

Weinstein said the government chose Linguard Labs to reimagine Chivo, adding that cheaper remittance fees are not the goal and that free transfers and wider credit access mark a new era of financial inclusion in El Salvador and Latin America. The wallet first drew attention in 2021, when citizens could receive a $30 airdrop.

Read the full story on Bitcoin.com News

Desk editor: Keshav Aggarwal (accountable for this page; this summary was not edited by hand)

How this was produced: an AI model wrote this summary of Bitcoin.com News’s report, which we credit and link above. Read our Editorial and AI policy. Spotted a mistake? See Corrections.

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