Ripio Exchange Review

Ripio – Is It Good?

The Ripio Credit Network is a project looking to bank the 65% of the population that remains unbanked in South America. It’s a protocol that enables P2P lending regardless of the user’s location.

Unlike most exchanges that focus on banking people by only giving them a way to trade their fiat currency into Bitcoin, Ripio focuses on banking people by also getting them credit services, trying to be everything a bank should be, with lower rates and faster services across borders

But how good is Ripio? Is Ripio a scam? What do you need to get a loan? And, most importantly, how does it stack up against other platforms?

What Does Ripio provide?

Ripio is the cryptocurrency response to the credit part of the banking system. Their logic is quite simple: if a borrower needs money, why go through a bank? A bank doesn’t provide loans across borders and gathering all of the user’s information is costly so it increases their fees. Plus if you’re part of the 65% of the Latin American population that isn’t banked, how are you supposed to get a loan?

Ripio instead is trying to democratize the P2P loans that already exist by speeding up the process (and reducing the fees along the way), while appealing to the majority of the population across borders that otherwise wouldn’t have an access to a bank.

To get a loan there are different parties:

• The Borrower: Who makes a request from its wallet provider and receives a loan in their local currency
• The Wallet Provider: Who generates the lending contract. Ripio will be the first Wallet Provider.
• The Scoring Agent: Who provides the Borrower’s score.
• ID Identifier: Who corroborates the Borrower’s ID.
• The Co-Signer: Who acts as a guarantor for the borrowers. Ripio will also be the first co-signer.
• The Credit Exchange: Who allows the Lender’s offer to extend the credit that a Borrower is requesting through the smart contract generated by the Wallet Provider. Ripio will be the first credit exchange.
• The Lender: Who lends the money by investing it through the Credit Exchange.

This innovative idea is actually years in the making! In fact the company started all the way back in 2013 as “BitPagos”, launching Ripio just a year later as a digital wallet for consumers to send, receive and save Bitcoin in local currency for purchase or selling. Ripio has even received over 6 million dollars through VC funding in 6 rounds.

Supported Countries

Ripio is focused in South America, it only operates in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Peru and, more recently, Mexico. It does not operate in the United States nor any other country that’s not in South America besides Spain, being the only country outside of South America that Ripio currently supports.

It is however slowly growing although all of their efforts will probably focus more in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.

Ripio Rates and Buying Limits

Ripio’s fee is actually not that high for a Latin American exchange which varies from the amount of money you want to trade.

Ripio fee: 0.5 to 3%

Keep in mind Ripio’s main attractiveness is the credit side of their business, not their low trading fees.

Ripio Cons

• Lack of online support: They don’t have any kind of immediate support so you’ll have to wait for that email.
• Limited availability: If you don’t speak Spanish, even as an investor you may have some issues with Ripio.
• No 2FA: The lack of this simple security feature is worrying.

Go to Ripio

Is Ripio Good For Bitcoin?

Ripio is a novel idea for an exchange platform. If you don’t want or can’t use it for their exchange or credit features you may want to invest in it with a Token. However if you don’t speak Spanish, chances are you’ll have a hard time if you want to get constant updates.