$200 Limit Now Includes Card Payments

[wjacobs]

You could make 10% on anything.
[/QUOTE]
Don't even need friends when you have a credit card reader and you can sell water or air to yourself.

 

[wjacobs]

The next stage would be to offer 10% discount on anything to friends where you buy/ship the item with your Arg debit card and they pay you the price minus 10% in usd in the USA.

You could make 10% on anything.

Don't even need friends when you have a credit card reader and can sell air or water to yourself.

 

[wjacobs]

Today for funsies I bought a coffee tool from amazon in the states with my arg debit card. The total was $21.64usd.

My arg account reflected:
debito Tarj BA: -1709.56
Impuesto Pais: -490.72
Perception RG: -572.51 <---- Don't know what this is...

For a total of 2772.79ARS with final exchange rate of 128.13ars/1usd

So your purchase required you to put up a total of 65% in taxes? The government said that that would start happening. However it keeps charging my card only the 30% extra, not the total 65%. Wonder if it will be pulled out later? Or if I'm not required to pay in because I have no income there? Or if they can't tax it because my DNI and visa are expired? Would love to know, so that I can figure out whether or not to go on a spending spree now, or if I have to wait for a bit more inflation.

 

[jblaze5779]

My dni is expired also. My bank is bbva. Maybe some banks aren't charging yet and some are. Who knows...

 

[dsp27]

DNIs has nothing to do with the tax. You will be charged eventually. Wait till the end of the month or even the 1st week of next month to get your statement. Then all credits, debits should be reflected correctly.

 

[wjacobs]

Seems to be in place now. Just spent $200 and it gave me a rate of 129. Has not corrected any charges from last week. Anyway I got a rate of 139 when I sent money down there on Monday, so the arbitrage opportunity is basically gone (too small to be worth the trouble) but would like to think a couple more weeks of inflation and we'll be good to go again.

 

[BANY]

Don't even need friends when you have a credit card reader and can sell air or water to yourself.

Het is that reader from a company like Stripe or similar? One question, how does that work exactly? you have it to your local cel phone? I thought that if it caught you were not in the U.S. it would not work. Do you need any type of VPN trick or it just works here in Argentina?

 

[wjacobs]

Het is that reader from a company like Stripe or similar? One question, how does that work exactly? you have it to your local cel phone? I thought that if it caught you were not in the U.S. it would not work. Do you need any type of VPN trick or it just works here in Argentina?

Yep, just one of those basic card readers you get for free. The ones that connect to your cell phone are perhaps easiest because you just download an app, hook up the reader, and off you go. I tried Square first and they didn't like that the customer and owner had the same name, so wouldn't recommend them; try another company or use a friend's bank account.
I'm back in the USA now so no issue with being in an unsupported region. If you're in Argentina I'm not sure if it matters or not, but if it does, I presume you could use a VPN or just send the setup to a relative back in Gringoland and tell them to swipe once a day.

 

[dsp27]

Yep, just one of those basic card readers you get for free. The ones that connect to your cell phone are perhaps easiest because you just download an app, hook up the reader, and off you go. I tried Square first and they didn't like that the customer and owner had the same name, so wouldn't recommend them; try another company or use a friend's bank account.
I'm back in the USA now so no issue with being in an unsupported region. If you're in Argentina I'm not sure if it matters or not, but if it does, I presume you could use a VPN or just send the setup to a relative back in Gringoland and tell them to swipe once a day.

It's not worth it at the current rate. You can make like 80 bucks for each 1000 dollars in charges? This is called manufactured spending and while not illegal per se it can be flagged as a money laundering scheme both in the US and (less likely) in Argentina.

By all means, use your AR debit/credit cards to save some cash on organic charges abroad but manufactured spending is too risky and frankly at this rate not worth the trouble.

 

[camberiu]

I am not sure I agree with that.
The worst place I have been outside of GBA are some cities and towns in Jujuy province and villas around Rosario.
Most provincial towns are actually fairly well developed in comparison to BA or provincial capitals even in the province of Salta for example, and many arguably have better life quality, and are much safer, than many parts of BA - unlike say, Peru where almost all of interior cities are pretty miserable places and most people don't even have refrigeration and you are just as likely to be robbed by the police as a motochorro.

If you go to the south Ushuaia, El Calafate, Rio Gallegos, Trelew etc. the cities appear even better off or at least comparable to cities in the southern part of Chile, with very few if any villas.

Argentina could still be much worse.

This is why I take hard data over anecdotal evidence any day of the week.

The "Índice de Desarrollo Regional Latinoamérica" (IDERE LATAM) measures development at the sub-national level on eight critical dimensions: Education, Health, Socioeconomic Wellbeing, Economic Activity, Security, Institutions, Environment, and Gender