Foreign credit cards purchases at MEP rate

rdino said:
Just speculating here, but I have heard that there is a way for locals to buy (i believe unlimited) $USD legally at the MEP rate, so maybe demand for that has pushed it up?
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Yes, it is incredibly easy with many banks and online platforms offering it from their apps and the MEP is the cheapest dollar available to buy right now.

For PR / citizens you also have a legal option to bring in money via private banks here using "Dollar Cable" (Think Western Union but with a fee of 0.005%ish, no limits, no parking and no questions regarding legality / compliance of funds from an AFIP perspective providing the source of your funds (savings) is declared etc.) The Dollar Cable is more akin to CCL (higher than MEP) meaning that you could bring your Dollars from outside, receive them in Pesos and convert those pesos back into USD via the MEP at a profit all 100% which will then be deposited back into your local USD bank account, which you then withdraw at the bank teller in crisp USD bills if you want... all legally and en-blanco.
 
earlyretirement said:
It's just super convenient. Sure, for those that live in Buenos Aires long-term you would probably just exchange some cash and save but many people like me only go to Buenos Aires for work or short trips and you have to assign a value to your time. Time always = money. And the time you spend going to exchange the money along with the possible risks of something happening during that exchange. (Possibly getting robbed, followed to your apartment, getting counterfeit bills, etc).

For tourists this is a no brainer and makes it so easy. Sure, you can get a better rate bringing cash but there are a lot of risks of something happening to Cash vs. just charging to a credit card.

Credit card charges are effortless and easy to do and totally avoids having to deal with cash which has to have some value placed to it. I'm still amazed that the government was able to pull this off. It's clear to see with the volume of $ spent how valuable this is to people.

Plus this leaves no real "paper trail" in Argentina from having to have records of you sending cash all the time into Argentina. I don't honestly see any real way that Argentina would even know what you were doing in Argentina financially if you are using a credit card issued outside of Argentina. Western Union is definitely being tracked so there is that reason too.
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"Western Union is definitely being tracked." That is the understatement of the year. It is called the Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC). And it tracks everything.

thehill.com

Senate Democrat calls for investigation of mass money transfer surveillance

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Wednesday called for the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general to investigate federal law enforcement agencies’ use of a nonprofit database that has amassed milli…
thehill.com thehill.com

Salient point: "TRAC had accumulated about 145 million records from 28 different companies as of 2021, and more than 700 law enforcement entities had access to the database as of May, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also released on Wednesday."
 
antipodean said:
Yes, it is incredibly easy with many banks and online platforms offering it from their apps and the MEP is the cheapest dollar available to buy right now.

For PR / citizens you also have a legal option to bring in money via private banks here using "Dollar Cable" (Think Western Union but with a fee of 0.005%ish, no limits, no parking and no questions regarding legality / compliance of funds from an AFIP perspective providing the source of your funds (savings) is declared etc.) The Dollar Cable is more akin to CCL (higher than MEP) meaning that you could bring your Dollars from outside, receive them in Pesos and convert those pesos back into USD via the MEP at a profit all 100% which will then be deposited back into your local USD bank account, which you then withdraw at the bank teller in crisp USD bills if you want... all legally and en-blanco.
Click to expand...
I just registered to ask more about this, seems interesting. Can you elaborate how to set it up? I'm trying to google but there's not really any information.
 
hdanh00 said:
I just registered to ask more about this, seems interesting. Can you elaborate how to set it up? I'm trying to google but there's not really any information.
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Talk a private banker from one of the investment banks here (BACS, Heritage, Puente, Mariva, Meridien etc)

If you’re just looking to buy USD using ARS using MEP then you can consider Cocos or Reba or any number of eBanks/ Brokers.
 
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