Moneero Announces Miguel Santos To Join The Board Of Directors

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Starting on the 25th September 2014, Miguel Santos joins the board of directors for Uruguay based Moneero SA. Santos is currently CEO of Technisys, Latin America’s biggest provider of Service Oriented Architecture software for banks. Speaking to Brave New Coin Steven Morrell, Moneero co-founder and CPO advised:

"We are very, very excited. He has been our mentor over the last year and a half or so. It’s a very flattering feeling that we now officially have him as a board member."

Moneero SA has been moving quickly since exiting out of stealth mode in July. In addition to Miguel Santos, they recently announced their aquisition of Rodrigo Benzaquen. Benzaquen is the former director of research and development at MercadoLibre, the number one online auction and e-commerce site for Latin America.

“MercadoLibre literally made their way from a company in a garage, all the way to Wall Street IPO, from Argentina.” – Morell

With this calibre of talent and experience on the board, Moneero SA is ready to hit the ground running with four core products; Moneero Social, SMS, BTM and FX.

Moneero’s ROX is the currency agnostic system at the heart of the Moneero suite. ROX has the ability to manage accounts in a multitude of different currencies. ROX offers an API which supports what Morell refers to as “Thin Apps”. Thin Apps allow Moneero account holders to transmit funds through facebook, twitter (Social), mobile phone messaging (SMS), and any other channel Moneero chooses (currently BTM and FX).

The magic here is that the recipient isn’t required to set up a wallet in order to receive funds. “Thin Apps” generates a Moneero wallet for the recipient. The recipient can then access their wallet with their social media account or mobile phone.

"You can text money to any cell phone in the world and the holder of the cell phone gets notified, and the moment he is notified, he just accepts the payment, and the moment he accepts the payment he has his account."

With 6.8 Billion cell phones around the world, this would allow people without access to conventional banking to join the economy. The tech behind it is rather complex, but the opportunities are boundless. The inventor of Bitcoin Mining Contracts, Vladimir Marchenko, works behind the scenes as CTO and CISO.

“He joined us early on and he is the mastermind behind the architecture.” – Morell

In May 2014 El Banco Central de Bolivia, the central bank of Bolivia, banned Bitcoin. Bangladesh has recently followed suit. However, there are several popular e-money solutions available such as Utiba, which currently uses the Mastercard network, and m-pese (as reported by BNC). In these cases Moneero makes it possible to enter a country using existing e-money solutions to transfer funds. This ensures compliance with local regulation.

“The regulatory landscape on the global scale is on the one side very uniform, regulations look very much alike on the first glance, but in detail it is very different. We are not sitting around and waiting until a country decides what it is going to do with Bitcoin.” – Morell

Moneero SA claims they are not the typical Silicon Valley start-up. Choosing Montevideo, Uruguay as a base was a conscious decision. Moneero SA wants to solve real world problems for real people.  

“We are going out to our neighbourhoods, we are talking to unbanked people and asking them questions. We listen, because we believe this is the way to learn. Only if you understand somebody’s pain can you come up with a real solution.” – Morell

As a result, Moneero SA is not assuming what the community needs. Morell adds;

“Going into neighbourhoods we really shouldn’t go, talking to merchants and people, we take this [information], go back to our office, and think about how we can use this technology to solve problems that people on the street really have.”

Miguel Santos

Morell has encountered many local issues whilst wearing his Moneero logoed hat. Communities not knowing when they are going to get their next meal. Security in societies that operate predominantly in cash.

Moneero SA is not just about accepting Bitcoin as a currency, but also providing opportunities and solutions to problems that developing countries face every day.

B.Holmes, author of The Range of Illusion and The Private Key instalments, is currently located in Thailand, researching and writing about crypto. You can follow B.Holmes on twitter @BanteringB