Stablecoin wallet Rpay has been granted a license from the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) to continue operating in Venezuela without breaking sanctions. According to Rpay, the license eliminates the growing compliance risk and requires the company to reject employees of the Venezuelan government. CEO Gabriel Jiménez stated that the license is similar to the ones Visa and Mastercard have to operate in Venezuela, and that it is a highlight for a crypto company to receive authorization from the Department of Treasury.
The regulatory complexity of Venezuela has caused a number of crypto companies to exit the country, including Paxful in 2020 and Uphold in 2022. Rpay, developed by the team behind the stablecoin protocol Reserve, has 600,000 registered users in Latin America and $5.7 billion in cumulative volume since going live in 2020. The platform has also adopted the decentralized Electronic Dollar (eUSD) stablecoin.
Despite the license, Rpay is more focused on other Latin American countries with strong remittance corridors, such as Mexico and El Salvador.