Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz launches KOIN, a digital asset e-wallet in Bolivia

Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz (BMSC) has introduced KOIN, an e-wallet for access to digital assets, backed by the largest private bank in Bolivia. For high-risk PSPs, the notable part is not the branding exercise; it is the combination of USDC, Visa settlement, and a bank-led wallet that tries to make blockchain rails look like ordinary retail banking.

1. KOIN is presented as the first e-wallet for access to digital assets in Bolivia. BMSC says it was designed to remove the technical barriers that have traditionally slowed blockchain adoption, with an emphasis on simple, secure everyday use.
2. The bank says KOIN is built as a digital financial ecosystem covering the full lifecycle of users’ assets: acquisition, management, and day-to-day use. Inside that ecosystem, users can make transfers and pay with a Visa card accepted at millions of merchants around the world.
3. KOIN operates with USDC, the stablecoin backed by Circle and used by Visa as a settlement currency in its ecosystem. The infrastructure is built on Ethereum and Polygon, using ERC-20 standards.
4. BMSC Vice President of Technology Fabiola Cerveró said the launch is the start of a broader evolution toward a digital financial ecosystem, with new solutions to be added over time. Claudia Ruiz, BMSC’s Deputy Manager of Innovation, said the goal is to give access to both digital-asset users and people who have never used an e-wallet before.
5. BMSC also says it has become one of the pioneer banks in stablecoin settlement in Latin America and the Caribbean through Visa’s regional launch. The bank says settling with USDC brings faster movement of funds, 7-day availability instead of the traditional five-business-day scheme, and blockchain-based transfers.

For PSPs and acquiring teams, the practical signal is straightforward: bank-issued consumer wallets are now being tied to stablecoin settlement and card acceptance in the same flow. That is the sort of setup that changes what “digital asset” infrastructure looks like once it moves out of crypto-native channels and into mainstream banking.