El Salvador has managed to bring its Chivo Bitcoin ATMs inside multiple cities in the United States.
The main reason behind bringing Chivo ATMs into US Soil is because it makes it much less difficult and inexpensive to transmit remittances outside of the US back to people in El Salvador. This is a great advantage for anyone living in the US, that can easily send remittances to their friends or loved ones in El Salvador.
Locations for ATMs
According to the thread of tweets posted by President Nayib Bukele, currently, around fifty Chivo ATMs have been registered in ten separate locations in the US, where legal permission has been granted by the local legislation. These ATMs will also be share-free in operations, which means that no one is getting anything extra out of it. Registered locations include LA, San Francisco, Atlanta, California, and a few others, respectively. According to the Chivo Map, the location of 2 of the ATMs are also present in Columbus, Ohio. One surprising thing is that there is no ATM location mentioned in Washington, D.C, which apparently has a great population of Salvadoran people living there.
In regards to population research held by Pew Research back in 2017, there were about a 2.3Million people, also counting in registered civilians, living in the United States, initially originated from El Salvador.
Working of the ATMs
Regarding the process, people who want to send remittances to their friends or loved ones will have to sign up for a Chivo account by using their proper national ID. The ATMs will have the ability to let people take out cash or refill their accounts. As for sending remittances, users can utilize the Chivo wallet application, which lets them directly send Bitcoin or traditional dollars to people in El Salvador. The best thing is that, because the system is completely share-free, users are not required to pay any additional charges for their actions.
High Remittance Tax
President Bukele has said that around 500,000 users have already created Chivo wallet accounts. The wallet application incentivizes new users by handing out $30 worth of Bitcoin. President Bukele also mentioned that El Salvadorans are forced to spend nearly $400 Million worth of remittance tax yearly, so the opening of these special ATMs will certainly bring Salvadorans a piece of mind.