San Luis provincial leaders partnered with AccelOne, a custom software solutions development provider, on the design, architecture, building and testing of the robust technology platform. Building on success with student users, province officials plan to roll out Billetera Activa to merchants and other residents in the coming months.
“Billetera Activa represents a dynamic new tool for the government and citizens of San Luis, Argentina and we are excited to help promote financial opportunities, literacy, education and inclusion by enabling them to securely access, manage and maintain the value of stable assets,” said Scott Craig, AccelOne CEO and co-founder.
The province of San Luis has a robust history of deploying social and economic programs to help its residents thrive, but Argentina’s hyperinflation has consistently made it challenging for people to save and invest. Over the past century, the average yearly inflation rate was 105%, with a historic high of 3,079% in 1989.
While San Luis has successfully operated a graduation incentive program for many years, Billetera Activa replaces the former practice of distributing paper stamps, or certificates, to graduates, which they physically redeemed for Argentinian pesos. The paper stamps would lose value virtually the minute they were printed. Instead of saving the incentives, most students cashed them in immediately before their buying power could further decline.
In 2022, leaders in San Luis reached out to AccelOne to create a strategic plan to redesign the graduation incentive program using blockchain technology. AccelOne and San Luis officials rolled out Billetera Activa in phases before launching the app to all eligible students, loading their secure digital wallets with digital tokens worth $2,500 USD each. As of May 2023, 100 percent of the 5,201 eligible student users have successfully created an account in Billetera Activa. Likewise, government professionals who manage the program have created 6,254,401 total Billetera Activa digital tokens.
“When we started this project, we knew there were opportunities to serve our community with blockchain technology, with a very specific goal in a very short amount of time. The AccelOne team was able to envision the opportunity to make a real impact,” according to Jeremias J. Thuer, the San Luis product owner. “We are very grateful for AccelOne’s responsiveness and willingness to work as a team from the beginning; taking our idea and turning it into an application with a real impact on the community, giving their engineers the autonomy to be creative and diligent.”
Students also share high praise for the program, which enables them to continue their education while helping to provide for their families.
“I am very happy to receive these assets, it is a very important help for the young people of San Luis,” said Sol Pereyra, a Billetera Activa account holder and recent graduate.
To build the Billetera Activa platform, AccelOne collaborated with the Province Ministries of Finance, Education and Technology to understand the community’s needs ranging from banking integrations to realistic load speeds, and drive program development, platform integrations and communication with students.
With an all-hands-on-deck mentality, the team worked within an agile environment to conduct parallel analysis, design, development, and quality assurance. They launched operational versions of the platform after five months – in time for graduation in December 2022. For additional security, AccelOne recommended that clients hire an independent third party to test for any gaps in cybersecurity controls, ensuring a high level of security for the app’s infrastructure.
The idea is to proceed to the next phase of Billetera Activa which will extend use of the secure, stable and scalable blockchain platform to merchants and residents across San Luis, building on success with graduates to create a province-wide solution to the effects of inflation and secure upward mobility for the community.
“We’re thrilled with the early success of the Phase One roll out to students and are excited to begin thinking of a possible Phase Two to allow other community members to realize the benefits of a more stable financial future,” Craig said.
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