Argentina Congress has removed digital wallet salary option, keeping deposits in traditional banks despite public support for choice.
Following this announcement, Argentina's Congress has voted to exclude a provision from President's labour reform legislation that would have granted workers the right to receive their salaries through digital wallets, keeping wage deposits restricted to traditional bank accounts.
The provision, known as Article 35, had been included in an earlier version of the reform bill. Its removal followed lobbying by banking associations, which argued that digital wallet providers lack an equivalent regulatory and prudential framework to that applied to banks. Banco Provincia cited these concerns directly during legislative negotiations, contending that the absence of comparable supervision created legal and financial risk.
Fintech sector pushes back
According to the announcement, fintech firms operating in Argentina disputed the banks' position. Lemon, a digital wallet provider active in the market, stated that all payment service providers are regulated and supervised by the Central Bank of Argentina, and characterised digital wallets as a primary access point to financial services for millions of users. The company's officials also noted that the exclusion of Article 35 eliminated the possibility for workers to freely choose where to receive their salary.
According to a study by consultancy Isonomía, 75% of Argentines use digital wallets on a daily basis, and nine out of ten workers surveyed expressed a preference for having the option to receive their salary through such platforms. The data suggests that public demand for wallet-based salary deposits was considerable ahead of the reform vote.
Legislative trade-offs
The removal of Article 35 is reported to have been a concession made during broader legislative negotiations to secure sufficient congressional support for the labour reform bill as a whole. President Milei's party, which drove the legislation forward, opted to retain banking industry backing by dropping the wallet provision rather than risk the bill's passage.
The outcome preserves the status quo for wage distribution in Argentina, with traditional bank accounts remaining the legally mandated channel for salary payments. For digital wallet providers, the decision forecloses a significant potential source of transaction volume and user engagement, at least under the current legislative framework.
The debate reflects a wider tension present across multiple markets between incumbent financial institutions and fintech platforms over the scope of services that non-bank providers may offer, and the extent to which regulatory equivalence arguments can be deployed to restrict consumer choice.
