Society Without Change? Advantage Monedero.

The change shortage in Buenos Aires is good news for e-payment solution providers like Monedero.

Brother, can you spare a dime? Or a quarter? Or any coins for that matter? Increasingly in Buenos Aires, the answer is a resounding “No.”

From cab drivers to newspaper vendors to street performers, the current coin shortage has impacted all moneda-centric businesses and prompted entrepreneurial activity at multiple levels, according to the Christian Science Monitor: “Bus companies run side businesses selling change to companies for a fee…some performers now offer change back to passersby…one Chinese-owned supermarket chain (is) giving out vouchers whenever they run out of coins.”

But the most innovative of solutions and not-so-accidental beneficiary of emerging societal coin-hoarding and simultaneous “change-aversion” has to be Monedero. While many of the world’s largest cities embraced e-chip debit card technology fifteen years ago, the Buenos Aires experiment is relatively new.

Billing itself as “The Best Way to Move In The City,” Monedero’s network of participating retailers has grown from the public transportation network (Subte, buses, trains and tolls) to convenience stores and movie theaters. Cardholders enjoy the convenience of re-charging their cards at multiple locations and monthly discounts at retailers like Hoyt’s, Blockbuster, Hard Rock and Miami Sun.

Today, with over 2.5 million cards in circulation, 300 million transactions processed and hundreds of Twitter followers, it seems Buenos Aires has embraced one type of “change” and gradually rejected another.