Latin American telecommunications provider VIVA is transitioning a portion of its financial operations onchain via Iris, a fresh network designed to assist mobile operators in transforming their existing customer relationships and distribution frameworks into payment solutions and other financial offerings.
VIVA, which has functioned in Bolivia for upwards of 25 years and recently expanded its footprint into Mexico, stands as the inaugural carrier operating live on Iris. It leverages USDi, the network’s dollar-pegged stablecoin created by stablecoin infrastructure platform Agora, to clear transactions and maintain qualifying operating reserves in U.S. currency instead of local legal tender.
Iris is spearheaded by CEO Jules Miller, a former partner at IBM Blockchain Ventures who previously assisted in founding the enterprise’s blockchain venture arm.
“Iris serves as the financial architecture for telecommunications corporations,” Miller shared with CoinDesk during an interview. She clarified that carriers can integrate their identity, billing, and distribution frameworks into the network, activate various services, and clear transactions in American dollars without needing to swap out their foundational infrastructure.
“We have poured significant resources into upgrading our network and welcoming our clientele into the modern digital economy,” noted VIVA CEO Ryan Alvarez via an official statement. “Iris grants us the ability to generate fresh revenue streams from that investment and scale into a platform, without discarding the systems our operations currently rely upon.”
Iris launches backed by a $43 million financial commitment originating from Balesia Group, a family office boasting telecom operations spanning throughout the Americas. The broader strategic gamble is that carriers can successfully capture a larger share of the economic value generated by infrastructure they spent decades constructing.
Between the years 2012 and 2025, worldwide mobile data usage expanded by upwards of 50% on an annual basis whereas operator service revenue climbed by under 1% per year, drawing on McKinsey metrics cited by Iris.
Telecommunications operators possess an asset that financial applications typically expend massive amounts of capital attempting to construct: established users, verified identities, and distribution channels.
That advantage can prove particularly potent within developing markets.
“Within the United States, the carrier acts as merely one highway among countless others,” explained Ava Labs Chief Business Officer John Nahas to CoinDesk. Conversely, in regions such as Bolivia, “the mobile operator frequently functions as the primary rail individuals utilize for virtually everything.”
According to Nahas, this dynamic explains why Iris anticipates its initial growth phase will center on Latin America alongside select regions in Africa and Asia rather than targeting the U.S.
VIVA serves as an early trial regarding whether this business framework can convert into superior financial returns for carriers. Nahas stated that a super-app product deployed by VIVA successfully drove down churn rates among prepaid cellular subscribers by 33% simultaneously boosting their overall lifetime value by 35%.
“Once you observe metrics of this magnitude, the concept rapidly begins to gain traction,” he noted, appending that Iris currently requires additional practical use cases.
Stablecoins Behind Telecoms
Iris operates on a specialized Avalanche Layer 1, supplying the network with complete authority over its settlement, operational, and regulatory compliance criteria. USDi acts as the settlement medium, while simultaneously providing VIVA the flexibility to hold approved operating reserves in U.S. dollars.
In the case of VIVA, leveraging a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin for clearing transactions additionally translates to possessing the choice to retain eligible operating reserves in American dollars, which holds immense importance within economies characterized by fluctuating local currencies.
This rollout follows other enterprise adoptions of the Avalanche blockchain. South Korean commercial powerhouse POSCO recently integrated trade receivables onto the platform, while automotive manufacturer Hyundai transitioned a stablecoin-centric internal remittance mechanism utilizing U.S. dollars and USDT USDT $0.9996 between its American and Mexican corporate branches toward production readiness.
Nahas of Ava Labs expressed that this architecture forms part of a wider initiative to bring legacy commercial enterprises onchain while maintaining blockchain infrastructure largely invisible to everyday end users. A cellular account can functionally transform into a digital wallet, fiat-pegged dollars can transfer as stablecoins, and financial services can execute seamlessly in the background.
This methodology aligns closely with Miller’s professional background in enterprise distributed ledger technology. She remarked that she has continuously searched for “actual enterprises performing tangible operations that genuinely require blockchain technology,” as opposed to ventures engineered solely around launching a token initially and seeking a business application afterward.
She added that Iris is presently engaged in discussions with extra telecommunications providers worldwide as it seeks to onboard additional carriers and services onto the network.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/09/15/a-latam-telecom-operator-is-putting-part-of-its-finances-on-avalanche.
