Modveon, the startup behind El Salvador’s new national payments platform, launched Sivar on September 29, with Coinbase supplying the infrastructure that moves the money. Eligible users in the United States can now send funds to verified recipients in El Salvador for a flat $2 fee, with transfers settling in stablecoins on the Base network, according to the companies’ announcement.
How Sivar Moves Money on Base
Sivar’s remittance experience runs end to end on Coinbase’s payments infrastructure. Users fund transfers directly from a debit card through Coinbase Onramp, and each user is provisioned a non-custodial wallet inside the app. Peer-to-peer transfers between verified users are powered by Coinbase APIs, while transactions settle in stablecoins on Base so value can move quickly and at low cost. Once a transfer is complete, recipients can cash out through a network of more than 1,000 locations across El Salvador, and the $2 fee stays flat regardless of the amount sent. Crypto is abstracted throughout the experience, so users unfamiliar with digital assets can send and receive money without handling a wallet or a token.
Remittances Are a Lifeline for El Salvador
Salvadorans abroad sent roughly $9 billion home in 2025, about 92 percent of it from the United States, and an estimated 1.6 million people depend on those transfers. Sivar is Modveon’s first national deployment of its Verified Operating System, which brings verified identity, communities, institutional services, and payments into a single app. More than 25,000 Salvadorans signed up before launch. "The internet scaled faster than trust. El Salvador chose to address this directly," said Modveon CEO and co-founder Nana Murugesan. "That starts with something practical: letting U.S. residents send money to El Salvador for a flat two dollars, no matter how much they send."
A Country-Scale Test for Onchain Payments
Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad framed the launch as a test of whether stablecoin rails can undercut legacy remittance costs. "Salvadorans send billions of dollars home every year, and too much of it disappears into fees," he said. "Bringing that cost down to a flat fee and settling transfers in seconds is exactly what modern payment rails are supposed to do." The deployment puts a country-scale remittance corridor on Base alongside Coinbase’s broader payments push, which includes its stablecoin payment expansion with Citi and stablecoin settlement across Mastercard’s network. Sivar is a product of Modveon, while Coinbase provides the payments infrastructure and transactions settle on the Base network.
