El Salvador now has a government-backed app for holding and sending dollar stablecoins on Base. Modveon announced the national launch of Sivar on Sept. 29, with CEO and co-founder Nana Murugesan confirming the deployment and describing a service that supports transfers between the U.S. and El Salvador, including Circle's USDC.

The app's terms of service position Sivar as a self-custodial product: users control their own assets and private keys, and Modveon does not hold tokens on their behalf. Coinbase supplies the underlying wallet infrastructure through its Coinbase CDP product, according to those terms. Murugesan thanked Coinbase for "backing us and helping power Sivar's payments infrastructure."

Who can use Sivar, and what does it cost?

Modveon says Sivar operates under a five-year agreement with the Salvadoran government, with Modveon El Salvador, S.A.S. de C.V. named as the contracting entity for local users. The company lists Coinbase Ventures and the Salvadoran public institution AAB among its investors.

Access is deliberately narrow. Account holders must be at least 18 and pass identity verification through El Salvador's national registry. U.S. users must be Salvadoran citizens holding a valid national identity document, the DUI. The app is live on Apple's Salvadoran App Store, with Android availability advertised on its website.

The fee schedule is published in full:

• $2 flat fee for eligible cross-border transfers in either direction, with a $25 minimum
• No fee for domestic wallet-to-wallet transfers within either country
• No funding fee through the logged-in Coinbase flow
• 2.5% processing fee for Apple Pay or Google Pay funding in the U.S.
• Cash withdrawals in El Salvador via Puntoxpress cost $0.25 plus 0.50% of the amount

Recipients receive the same stablecoin that was sent, not an automatic cash payout. Users generate a code in the app and collect cash at a partner location.

How does Sivar differ from Chivo?

Sivar is not El Salvador's first government-linked payments app, and the distinction from Chivo runs deeper than dollar access. An IMF analysis completed in 2023 described Chivo as a centralized intermediary and found that few people used its dollar functionality, even for remittances — consistent with The Defiant's earlier reporting on the limited economic footprint of the country's bitcoin program.

Sivar inverts that structure. Its terms place responsibility for wallet keys with users and state plainly that Modveon cannot recover funds if keys are lost. The terms also disclose that the stablecoins are not government-guaranteed and carry no deposit insurance.

At the reserve layer, Circle says USDC is redeemable one-for-one for dollars and backed by reserves held separately from its operating funds, with BNY serving as primary reserve custodian. Circle Mint, the direct issuance and redemption service, is available only to institutions, not individuals.

What does key export actually protect?

Sivar's terms provide an exit from the app, not an exemption from issuer controls. On account closure — whether initiated by the user or by Modveon — the company says it will deactivate platform transfers and display a private key the user can import into any compatible wallet.

A separate authority sits at the token layer. Circle's USDC terms reserve the right to block transfers to and from an on-chain address under its access-denial policy, and the restriction is address-wide: all Circle stablecoins controlled by a blocked address become nontransferable on-chain. Circle may reverse a denial upon formal confirmation from a designated authority that the underlying legal obligation no longer applies or a security incident no longer requires intervention.

Read together, the documents distinguish two different risks. Key export preserves access to the wallet outside Sivar; it cannot undo an issuer block tied to the address itself.

Whether the five-year government agreement translates into adoption where Chivo's centralized model fell short will depend on how Salvadoran remittance corridors respond to a $2 fixed transfer cost against incumbent money-transfer pricing.