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Hello fintech friends,
For years, financial inclusion in Latin America meant one thing: get someone a bank account. Latin America's banking system posts a 12% to 14% return on equity, nearly double what banks in developed markets earn, yet millions across the region remain excluded from real financial services.
The gap is uneven: Brazil and Chile have pushed account ownership above 85%, while a giant like Mexico still has 40% to 50% of its population without full access. The real obstacle is that newly included customers often have no credit history for lenders to price their risk against, so they end up banked on paper and locked out of credit in practice. The next phase of inclusion won't be measured in accounts opened, but in whether people can actually build a financial relationship once they're in.
Enjoy the read.
~Vivi
The Rundown
🚀 Product Launches
🇺🇾 dLocal launched dMoRe, a formal Merchant of Record product covering the legal, tax, and compliance work of selling in emerging markets, built entirely on its own in-market payment infrastructure.
🇨🇴 Nequi partnered with payment network Redeban to extend its pre-approved credit line to physical checkout, letting more than 3 million users finance purchases at any of the network's payment terminals across Colombia.
🇨🇱 Fintoc debuted as a non-bank card issuer, gaining the ability to move money directly on Chile's transfer rails, and rolled out a dedicated business account so companies can reconcile bulk payments.
🇲🇽 Banco Afirme partnered with Costa Rican fintech Monibyte and Visa to launch an automated expense management solution for corporate cards, marking Monibyte's entry into the Mexican market, its fifth country of operation.
💸 Fundraises
🇲🇽 Felix Pago raised $200 million, led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from General Catalyst, to expand beyond remittances into loans, savings, and an AI financial assistant for Latin American immigrants in the US.
🇨🇴 Yuno, a Colombian AI-native payments platform, raised a $45 million Series B led by Global PayTech Ventures, with Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, and Kaszek participating.
🇦🇷 Autonomy, the Argentine fintech offering a rent-to-own mobility model for drivers with limited access to traditional auto loans, raised an $8 million Series A led by Magna Capital, Comafi, Natan VC and Murchison Ventures.
🇧🇷 Pluggy, the Open Finance infrastructure platform, raised $3.5 million in a Series A round led by DGF, with participation from Y Combinator and B Venture Capital (BVC).
🇻🇪 Fina, the Venezuelan fintech running an admin platform that centralizes inventory, sales, and finances for SMEs, raised $1 million in a Seed round co-led by SquareOne Capital and Tomorrow Capital.
🏛️ Policy & Regulation
🇦🇷 The Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) mandated banks and digital wallets to adopt "Cobro con Transferencia" (CCT), an automated system that debits loan installments directly from a borrower's account. The rule took effect August 31, but only one bank appeared ready to activate it, with the rest pushing back or requesting a delay.
🇵🇪 Peru’s Superintendency of Banking, Insurance, and Private Pension Fund Administrators (SBS) streamlined the authorization process for new financial and insurance entities by introducing three risk-based licensing tracks.
🇲🇽 Mexico's CNBV now allows banks to use SMS for identity verification on transactions made through third-party apps, and lighter authentication for low-risk actions like checking a balance. The rule took effect September 2.
🇨🇱 Chile's CMF published a policy package proposing to modernize the country's financial market, including a public-private working group to study asset tokenization and a roadmap for its development.
🗂️ Other News
🇨🇴 Nequi became a neobank and financing company under Grupo Cibest on September 1, operating on its own financial license instead of Bancolombia's while continuing to serve its 29 million users.
🇦🇷 Argentina leads global stablecoin usage, with 94% of peso-denominated crypto trading volume going into stablecoins, according to a16z crypto and Artemis.
🇲🇽 Mercado Libre launched the second edition of CLIC, El Impulso de lo Nuestro, offering six free training modules and personalized diagnostics to help Mexican producers, cooperatives and SMEs digitize and sell online.
Editor’s Picks
That’s all for now. We will see you back here next week!
