Hola amig@s fintech,
Pix, wallets, cards, cash vouchers, A2A. If you're selling across LatAm and you haven't localized your payment stack, you're leaving money on the table. This week we open with the report that breaks down exactly how much.
Also worth your attention: Mastercard is negotiating with Brazil's payment processors to share $440M in losses after a fintech-issuer collapsed and left merchants unpaid. It's the kind of story that reminds you the infrastructure holding this all together has real financial exposure when something goes wrong.
Lots to read this week. Let's get into it.
~Vivi
🟨Editor’s Picks
LatAm's fragmented payment rails are leaving 30% of conversions on the table
Share of e-commerce payments by method and region, 2024.
Latin America's e-commerce is growing two to three times faster than North America and Europe, and the Yuno Global Payment Infrastructure Playbook 2026 maps exactly what that speed costs merchants who aren't prepared. The region runs on parallel rails — Pix, wallets, cards, and cash vouchers — and enterprises that stick to a single-method strategy lose up to 30% of conversions. The report breaks down where the revenue leaks and how orchestration turns fragmentation into a competitive advantage.
Why companies are ditching banks for stablecoins to move money across borders
In this episode of Finanzas del Futuro, a podcast by Talentópolis, Ignacio Detmer, co-founder of Koywe, explains why stablecoins are emerging as a more efficient alternative to traditional banking for companies operating globally, allowing cross-border capital to be moved in minutes, significantly reducing transaction costs, and achieving greater transparency and financial traceability.
Payments, remittances and crypto adoption in LatAm
Peru's financial map is being redrawn. Fintechs are converting to banks, digital payments are scaling, and the BCRP is pushing interoperability through UPI. As the line between bank, fintech, and tech company blurs, where does competitive advantage actually sit in a market like Peru?
The fintech conversation continues in our community chats.
Across WhatsApp and Telegram, thousands of founders, operators, investors, and builders connect daily to share insights, opportunities, and market intel.
🟨 This Week’s Key Moves
| Fundraising
🇧🇷 Robbin, the Brazilian B2B credit and payments fintech, announced a $108M financing package to expand credit operations between manufacturers and retailers in Brazil, including an $8M seed round co-led by Canary, Atlântico, and Caravela, and a $100M FIDC structured with Augme, XP's asset management arm. The company uses Pix infrastructure for real-time settlement and recently launched an AI assistant that approves credit directly on WhatsApp.
🇲🇽 RedGirasol, the Mexican crowdfunding platform for sustainable and productive projects, received an initial investment of $5.8M from Credit Saison Mexico, a subsidiary of one of Japan's largest non-bank financial groups. The deal makes RedGirasol the first Mexican fintech selected by Credit Saison to channel impact investment, and positions the platform to double its loan portfolio in the next 12 months.
🇧🇷 Trinio, a Brazilian retailtech building AI-powered infrastructure for omnichannel e-commerce operations, raised $5.7M in a seed round led by Hi Ventures, with participation from Activant, Caravela, Latitud, and Gilgamesh. The funds will go toward expanding agentic AI capabilities and entering Colombia and Mexico.
🇧🇷 MSW Capital launched BB Ventures 2, a $21M corporate venture fund co-structured with Banco do Brasil focused on fintech, agritech, and govtech, bringing the firm's total to $96M under management across five funds.
🌎 inDrive launched Aurora Ventures, an early-stage investment program focused on women founders across LatAm, MENA, Africa, and emerging Asia, with checks of $180K–$250K at pre-seed and seed stage.
🇺🇾 Mozart, the Uruguayan AI-powered debt collection platform, raised $600K in a pre-seed round led by Orbit Ventures, a Singapore-based fund with strong presence in Southeast Asia and Africa, with participation from Picante VC and angel investors from Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. The startup operates in 15 countries and is growing revenue 20% monthly.
| Exits
🇲🇽 Klar, the Mexican neobank, acquired Yave to enter the mortgage market, a move that signals an ambition to go beyond consumer credit even as Mexico's housing sector slows down.
🇧🇷 Z.ro Bank, the Brazilian digital bank, announced the acquisition of Paag, the Brazilian payments fintech specialized in the iGaming sector, creating a dedicated business unit focused on betting and gaming payments as Brazil’s regulated online gaming market expands.
🇧🇷 Evertec, the Puerto Rican payments and fintech infrastructure company, announced the acquisition of a 67% stake in BBChain, a São Paulo-based blockchain and asset tokenization firm, for $5.6M. The deal marks Evertec's fifth acquisition in Brazil and signals a deliberate push into digital assets and tokenization infrastructure for financial institutions across the region.
| Products & Partnerships
🌎 Brazilian fintech PagBrasil launched RoamingPay, a platform that interconnects instant payment networks across Latin America — including Pix, Transferencias 3.0, and Bre-B — allowing travelers to pay abroad using their local banking apps while merchants receive settlement in their own currency. The company targets 10 countries and $600M in transactions in its first year.
🇨🇴 Mobility platform Yango integrated Colombian fintech Cobre's payment infrastructure to enable real-time disbursements for over 120,000 drivers in Colombia, cutting wait times from up to 48 hours to instant. Cobre processes $2.6B monthly for over 300 companies across the region.
🇻🇪 Venezuelan fintech Kontigoannounced plans to integrate Zelle, PayPal, and U.S. interbank transfers as payment methods, leveraging OFAC's License 57 amid gradual sanction easing to allow Venezuelans to send remittances, receive funds, and transact in stablecoins.
| Policy
🇲🇽 Mercado Libre submitted a request to Mexico's CNBV to operate an investment fund management company through a new subsidiary, Mercado Pago Fondos. The request, filed in March 2025, is still pending approval — and comes as a separate pending application to operate as a full bank also awaits the regulator's green light.
🇵🇪 Peru's Superintendency of Banking, Insurance, and AFP (SBS) authorized the conversion of Financiera Efectiva into a full bank, which will operate under the brand Efectibank. The move follows a multi-year digital transformation and gives the company access to deposit-taking and expanded retail financial products.
🇲🇽 Western Union Financial Services acquired a 99.99% controlling stake in Lanapay México, following regulatory authorization from Mexico's CNBV under the country's Fintech Law.
🇵🇪 Peruvian Supreme Courtproposed urgent amendments to the country's anti-money laundering framework to address gaps exposed by crypto and AI-enabled illicit flows. Financial intelligence data shows approximately $853M is processed annually through these channels.
🟨 On our Radar
| Signals
When Banco Master was placed into liquidation by Brazil's central bank in late 2025, its fintech arm Will Bank left behind roughly R$5 billion in unsettled merchant payments. Mastercard, as the card network, was on the hook — and covered approximately R$2.5 billion out of its own funds in the first 30 days. Now it's negotiating with Brazil's largest payment processors to share the remaining burden, while also selling seized collateral assets, including a stake in Banco de Brasília, to recoup losses. The case is a live stress test of how Brazil's acquiring infrastructure handles issuer failure — and a signal that the network guarantee model has real balance sheet consequences when a fintech partner goes under.
With Decree 0368, Colombia joined Brazil as one of the few countries in Latin America to move open finance from voluntary to mandatory. All entities supervised by the Superintendencia Financiera — banks, insurers, pension funds, card issuers — must now share customer-authorized data through standardized APIs, with 12 months to comply per data category once standards are published. The harder deadline, as one analyst put it, is competitive: whoever builds on this infrastructure first sets the new bar.
| People
🇨🇴 Addi appointed Juan Manuel Iranzo, former CFO of Mercado Libre Mexico, as its new CFO.
🌎 TransFi appointed Victor Lucena as CEO for Latin America to lead its regional expansion across payments, remittances, and digital asset infrastructure.
TWIF Latin America editorial team
Elena, Head of New Technologies at Afirme Financial Group
Carlos, ESG Analyst at CFECapital
Editor-in-Chief: Vivi, Strategic Communications and Public Affairs Advisor
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