Hola amig@s fintech,

We hope this next week goes well, and that the fintech industry in LatAm keeps giving us wonderful news to cover. 

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🩵 Until next weekend. Até a próxima!

• Lorena

🌐 TWIF Community

🗣️ Channels

📊 Stat of the Week 

Colombia’s financial inclusion rate is around 85% (percentage of adults with bank or fintech accounts) but usage remains limited and uneven across regions. This suggests a shift in fintech opportunity: growth will depend less on onboarding new users and more on monetising existing ones through value-added services, digital credit, and embedded finance (source).

📖  Read of the Week

The report “Inclusion and Remittances in Northeast Mexico” shows that around 53% of remittance-recipient households in the region are outside the formal banking system, and over 40% of migrants send money without using fintechs or digital channels. This highlights a significant financial-inclusion gap. There is a market of millions of users who could access digital payments, credit or savings, which drives fintechs to build remittance solutions, digital accounts, and cross-border credit, leveraging migration flows.

🎙️ Podcast of the Week

💸 Venture Financing

💸 Equity

🌎 DRUO, the Miami-based company that provides a global direct-debit payment network enabling businesses to accept bank-account-based payments, raised a Seed round led by Global PayTech Ventures. The amount was not disclosed.

🇨🇴 Akua, the Colombian infrastructure platform focused on cloud-native payment processing for merchants, banks and fintechs, raised a $8.5 million Seed round, co-led by Flourish Ventures and Cathay Latam.

💵 Debt 

🇧🇷 CloudWalk, the Brazilian payments-technology company, raised $780 million through a Brazilian FIDC to finance credit-card receivables for merchants using InfinitePay’s platform in Brazil. 

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

🇵🇪 Monnet Payments, the Peru-based digital payments specialising in pay-ins and payouts across LatAm, acquired Chilean ETPay, the pay-by-bank platform, and announced plans to open a new operational hub in Uruguay. The acquisition aims to strengthen Monnet’s collection and dispersal payments infrastructure in Chile, while the Uruguay hub will support expansion into the Dominican Republic. No financial details of the acquisition were disclosed. 

🚀 Product Launches & Partnerships

💻 Fintech

🇨🇴 Nu Colombia introduced two new cards—Nu Control and Morada Abrecaminos—designed for individuals without prior credit history, alongside two digital credit lines, Préstamo Ligero Nu and Préstamo Personal Nu, offering loan amounts to expand access to formal financing.

🇻🇪 Conexus, the Velezuelan payments processing network, is developing a system to integrate Bitcoin and stablecoins into Venezuela’s national banking infrastructure, aiming to formalize crypto usage, enable point-of-sale acceptance and bank-account interoperability.

🇲🇽 Bitso announced the integration of USDT on Solana, accelerating access to the DeFi ecosystem in Latin America through near-instantly and low-cost stablecoin transactions on a high-throughput blockchain.

🇦🇷 Kripton, the Argentine payment system, is developing a crypto-enabled payment infrastructure that allows merchants to accept digital assets as easily as traditional methods, including bank-like transfers and interoperable QR-code payments.

🏦 Financial Services & Banking 

🇧🇷 Amazon and Nubank announced a strategic partnership in Brazil enabling Nubank customers to access additional credit lines and pay in installments when shopping on Amazon Brazil, strengthening digital commerce and expanding consumer financing options.

🇲🇽 Walmart de México and Aplazo formed a partnership to enable card-free flexible payments, expanding access to digital credit in a market where only 11% of adults hold a credit card, and supporting broader financial inclusion through embedded BNPL solutions.

🇲🇽 FINSUS, the Mexican platform, and OXXO unveiled a collaboration enabling FINSUS customers to withdraw cash using their Mastercard debit card across 24,000+ OXXO stores in Mexico, expanding nationwide access points and strengthening last-mile financial infrastructure for underserved users.

🇲🇽Uvicuo, the Mexican logistics-fintech startup, partnered with Mastercard to transform operational expense management in the transport sector through AI-driven automation, real-time receipt validation via WhatsApp, and intelligent fuel-spend alerts.

📜 Policy

🇧🇷 The Brazilian justice system expanded the legal liability framework for banks and fintechs, authorising authorities to hold these entities jointly responsible for prevention of digital fraud. The move signals intensified regulatory pressure and higher compliance burdens for fintechs operating in payments, wallets and open-banking in Brazil.

🇨🇴 Colombia’s government decided not to apply the proposed 1.5% tax or withholding on transactions made through digital platforms such as Bre-B, Nequi, and Daviplata.

🇨🇴 Nequi, Colombia’s digital wallet, received authorization from the Financial Superintendency to operate as an independent financing company separate from Bancolombia.

🇨🇱 Fintoc has secured authorization from Chile’s Financial Market Commission (CMF) to operate as a prepaid card issuer. The approval enables the company to broaden its payment infrastructure, support new use cases for businesses and consumers, and deepen its role within Chile’s rapidly evolving fintech landscape.

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📰 Other News 

🌎 Ignacio de la Cuadra was named Chief Financial Officer at Global66.

🇲🇽 Alfonso Quijano was named Commercial Strategy & Enterprise Expansion Manager at Mercado Pago Mexico.

🇲🇽 Unico, the Brazilian digital ID company, launched Trust Network in Mexico, a collaborative fraud-detection platform powered by facial biometrics and AI, enabling participating companies to identify and block up to 80% of active fraudsters through shared intelligence and real-time verification.

🇲🇽 ASEM, the Mexican Association of Entrepreneurs, and WhatsApp launced a new platform for Mexican SMEs, introduced a solution enabling small businesses to accept payments, issue digital receipts and manage cash-flow within WhatsApp’s chat interface, representing a convergence of messaging, payments and SME finance in LatAm.

📚 Deeper Reads

Fintech revolution: open finance and inclusion in Mexico 

Teaching payments to trust agents: the AI Paradox and the transformation beyond

Humanity Protocol Integrates Open Finance into Human ID

Banks are demanding access to more data to combat fraud and money laundering (PO)

Digitization: the engine of the future of payments in Mexico (ES)

Why did Bitcoin and Ether fall, and what can we expect going forward? (ES)

📣 LatAm fintech enthusiasts looking for a new role, check out https://jobs.thisweekinfintech.com

Made in LatAm with 🩵by 

Elena, Digital Innovation Manager at Banco Azteca

Carlos, Research Associate at El Colegio de México

Lorena, Head of Policy for Spanish-speaking LatAm at Tools for Humanity

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