Hola amig@s fintech,

There is a wildflower bloom happening in Chile’s Atacama Desert, a rare phenomenon that happens every few years. If you can, take a deeper look at the photos, it is amazing!

If you like our content, stay in the loop by subscribing and following us! You can also find us on LinkedIn!

🩵 Until next weekend. Até a próxima!

• Lorena

🌐 TWIF Community

🗣️ Channels

📺 Sponsored Content

With Bridge’s stablecoin-backed infrastructure, Cenoa scaled to 40+ markets, grew 30x in 5 months, and surpassed $10M in monthly volume—delivering 80% lower cross-border fees and instant onboarding for entrepreneurs worldwide.

Join Cenoa, Felix Pago, Metamask, Remitly, and thousands of others using Bridge to simplify money movement. Learn more here.

📊 Stat of the Week 

 While Mexican banks seem streamlined, key metrics show they have grown assets by 33% in five years and 107% in ten years; yet their asset-to-GDP ratio stands at just 48%, among the lowest in Latin America. This suggests high growth in size but limited credit reach, opening vast space for fintechs to expand digital lending, alternative finance, and inclusion across underserved markets (Source).

🦉 Post of the Week

🎙️ Podcast of the Week

💸 Venture Financing

💸 Equity

🇲🇽 Plata, the digital financial institution, raised $250 million in a capital round led by Televisa Univision and Kora, with participation from Moore Strategic Ventures, Audeo Ventures, Spice Expeditions and Hedosophia, bringing its valuation to $3.1 billion.

🇧🇷 Bull, the Brazilian credit-tech platform enabling companies to deploy white-label payroll-loan products to their customers, raised $1.8 million in a Pre-seed round led by Canary, with participation from Scale Up Ventures and Endeavor. 

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

🇨🇴 Siigo, the cloud-based accounting and administrative software platform for SMEs in LatAm, acquired 100 % of Actualícese, the Colombian media portal focused on accounting, tax and labor intelligence.

🚀 Product Launches & Partnerships

💻 Fintech

🇲🇽 Stori, the Mexican fintech operating under a Sofipo license, launched a new feature enabling users to receive remittances from the U.S. through an alliance with Félix Pago.

🇨🇴 Movii, the Colombian company, has developed a smart router designed to enable seamless connectivity with the Banco de la República’s Bre-B system. This innovation aims to optimize transaction routing, reduce latency, and improve interoperability between financial institutions and the country’s real-time payment infrastructure.

🇨🇴 Redeban, the Colombian payment systems company, has entered the Peruvian market, offering merchant acquiring services that include digital payments with a strong focus on security, technology, and ecosystem integration to enhance local payment infrastructure.

🇵🇪 OKTO, the Peruvian digital payments startup, has launched a new real-time account-to-account (A2A) payment and withdrawal feature in Peru, integrating an interoperable QR code compatible with popular wallets such as Yape, Plin, and Bim to streamline instant digital transactions.

🇨🇴 Daviplata, the digital wallet of Colombia’s Banco Davivienda, announced the launch of digital credit and debit cards, which can be used for online purchases both in Colombia and globally.

🇨🇴 TumiPay, the Colombian digital payments platform, announced a partnership with Kamin, the real-time payments platform, to integrate Bre-B, the new instant payment system launched by the Banco de la República.

🇲🇽 Bitso announced the launch of a new product that allows users in Mexico to invest in fractional shares and ETFs of international companies.

🇲🇽 Fintech México signed an agreement to incorporate the OFAC lists (Office of Foreign Assets Control) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a voluntary measure to strengthen regulatory compliance, transparency, and integrity in the country’s fintech sector.

🇧🇷 Mercado Pago launched an AI-powered personal assistant to help users better manage their money. The rollout will begin in Brazil, offering features such as balance inquiries, payments, and transfers, with personalization based on individual user habits.

📜 Policy

🇲🇽 The Mexican National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) has authorized Moneki as an Electronic Payment Funds Institution (IFPE), adding it to the group of regulated fintech institutions operating in the country.

🇨🇱 LAKPA, the Chilean financial advisors platform, has obtained approval from the SEC to operate as a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) in the United States.

🇲🇽 The Mexican government plans to introduce a proposal to digitalize payments in the country, aiming to reduce the informal economy, enhance security, and facilitate everyday transactions.

📰 Other News 

🇲🇽 Juan José Galnares was named CEO at Openbank Mexico.

🌎Revolut, the UK-based neobank offering digital banking and financial services in over 35 countries, faced a setback in its pursuit of a full UK banking license after regulators raised concerns about its risk management and internal controls. The decision delays Revolut’s expansion plans in the UK and may impact its global growth strategy, including its operations across LatAm, where it has been expanding digital payments and investment solutions.

🇨🇴 Energy Master, the Colombia-based tech company, invested $380,000 to develop the country’s first artificial intelligence platform designed to reduce public utility costs, optimizing energy and water consumption for households and businesses.

📚 Deeper Reads

The Frictionless Fiction: Why Banking CX Requires Intelligent Pauses

How to stop talking about the future of payments in Mexico and start building it (ES)

From frictionless to friction smart: the next wave in Latin American banking (ES)

MIT has studied the impact of AI on businesses (ES)

Cash is cringe. QR is king

📣 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

👍👎 Did you like this edition of TWIF LatAm?  Take a 1-minute anonymous survey here.

Come meet us in person at www.thisweekinfintech.com/events. You can also join our global community on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.