📱Banking Apps

Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations.

Our phones are at the heart of our financial world nowadays, whether it be through paying bills remotely, tap-and-paying at the local coffee shop, or quickly transferring your friends some money to pay them back after they’ve covered the bill at the restaurant.

Given this, it’s little surprise that banking apps have become among the most popular on the app store in countries like Mexico, as more and more people circumvent traditional banking barriers with the help of their cell phones.

But don’t think this is reserved for the historical big banks of the last century. Banco Azteca is competitive despite having only launched in 2002.

And even more impressively, South American fintech newcomers aiming to acquire their banking licenses are seeing more downloads than ever. Since December, Mercado Pago’s app has been getting more monthly downloads than Mexico’s largest bank, BBVA.

Nu Mexico obtained initial approval for a banking license last month, while Mercado Pago applied to Mexico’s regulatory agency just last September. Being a licensed bank means opening the door to new offerings such as the introduction of payroll accounts. In Mexico, a little over a third of adults have access to these sorts of accounts—90% of them are currently concentrated in just four banks.

But beyond taking on the big banks, fintechs have been fiercely competing with each other, in large part through the use of attractive interest rates on savings accounts from 10-15%.

So onwards and upwards to our new regional superstars which are quickly moving beyond the mere fintech label to become true and proper banks in their own rights. We hope the successful rise of these apps will lead to greater competition, financial inclusion, and access for underbanked individuals across Mexico and beyond.

Comment of the Week 🗣️

Abel raises a very valid concern about ILO’s productivity metric. How can Cuba be higher than Mexico and Brazil?

We attempted to dive into it, and based on Cuba’s lack of data, we don’t think this Cuba metric by the ILO is trustworthy. For instance, the IMF has no GDP numbers for Cuba, nor does the World Bank since 2020.

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