Hola amig@s fintech,
This Saturday is International Freedom of the Press Day. You might be wondering about the connection with fintech. Well, it's closer than you think.
Freedom of the press is not only about what journalists can say; it is also about the right to access information. They are two sides of the same coin —pun intended— and that coin is what you need for transparency: in countries' institutions, but also in markets and in the systems that move money.
Still don't see the connection? Think about OFAC. The US Treasury's sanctions list —one of the most powerful financial crime tools in the world— only works because it is public. Every bank and fintech that touches the US financial system must screen against it in real time. But adding someone to that list —known as a designation— depends entirely on journalists and civil society organizations who investigate, document, and report on human rights abusers and corrupt officials. No free press, no evidence. No evidence, no designation. No designation, no accountability.
When there is free press, journalists can access information to uncover financial crime, fraud, and corruption, and make it public. Free press is what keeps corrupt actors off the financial rails your business depends on.
So this Saturday, raise a glass to freedom of the press, but first, make sure you read this week's news.
~Vivi
| Stat of the Week
Data from Colombia’s Central Bank 2025 Survey of Electronic Payment Services shows that electronic transfers are the most widely used digital payment instruments in the country. 69.7% of adults report using intra-entity transfers, followed by interbank transfers (41.7%), QR code payments (39.9%), and instant transfers (32.9%), all above debit cards (37.9%) and well above credit cards (16.6%). The survey also shows strong user readiness: two out of three adults view electronic payments as easy to use and a pathway to financial inclusion.
Source: Banco de la República, Colombia
| Read of the Week
Bitso’s report Real-Time Money: The State of Mexico's Digital Payments Ecosystem and the Rapid Adoption of SPEI shows how SPEI has become the backbone of Mexico’s payments system, processing more than 7 billion transactions in 2025 and moving over $20 trillion, equivalent to more than 10x GDP. While cards dominate in volume, SPEI moves 27 times more value, driven by payroll, B2B payments, and treasury flows. The data also highlights a growing gap: domestic payments scale rapidly on real-time rails, while international transfers through traditional systems grow at just ~4% annually, pointing to an opportunity for new infrastructure to connect global payments with real-time local settlement.
| Podcast of the Week
In this episode of This Month in Fintech, Sasha Pilch sits down with Ximena Aleman, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Prometeo, to unpack what it really takes to build a single banking API across Latin America and the US. They dig into the realities of cross-border fintech infrastructure, from early workarounds like screen scraping to the impact of Brazil’s open banking movement, and how Prometeo is pushing banks toward API adoption. Ximena also shares lessons from scaling across fragmented markets, raising a Series A during a downturn, and navigating the challenges founders face in LATAM.They also explore where LATAM fintech could gain ground in the US, from cross-border payments and remittances to new approaches to credit for underserved populations.
| Post of the Week
A LinkedIn post arguing that in Mexico, fintechs are racing to become banks not as a growth milestone but as a survival strategy.
Stop Talking, Start Building: The Fintech Builders Lab Hits Bogotá & Mexico City
We are thrilled to announce the Fintech Builders Lab, a collaborative series presented by This Week in Fintech and the Interledger Foundation.
This isn't just another networking event. It’s an intensive, collaborative sandbox designed for the founders and engineers who are actually moving the needle. We’re moving beyond the headlines to solve real-world friction in interoperability, fees, and UX.
Why you should care: The Lab serves as the official launchpad for the Interledger Hackathon, focusing on accelerating the transition from cash to digital for small merchants across LATAM.
Choose your city and apply below (Spots are limited and curated):
📍 Bogotá - Wednesday, May 27 | 4:00 p.m.
📍 Mexico City - Wednesday, June 3 | 4:00 p.m.
| Venture Financing
🇧🇷 Aro, the AI-powered credit, raised a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by ONEVC and 17Sigma, with participation from Norte Ventures, Gilgamesh, and Grão VC. The company builds an AI agent that analyzes behavioral data to guide users toward the most suitable credit options, aiming to expand financial inclusion in Brazil.
🇧🇷 CloudWalk, the Brazilian payments company, raised $1.1B through a FIDC issuance led by Bradesco BBI with participation from Itaú BBA, BTG Pactual, Safra, UBS BB, and BV. The funds will be allocated to the early receipt of receivables for entrepreneurial clients.
🇨🇴 Addi, the Colombian buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform, secured a $150 million structured credit line led by J.P. Morgan with participation from Fasanara Capital. The company enables instant digital credit at checkout for consumers and merchants, and will use the funds to scale its lending operations and grow its financial services ecosystem.
| Product Launches & Partnerships
🇲🇽 Pomelo executed the first agentic payment transaction in Latin America directly via ChatGPT, utilizing Mastercard Agent Pay and card tokenization to enable AI agents to complete commerce flows within a conversational interface.
🇨🇴 Wenia, the digital asset platform of Grupo Cibest, introduced Usdw, a proprietary stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar that will replace USDC within its ecosystem. Reserves backing the token will be held in fiduciary custody by Bancoagrícola in El Salvador, a Cibest subsidiary, and audited externally with daily and monthly reporting.
🇲🇽 Grupo Comercial Chedraui integrated Kueski Pay into its e-commerce platform, making it the first BNPL solution available in its online channel. Customers can now split purchases into biweekly installments without a credit or debit card, expanding payment options in one of Mexico's largest supermarket chains.
🇦🇷 Brubank introduced BruFon, a native international eSIM integrated into its digital banking platform via Gigs technology, enabling users to access mobile data in over 150 countries and positioning itself as the first Argentine bank to offer embedded global connectivity services.
🌏 UK-based Damisa partnered with Uruguayan dLocal to expand its B2B cross-border settlement capabilities across the Asia-Pacific region, integrating dLocal's local payment rails to enable merchants to settle stablecoin and fiat transactions into local bank accounts in hours rather than days.
🇦🇷 Banco Credicoop joined the Nera agri-fintech ecosystem, combining the cooperative bank's network of over 150 branches in productive regions with Nera's data analytics and machine learning platform to expand digital credit access for agricultural producers across Argentina.
🇳🇮 TerraPay partnered with Banpro Grupo Promerica — which handles 42% of all remittance payouts in Nicaragua — to enable direct-to-account inbound remittances with 24/7 availability, same-day access, and preferential exchange rates, initially covering corridors from the US, Costa Rica, Spain, and Panama, in a sector representing approximately 26.6% to 29.4% of the country's GDP.
Nuvei, a Canadian global payments processor, launched direct acquiring operations in Mexico through its own licensed infrastructure, enabling merchants to process card transactions locally with higher authorization rates, lower latency, and access to local payment methods including OXXO Pay and SPEI — in a market that grew 19.2% year-over-year.
| Policy
🇦🇷 Argentina's BCRA incorporated digital wallets into its "Group A" supervisory regime, subjecting Mercado Pago, Naranja X, Personal Pay, and other Payment Service Providers to the same sanctions framework as traditional banks — raising the compliance bar and potentially accelerating consolidation among smaller players.
🇨🇴 The Colombian government established a mandatory Open Finance framework, requiring all financial institutions supervised by the Superintendencia Financiera to share customer financial data via standardized APIs —with explicit user consent— replacing the prior voluntary scheme and positioning the country among the few in Latin America with an obligatory model.
🇧🇷 PicPay, the Brazilian digital bank, received authorization from Brazil's Ministry of Finance to operate Joga Junto, a sports betting platform, marking the neobank's entry into the country's fast-growing regulated betting market as part of a broader strategy to monetize its user base beyond financial services.
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.
| Other News
💳Industry/Market
🇦🇷 MercadoLibre's 90-day delinquency rate on Mercado Pago loans in Argentina jumped from 1.8% to 8.7% between December 2024 and December 2025 — a trend seen across the entire Argentine financial system — though still well below Brazil, where the rate fell from 15.9% to 11% over the same period.
🇲🇽 Fintech players like Mercado Pago, Clip, and Revolut are outpacing traditional banks 3-to-1 in rural Mexico, reshaping how underserved communities access payments and financial services in areas where bank branches remain scarce.
🇻🇪 Following the US OFAC's General License 57 lifting key sanctions, Venezuela's banks — already deeply integrated with crypto infrastructure — are positioning stablecoins like USDT as a critical financial rail, with 80% of the national banking system now acting as the transactional backbone for digital assets in a country where crypto adoption became a survival tool.
🔄Leadership changes
🇨🇴 Bold, one of Colombia's largest payment fintechs serving SMEs, appointed Pope Davis as CTO and Alejandro Esguerra as CPO.
🌎 Insight Partners, a global venture capital and private equity firm, appointed Yoni Meyer to lead capital raising in Latin America.
🇲🇽 Fintech México, the Mexican fintech industry association, ratified Felipe Vallejo as President and introduced a new board of directors.
| Deeper Reads
A Substack post taking a clear-eyed look at whether tokenized real world assets can meaningfully close Latin America's agricultural credit gap. The core problem is old: farmers who are asset-rich but cash-poor, sitting on grain, invoices, and contracts that the formal credit system can't easily use. RWAs can change that — but scaling depends less on technology and more on regulation, legal enforceability, and distribution through intermediaries producers already trust. A grounded, country-by-country breakdown that separates what's working from what's still wishful thinking.
Chile has strong institutions and high bancarization, but its payment rails are owned by the same banks that compete on top of them — a conflict of interest that limits competition, overcharges SMEs, and slows fintech development. The article argues that the real lesson from Brazil's Pix and India's UPI is not the technology but the model: public digital infrastructure, open to all, owned by no one. A clear-eyed case for why building a state-backed real-time payment rail may be Chile's most effective productivity policy.
The Group of Thirty — an influential body of former central bank governors, finance ministers, and senior financial regulators — warns that nonbank financial intermediaries (hedge funds, private credit, money market funds, pension funds) now account for more than half of all global financial intermediation, with $260 trillion in assets. Their rapid expansion, light regulation, and deepening links to the banking system are creating conditions for a systemic crisis. For fintech, the implications are direct: the report flags stablecoins as among the most imminent vulnerabilities, warns that AI in financial services could accelerate herding and contagion, and calls for tighter oversight of payment systems and digital assets before the next shock forces the issue.
Made in LatAm with 🩵by
Elena, Head of New Technologies at Afirme Financial Group
Carlos, ESG at CFECapital
Vivi, Communication expert and Principal at Areté Consulting
Feedback? Reach out to us anytime! This week it’s Elena on read, post, and podcast of the week, funding, exists, other news and deeper reads, Carlos on policy, and product launches and partnerships, and Vivi on editing.
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