👋 Welcome to the new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 176,000+ other subscribers who love fintech.
Hola amig@s fintech,
This week brought two snapshots of women in finance, one from Mexico and one from Brazil. In Mexico, women hold 53% of banking jobs, yet men fill two of every three senior roles at the eight banks that report leadership figures. In Brazil, a study of 1,744 regulated institutions found women in just 20% of leadership roles, and in none at all at 30% of them. The studies measure different things, so they can’t be ranked, but the pattern is the same: women fill the ranks and thin out near the top. The cost goes beyond fairness. The people at the top decide which products get built, who qualifies for credit and who gets promoted next. When roughly half your potential customers are women, leaving them out of those decisions is shooting yourself in the foot, and banks and fintechs in Latin America’s two largest economies are doing exactly that.
Enjoy the read.
~Vivi
The Rundown
🏦 M&A
🇸🇻 Linguard Labs, the digital finance infrastructure company, acquired a majority stake in Chivo, El Salvador’s government-backed digital wallet, with the government staying on as a shareholder. The relaunch adds microcredit, cash advances and free US remittances, serving more than 4.5 million registered accounts.
🇲🇽 PayJoy, the smartphone-financing lender serving more than 20 million customers across nine countries, acquired select strategic assets of Finia AI, a Mexican fintech that built AI underwriting, credit cards, and installment loans for micro-businesses with little or no formal credit history. Terms were not disclosed.
🚀 Product Launches
🇲🇽 Mercado Pago launched Seguro de Comercio with Chubb, covering theft, fire, equipment damage and civil liability for small businesses from about $3 a month.
🇧🇷 Kavak, the Mexican used-car buying and selling platform, launched Kavak Seguros in Brazil, its first insurance market, built in under 60 days through a white-label partnership with Split Risk, a Brazilian insurtech providing insurance-as-a-service infrastructure.
🇲🇽 Orbi, a Mexican digital-dollar fintech, announced a strategic partnership with SoFi Tech Solutions and Mastercard to launch a crypto-linked card that lets customers spend crypto and stablecoin balances at any Mastercard merchant, which receives pesos.
🇦🇷 Cocos, the Argentine investment app with about 2 million users, launched Cocos Crypto, a standalone app for buying, selling, holding, sending and paying with crypto, separating the business from its main platform as it becomes a bank after buying Banco Voii for about $20 million.
💸 Fundraises
🇨🇴 Fronte, the Colombian company building a financial operating system for transnational households, raised an undisclosed pre-seed round co-led by Rally Cap VC and Bankless Ventures, with participation from Base Ecosystem Fund.
🇧🇷 Auro, a Brazilian startup using AI to bring wealth management to people still building their savings, raised an undisclosed pre-seed round from Link Capital, the early-stage fund of Link School of Business.
🏛️ Policy & Regulation
🇵🇪 Peru’s Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Private Pension Funds (Superintendencia de Banca, Seguros y AFP, SBS) published the first block of rules for the country’s Open Finance System (Sistema de Finanzas Abiertas, SFA) for public comment until October 23. The draft covers the system’s scope, data, participant roles, registration, and how users give and revoke consent.
🇸🇻 El Salvador’s Superintendency of the Financial System (Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero, SSF) authorized fintech Monetae to acquire Transferencias de El Salvador, the electronic money provider belonging to remittance group AirPak, which will be renamed Monetae Pagos Integrados.
🗂️ Other News
🇲🇽 Revolut plans to raise its cumulative investment in Mexico from $167 million to about $250 million by 2027, after reaching 1 million customers within eight months of launching full banking operations.
🇲🇽 Data from Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission (Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores, CNBV) shows that women hold 52.8% of jobs in Mexico’s banking system, yet men fill about two of every three senior roles at the eight banks that report leadership figures, and Banorte reports no women in top management.
🇨🇴 Nu Colombia rolled out cardless QR cash withdrawals at about 2,800 Tiendas D1 stores in 540 municipalities, joining Grupo Aval’s banks, which already use the chain as a banking correspondent.
🇵🇪 Monnet Payments, the payment-processing technology company, joined TAPP, the retail payment initiation infrastructure that Peru’s Central Reserve Bank will pilot in December. Monnet projects more than $6 billion in processed volume by the end of the year.
What if access was never the finish line?
Across Latin America, millions now have access to financial products. But access alone doesn’t mean those products are useful, connected, or built around how people actually move and use money. So, what comes next?
This Week in Fintech and Interledger Foundation are joining forces to connect builders, creators, and ecosystem partners to answer that question and build what comes next for money.
So far, 400+ fintech operators have joined us across 4 events, in 2 countries, and +30 roundtables discussing ideas ranging from payments and remittances to smart AI assistants and open banking.
Next stop: Medellín, Colombia, with Innovation at the Edges on October 15 and the Open Payments Hackathon on October 16–17.
See you there!
Quote of the Week
Marlene Garayzar, CGO and co-founder, Stori, on designing financial tools around how women actually earn and manage money
Editor’s Picks
Deadline Extended: One More Week to Nominate Your 2026 Changemakers
Due to the flood of submissions over the past few days (and more than a few requests for extra time), we’re keeping the nomination window open for one final week.
You now have until Friday, October 16 to put forward the builders, platforms, and investors who drove lasting, positive change in fintech this year..
We’re recognizing honorees across five distinct categories: Big Companies, Startups, Founders, VCs & Investors, and Social Good / Nonprofits.
Winners will be announced live at our year-end Fintech Formal on Dec. 11 in New York.
Fun Stuff
Two truths and a lie. Can you spot the fake?
A. Kavak built its insurance product for Brazil in under 60 days.
B. Nu customers in Colombia can withdraw cash at about 2,800 Tiendas D1 stores, as long as they bring their physical debit card.
C. El Salvador’s government still owns part of Chivo, even after selling a majority stake.
Answer: B is the lie. Nu’s withdrawals at D1 are cardless: customers just show a QR code from the app.
That's all for now. We will see you back here next week!
