KoreFusion Names Mexico a Major Fintech Destination

Mexico is the destination of the most foreign fintech companies looking towards Latin America, says KoreFusion in its 2020 LATAM Fintech Report. 

According to the report, Mexico has a total of 249 fintech companies operating in the country, of which 91 are foreign, mainly from the US, Spain and the UK. These companies provide a variety of services ranging from lending to financial enterprise management and crowdfunding. 

This makes Mexico the Latin American country with the most participation form foreign fintech companies, followed by Brazil with 67 and Colombia with 50. Despite the large number of companies, the report connotes that this as a weakness in the Mexican financial ecosystem because “the high presence of foreign fintechs increases the competition between them and dissuades investor interest in local competitors,” explains KoreFusion.

Mexico, however, does not take the top spot in foreign investments in fintech as Brazil has received US$327 million, putting Mexico in second place with US$270.6 million. Nonetheless, Mexico still received more investment than the third, fourth and fifth place combined as Colombia received US$32.6 million, Chile US$26 million and Argentina US$20.9 million, reports KoreFusion. The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), however, is much more positive about fintech developments in Mexico as it stepped into the regulatory realm of financial technology before other countries in the region, ECLAC explained in its ‘Fintech Panorama’ Study.

According to Korefusion’s report, Brazil is the only country with fintech unicorns, naming PagSeguro, Nubank, Stone and EBANX. However, the report was made before Bitso announced today May 5, 2021, that it had brought its valuation to US$2.2 billion to become the first crypto unicorn in Latin America. “The growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem this year has been remarkable. It took Bitso six years to reach its first million customers. Now - less than 10 months later - we have reached two million,” said Daniel Vogel, Co-Founder and CEO of Bitso, in a statement, according to MBN.