Mexico and Argentina move the fintech needle | TWIF LatAm (04/22)

Hola amig@s fintech,

Two stories stood out this week, and they both point to the same thing: Latin America is writing new chapters in fintech history.

In Mexico, Banco Plata reached a $5 billion valuation, making it Latin America’s most valuable privately held digital bank. In Argentina, COELSA introduced NFC account-to-account payments without CBU, CVU, or alias a first in Latin America and a rare move globally. Two milestones in one week.

It doesn't stop there. PagBrasil's RoamingPay takes on one of the hardest problems in LatAm payments: making Pix, Bre-B, and Transferencias 3.0 talk to each other across borders. That's just one of the stories you'll find inside. Read on to catch up.

~Vivi

A new Mastercard study on the State of Digitalization and Financial Inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) reveals a region entering a new phase of financial progress. While still nearly half (47%) of consumers used cash in the past six months, 87% wish more stores and people accept digital payments, and 59% say that at least once a month they must use cash when they would rather pay with a card or digital device. This acceptance gap represents one of the biggest opportunities in advancing financial inclusion at scale across LAC. Another is for the players to understand that inclusion is no longer just about bringing people into the financial system – it’s about making sure the system works for them every day.

Across WhatsApp and Telegram, thousands of founders, operators, investors, and builders connect daily to share insights, opportunities, and market intel.

🇲🇽 Banco Plata, the Mexican digital bank, raised a $405M Series C round, led by Bicycle Capital with participation from Kora, Qatar Investment Authority, and BTG Pactual. The round brings the company to a $5 billion valuation, making it Latin America’s most valuable privately held digital bank.

🇲🇽 Pulpos, the Mexican startup building an AI-powered financial and operational platform for SMEs via WhatsApp, raised a $5M led by Dalus Capital. The company enables small businesses to manage sales, payments, and finances through conversational interfaces.

🇨🇴 Payments Way, the Colombian payments infrastructure provider, received a strategic investment from Coltefinanciera. The amount was not disclosed. 

🇧🇷 Bond, tthe Brazilian accounting platform, raised $2M in a pre-seed round led by Propel Venture Partners, with participation of Kiara Capital, Norte Ventures and Hypersphere.The company focuses on automating accounting processes and financial management, aiming to simplify operations for small businesses. 

🇦🇷 COELSA, Argentina’s clearing house for bank and fintech transfers, introduced a solution enabling account-to-account payments via NFC, without requiring CBU, CVU, or aliases. The system allows users to transfer money by bringing phones close together, marking the first rollout of this type in Latin America. 

🇧🇷 PagBrasil, the Brazilian payments company, introduced RoamingPay, a solution designed to act as a neutral layer connecting local networks and enabling interoperability across jurisdictions. In its first phase, RoamingPay integrates systems such as Pix (Brazil), Transferencias 3.0 (Argentina), SIPAP (Paraguay), and Bre-B (Colombia), with the goal of reducing friction in cross-border payments. 

🇸🇻 Grupo Cibest, the parent entity of Bancoagrícola, established Wenia El Salvador to enter the digital asset tokenization market. The move leverages the country’s specialized regulatory framework to facilitate the issuance and management of blockchain-based assets. 

🇵🇪 Takenos, the Argentine financial platform, committed $4 million to expand into Peru, as part of a broader regional growth plan through 2026. The company is entering the market with a focus on digital financial services, positioning Peru as a key step in its international expansion. 

🇵🇪 BTG Pactual, the Brazilian financial group, submitted its application to Peru’s banking regulator (SBS) to operate as a bank in the country. The filing marks a new step in the process following prior authorization to organize the entity, with final approval subject to regulatory review. 

🌎 Women are increasing their participation in investment markets and expanding their share of global wealth, according to a Forbes report. The piece highlights a growing role for women as investors, alongside shifts in financial decision-making and asset ownership across regions. 

🇧🇷 In Brazil, rising minimum capital requirements are pushing fintechs to reassess whether to operate with their own licenses or rely on Banking-as-a-Service providers. The shift is forcing companies to revisit the trade-offs between control and cost, as regulatory changes make licensed models more capital intensive. 

The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) 2026 AI Index shows a technology advancing faster than the systems built to manage it. AI capabilities continue to improve rapidly, with adoption reaching nearly 90% of organizations and over half of the global population in just a few years. This translates into early productivity gains in functions like customer support and software development, alongside emerging labor shifts in entry-level roles. Critically, governance is lagging: safety benchmarks are inconsistent and reported incidents are rising, widening the gap between capability and oversight. For fintech, this points to a more complex operating environment, shaped by uneven regulation and growing competition over AI infrastructure and talent. 

Visa’s report What Consumers Value Most: Are Companies Measuring Up? examines how consumers across Latin America and the Caribbean are redefining expectations in payments and commerce, where security, convenience, personalization, and trust are now baseline requirements. It highlights a persistent gap between the experiences companies believe they deliver and those consumers actually perceive. The report outlines differences in expectations across segments, including affluent users, Gen Z, underserved populations, and SMBs, while pointing to security and fraud protection as top priorities despite uneven satisfaction. It also identifies friction and weak personalization as key drivers of declining trust, and highlights priority areas for issuers, merchants, and payment providers to address these gaps.

Made in LatAm with 🩵by 

Elena, Head of New Technologies at Afirme Financial Group

Carlos, ESG Analyst 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.

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

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

_{* Cover photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash}