Friday Briefing: Santander and Banorte grow digital channels

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October 28, 2022

Good morning!

If you’ve been too busy watching Serena at Money 20/20, let us bring you up to date with the latest news. This week, executives from Mercado Pago and Ualá talk us through the changes and trends on the cards for digital payments in 2023. Also, earnings reports from Santander and Banorte underscore the growth of digital channels, and Yaydoo acquires Oyster in Mexico with the aim of providing payment solutions to businesses in the region.

All this and more in our weekly
summary👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

#TopStory 🔝

The opportunities to build a one-stop shop from payments

Without doubt, electronic payments is the vertical that has grown most in the last year, and the challenge for companies in 2023 is to match this expansion with profitability.

To do so, increasingly the leading market players will start to move away from single-product models to build concentrated ecosystems of services ranging from loans and business solutions to real-time payments, executives from Ualá and Mercado Pago told iupana.

“We all have an opportunity to continue working on being the
one-stop shop for payments,” said Ramiro Nández, commercial director at Mercado Pago México, during the online event “Digital payments 2023: what’s new and trends.“

The dynamics of the payment industry have changed. Companies are focused on healthy, sustainable portfolio strategies that don’t just offer discounts, cash back and loyalty points but also experiences, products and solutions to the obstacles users face in their daily financial lives.

“We aim to make finance easy through an application with embedded solutions or partnerships that cooperate in this process of
broadening the user experience,” said Simonelli, who is vice president of payment methods at Ualá.

The industry specialists expect these products to dominate developments in the payments vertical in 2023:

• BNPL
• Real-time payments
• New acquisition models

You can see the rest of their views here.

#Quote of the week 📆

“There are financial services that are going to have to be sacrificed because they can’t compete naturally against cryptocurrencies and blockchain. I expect remittances to be first. Naturally, they can’t compete: their costs in the Swift systems are very high compared to the costs of sending remittances with cryptocurrencies.”

Lenin Tarrillo, product owner from Banco de Credito del Peru (BCP), in episode 3 of the podcast series“The Future of Money: Crypto, Digital Currencies, and Financial Services.”

#Financial results💰

Santander and Banorte grow via digital channels

Banco Santander reported that 56% of its total sales were made through digital channels in the first nine months of this year. This bring the total number of digital customers in the countries where it operates to 50 million, an increase of 3.8 million compared to September 2021.

For its part, Mexico’s Grupo Financiero Banorte reported that digital transactions are also leading growth. Electronic payments via POS grew by 34% and mobile transactions by 59% year on year.

Meanwhile, the bank’s RappiCard Visa partnership with the Colombian superapp continues to grow in terms of cards and billing. To date, it has issued 703,000 cards, with 70% of users active monthly.

Also…

• BBVA will publish its third quarter earnings report today. Stay tuned for more details.

#Strategic Plays 📊

Yaydoo acquires Oyster

Mexican unicorn Yaydoo, which offers digital payment solutions for businesses, has acquired corporate payment platform Oyster. The fintech says it aims to become the largest B2B payment provider in Latin America and will offer a financial management system to help handle accounting and collections.

Visa, Pomelo and Satoshi Tango launch crypto card

Crypto exchange Satoshi Tango, infrastructure fintech Pomelo, and card giant Visa, presented a prepaid card with the aim of completing the circuit of cryptocurrency usage in Argentina. Users will be able to exchange pesos with the crypto of their choice and make payments at any store that accepts Visa.

Also…

• Argentine crypto platform Ripio will launch a Web3 compatible wallet in Brazil in the coming months.

#Investments 📈

Franq Open Banking from Brazil raises US$12M

Brazilian fintech Franq Open Banking, which develops technologies for open banking, raised US$12 million in a Series A round led by Quona Capital. The proceeds will be used to strengthen Franq’s technology teams, data, and products for business.

Also…

• Argentina’s Fidu, a platform that provides software to automate administration and collections in the education sector, raised US$5 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and NFX.
• Cicada raised US$4 million in a seed round extension led by Kaszek Ventures and DILA Capital. The digital brokerage began
  operations in Mexico this week.

#iupanaExclusive 🔥

This week, we present five companies that are innovating in sending remittances in Latin America. Ripley, Ualá, Revolut, Wise and Prex bring with them different business models but share the same goal: to digitalize end-to-end cross-border transfers.

• Chile’s Grupo Ripley will use its Chek electronic wallet to send remittances.
• Ualá and Revolut will compete for business in the US-Mexico corridor.
• Wise is established in Brazil and plans to open offices in Mexico. Its strategy involves using local bank accounts to prevent money from having to
  cross borders.

Learn more about their different remittance offerings in our lead article of the week.