4 FinTech companies disrupting the financial space in Argentina

By Pavithra R

The number of players in the Argentine FinTech ecosystem has doubled in the past two years, with particular notable growth in two of its four verticals: payments and blockchain and crypto assets: reveals a report prepared by Deloitte and financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The FinTech activity in Argentina rises as the country adopts new financial services innovations. The article list 4 FinTechstransforming the financial space in Argentina.

Afluenta

Afluenta is the collaborative finance network in Latin America with the mission of promoting a simple, secure, and transparent financial culture.  The FinTech removes the need for intermediaries, transforming credit conditions and investment performance into fairer values. The firm has raised a total of $$25.5 mn in funding to date.

Afluenta allows individuals to request personal and commercial loans from $ 20,000 to $ 1,000,000 in 12, 18, 24, 36 or 48 months. The applicant indicates the amount of money he wants and the term in which he would be willing to pay it. Investors compete to invest their money through the auction mode indicating the money with which they wish to participate from $ 50 to 100% of the total amount requested and the rate at which they would be willing to invest. When the total amount of money offered by the investors reaches that requested by the applicant, the individual investments are consolidated into a single loan with its corresponding obligations. It provides credits in a meritocratic way using technology. This means that after a credit analysis, the interest that is applied on the amount of credit requested is in direct relation to the amount that the applicant can pay according to their income and expenses.

Ualá 

Ualá is a FinTech that is revolutionizing personal finance from an app and a card in Argentina. Argentine entrepreneur Pierpaolo Barbieri created and launched Ualá in October 2017 with the aim of improving financial inclusion in Argentina by offering an innovative, integrated, branchless, and low-cost experience. 

It is a personal financial management mobile app linked to a Mastercard prepaid card that allows users to conduct financial transactions. Through the mobile application, users can carry out a wide variety of financial transactions, including transferring money, paying bills, loading balance on prepaid cell phones, and SUBE transport cards, among others. The app also allows users to track expenses through an analysis tool. It no issuance, renewal, maintenance, and closing costs. The FinTech has issued 2.5 mn cards in Argentina, a number equivalent to almost 6% of the country’s population.

Mercado Libre

MercadoLibre hosts the largest online commerce and payments ecosystem in Latin America and is gaining ground in FinTech products and services. The firm’s efforts are centered on enabling e-commerce and digital and mobile payments on behalf of its customers by delivering a suite of technology solutions across the complete value chain of commerce.

Mercado Libre helps to generate financial inclusion through FinTech solutions developed by Mercado Pago and Mercado Crédito. Mercado Pago is designed to facilitate transactions both on and off the MercadoLibre Marketplace by providing a mechanism that allows users to securely, easily and promptly send and receive payments online. Mercado Pago is currently available in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay and Peru.

Mercado Crédito offers a Credit solution to provide cash advances and working capital loans to professional sellers and loans to MercadoLibre buyers. It is an initiative implemented by Mercado Libre for users to purchase products in deferred installments without needing a credit card.

Ripio

Founded in 2013, Ripio, formerly known as Bitpagos, is a financial payments company that provides electronic payment solutions for businesses. The FinTech offers Blockchain-based products to different segments of the Latin American population, including a digital wallet, crypto brokerage and corporate services for institutional investors. Its main product is its Bitcoin wallet, which currently has over 150,000 users.

Ripio offers credit and online payment services, an effort that makes them the main financial inclusion and digital economy supporters in the region.

Also, read: Global FinTech Use Cases in Financial services