Argentine FinTech Uala plans to invest $150 million over the next 18 months to expand its Latin American digital banking activities as the region becomes increasingly digital.
According to a Reuters article by CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri, Uala, which is valued at around $2.5 billion, will largely focus on Mexico and Colombia in order to boost its user base from 5 million to 25 million or 30 million over the following five years.
The paper claims that Uala committed $80 million to begin operations in Colombia this year and bought the Argentinean online banking company Wilobank. In the same year that it purchased the Mexican bank ABC Capital in 2021, the company completed a $350 million fundraising transaction.
According to Barbieri, the business plans to increase its financial solutions to include debit cards, investments, loans, and insurance “in a market situation where others are decreasing investment.”
Barbieri continued, “Latin America is 20% digitalized compared to 50% in Europe and 70% in China. “I’m confident that digitalization will go on. The fact that there are so many individuals outside the system strikes me as a major shortcoming of Latin American democracies. There won’t be anyone outside the banking system in ten years.
In an effort to take advantage of the booming $60 billion remittances business, Uala said last month that it would permit users in Mexico to receive money from overseas. ABC Capital is in charge of the service.
At the time, ABC Capital CEO Carlos Hernandez remarked, “We’re attempting to reach a portion of the population that currently doesn’t have banking services, to offer a financial solution that allows people to forget about cash and start functioning in a more digital and reliable way.”
The service enables users of the ABC mobile app in Mexico, which, together with China and India, is one of the three largest beneficiaries of remittances in the world, to transfer money from outside via MoneyGram.
