Dear Reader,
The fintech industry in LATAM is facing challenges. In 2022, we saw less funding volume and a smaller number of deals. As we had foreseen and mentioned in our previous editions, there is a stronger presence of global fintechs that is inhibiting local growth and investments and what capital is flowing into the region is being accumulated in a handful of established companies. Unsurprisingly, the number of defunct companies is increasing just as the number of start-ups decreases. In line also with global trends in the tech space, many fast-growing fintechs are falling short in delivering the results they promised, and their valuations are taking a hammering or their plans to IPO are being postponed.
Not all is dark though: the region is still growing, and markets are still curious and eager to explore new business models and value propositions. There is lots of activity in fintech and banking as a service, and anything that facilitates or enables the offering of embedded financial services. The growth of PIX and advancement of public agendas regarding national real-time payment rails is also fostering new fintech business use cases. Keeping these industry shifts in mind, we looked for growth in new places. For this edition of our report, we increased our reach and took a wider, and therefore more accurate picture of the fintech landscape. Once again, we centralize insights at the category and subcategory level in order to improve strategic decisions and investment allocation. This new edition covers regional expansion as well as success factors and local competition versus regional and global players. We hope this level of detail accurately describes the different flavors in our fintech ecosystem.
This report builds upon our previous analyses of the fintech industry in LATAM, but our expansion of research leverages and centralizes the work of those individuals and organizations who had taken steps before us, and we hope that as a community we can continue to build on each other’s improvements. This is the driving reason behind us providing this report at no cost and asking the fintech community at large to help us improve it. At the end of our report, we provide a list of the sources and organizations we referred to and wish to thank. Our hope is that by adding another grain of sand we continue strengthening this fascinating sector. We look forward to your feedback and continue at your service to help improve your strategy and investment efforts.
Thank you from all of us at KoreFusion,
Jan
