Ualá expanding and aims to reach unbanked population in Mexico
After Argentina, Ualá is now available in Mexico. Ualá wants to utilize the digital banking potential of Latin American countries.
Ualá, the Argentinian digital bank founded in 2017 and issued more than 2 million cards in Argentina in just three years, started to provide its innovative financial services in Mexico, three years after its launch. For the last three years, this Argentinian fintech company had attracted worldwide investors, such as Soros Fund Management, Point72 Ventures, Tencent, and Softbank. In 2019 Tencent and Softbank invested 150 million US dollars to the Ualá. Tencent also owns WeChat, an app with more than 1 billion users in China, and has a fascinating paying system.
Ualá is working with Mastercard to offer its services to its customers. Mastercard provides a prepaid card to allow its customers to do financial transactions like money transfers, purchases, and payments. Furthermore, Mastercard also enables users to use Ualá internationally. Ualá’s primary goal is to increase the amount of Argentinians that use mobile banking services.
They offer a low cost and user-friendly service to attract more users into their system. Its competitive pricing strategy can beat the pricy traditional banks. Users can track their transactions, deposit, or withdrawal money without a banking account. According to the World Bank Data, Countries from Latin America suffer from low participation in the banking system among its citizens. The Ualá aims to increase banking penetration in Argentina and Mexico with a user-friendly experience. They target users who had never used a bank account or had never used a digital banking service before. Due to its low banking penetration rates and unbanked population, Mexico could be an excellent opportunity to attract users.
According to the interview between Bloomberg and the CEO of the Ualá, Pierpaolo Barbieri, Ualá's launch in Mexico takes 18 months. Besides their local team of 22 employees based in Mexico City, Ualá Argentina help to launch Mexico operations. Over 20 percent of their total count (500 employees) was dedicated to helping launch Mexico operations.
Pierpaolo Barbieri also points out that over 50% of the Mexicans have never experienced a means of payment except for cash, and 65% of the Mexicans have never had a bank account. Moreover, traditional banking transactions took a long time, like forty minutes. The CEO believes that Ualá can be the key to solve these problems with a digital, safe, and all-inclusive solution.
