Argentina’s fintech ecosystem continues to grow

Argentina is becoming one of the leading fintech powers in Latin America and is now in third place, after Mexico and Brazil. This data came from the second edition of Argentina Fintech Forum 2019.

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Argentina leading in Fintech Forum

During the Argentina Fintech Forum 2019, different panels dealt with such topics: regulation, link with banks, payments, technologies, metrics, and trends.

Driss Temsamani (City’s Regional Head of Digital Channels & Enterprise Banking) explained that this is the first time that the Latin American region has surpassed India and China in its investment in fintech, reaching $480 million. This is due to the region’s creative capital and a competitive advantage over Asian and European market costs.

“There are enormous opportunities for the region, with ecosystems highly motivated from the public and private sectors to achieve greater digitalization of money,” added Temsamani. He also said that while technology is a necessary factor, it is not enough. “We need a cultural change that implies not only having the tools to achieve such digitalization but also achieving greater use to allow them to scale,” said Driss Temsamani.

Fintech in the country

Without a doubt, one of the key figures was that the fintech industry grew at a rate of 70% last year in Argentina. A figure that is even more relevant considering the economic complexities of that country.

According to research, the conclusion of a panel composed of Matías Friedberg (co-founder of Ixpandit), Ignacio Carballo (professor and researcher at UCA, UBA, and Universidad Austral) and Gabriel Bizama (national director of Financial Inclusion of the Ministry of Finance of Argentina), was as follows: “These results show that the path taken for the development of the industry was the right one. If all sectors work together, hand in hand with technology, there is an enormous opportunity ahead, in a country in which 70% of buying and selling operations are still carried out in cash. The challenge is to encourage the use and acceptance of all digital payment methods, achieving an open payment structure, more incentives and greater acceptance by merchants.”

Robust ecosystem as a step to move forward

“In order to move forward and have a robust ecosystem, at the regional level, we must coordinate four fundamental pillars. These are the private sector, which takes the risk; the public sector, which defines the rules of the game; the academy, the powerhouse of talent, and the public of interest,” said Matias Friedberg.

“I like to think of the fintech industry with a background trend, how technology starts to make friends with the financial world. If this was a contractive year in economic terms, there are important signs of an industry that continues to grow. There was a 35% growth in the number of customers compared to last year who now have an active credit with a fintech. There was an 82% increase in the number of investors who tried to have a profitability through a platform of this vertical. More milestones are added to this, such as the QR technology, the record of opening of commissioning accounts and the CVU that connects all companies.

More about Argentina Fintech Forum

The Argentina Fintech Forum 2019 was held on November 19. The meeting was organized by the Argentina Chamber of Fintech and CMS Group and brought together more than 800 executives from all verticals of the ecosystem and complementary industries to discuss and build the agenda for 2020.

Topics such as the impact of technology, the Argentina and regional outlook and collaboration between fintech and traditional banking were addressed throughout the day by national and international experts.

Other topics presented in the agenda pointed to the role played by digital payments, the importance of defining a fintech user profile, and the challenges of public-private-academic collaboration in Argentina’s ecosystem.

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(Featured image by Adeolu Eletu via Unsplash)

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