Uala to Spend $150M to Expand Digital LatAm Banking

Argentine FinTech Uala plans to invest $150 million in the next year and a half to expand its Latin American digital banking operations as the region becomes more digitized.

The expansion will focus mainly on Mexico and Colombia, with Uala — valued at around $2.5 billion — hoping to grow its user base from 5 million to 25 million or 30 million over the next five years, CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri told Reuters in a Tuesday (Oct. 4) report.

This year saw Uala buy Argentine digital banking company Wilobank and invest $80 million to begin operations in Colombia, according to the report. The company closed an investment round for $350 million in 2021 the same year it purchased Mexican bank ABC Capital.

Read more: Argentinian FinTech Uala Gets Final Approval for Wilobank Acquisition

Argentinian FinTech Uala Buys ABC Capital for Ongoing Expansion

“In a market context where others are cutting investment, we are expanding because we already have the capital,” Barbieri told Reuters, adding that the company hopes to expand its financial offerings into debit cards, investments, loans and insurance.

“Latin America is 20% digitized against 50% in Europe and 70% in China,” Barbieri added. “I know that digitization will continue. It seems to me a great shortfall of Latin America’s democracies that we have so many people outside the system. In 10 years, there will be no people outside the financial system.”

Last month, Uala announced it would let customers in Mexico receive money from abroad in a move to capitalize on the blooming $60 billion remittances market. The service is being overseen by ABC Capital.

See more: Uala Wants to Tap Into Mexico’s $60B Remittance Market

“We’re trying to reach part of the population that today doesn’t have banking services, to offer a financial service that allows them to forget about cash and start operating in a more digital and reliable way,” ABC Capital CEO Carlos Hernandez said at the time.

The program will allow people to send money from abroad using MoneyGram to ABC mobile app users in Mexico, which — with China and India — is one of the world’s three largest recipients of remittances.