Argentina-based fintech Ualá has decided to launch personal loans in Mexico in partnership with Mexico-based ABC Capital.
According to Ualá officials cited by bloomberg.com, the ABC-powered loans will have a cap of MXN 20,000 (USD 1,011), and customers will be able to pay back in installments spread between 12 and 36 months. According to the same source, the partnership will be able to offer lower rates to its clients than those of existing banks thanks to the company’s fully digital nature.
Ualá plans to target both middle-class clients and previously unbanked users in Mexico, and it will rate these users based on its own credit score. The fintech’s financial services suite is based on a prepaid card managed through a mobile app in Mexico, Argentina and Colombia.
As for ABC Capital, the bank previously only offered loans to real estate developers, and thanks to this recent partnership, it has expanded its offering portfolio.
Ualá has announced it would purchase ABC in November 2021, but the acquisition is still pending regulatory approval at the time of writing. However, the company did purchase Argentina’s Wilobank, Empretienda and Ceibo Creditos in 2022.
In January 2022, Ualá expanded to Colombia, its third market in Latin America after Argentina and Mexico. The company decided to launch operations in Colombia after working with local regulators over the last two years to get a licence as a financing company to offer debit cards. In August 2021, Ualá has closed an investment round of USD 350 million, stating they were going to use the money to expand into Mexico and other parts of Latin America.
In April 2022, Ualá has announced its expansion into merchant services in Mexico. The company launched its mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) units, allowing small businesses to process payments on-site and receive an immediate deposit of the sales in their bank accounts. The company will charge a 2.99% fee per sale for merchants using its mPOS units, which cost about USD 17 and can be acquired on the company’s app and website.
In November 2022, Ualá has enabled Bitcoin and Ether trading for its customers in Argentina. At first, the new service was scheduled to serve a few thousand users, but it was rolled out to all of the company’s Argentine customers in the following weeks.
In order to comply with current regulations in Argentina, Ualá created a special company to provide its crypto service named Uanex. This company is based in the UK and has the Latin American crypto company Bitso as its crypto liquidity provider.
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