The Rise and Impact of Fintech in Latin America

In the past decade, fintech has shaken up the financial sector in Latin America providing innovations in lending, payments, insurance, and regulation and compliance. This paper examines this development by focusing on both fintech services and regulation. Exploring fintech’s macro-critical impact using country- and bank-level data, we find that booming financial technologies in Latin America have helped boost competition in the banking sector and inclusion. Additionally, we demonstrate that fintech firms in Latin America experienced robust growth even during the pandemic supported by external funding. Finally, we discuss how regulators are addressing the risks associated with financial technologies and how they are leveraging fintech tools in their supervisory activities.