Colombian fintech startups have a clear profile: nine out of ten of them are headquartered in the cities of Bogotá and Medellín; only one third of them generates an annual revenue of over 50,000 U.S. dollars; and, still, in 2019 the fundraising value of most of them was beyond 100,000 U.S. dollars. Tpaga, a platform used for saving, investing and transferring money, is one of the companies in this segment with the best fundraising ability. Also among the emerging Colombian fintech startups are Sempli, which provides credit for small and medium-sized enterprises, and Mesfix, dedicated to connecting businesses with potential investors.
The financial sector in Colombia sees mobile apps and cloud computing as the main technologies that are radically changing the local landscape, among the myriad of services that fintechs have started to provide in the last few years. On the same survey, Colombian respondents were asked to try to predict what digital resources shall deepen this industry’s transformations in the near future. The two most cited answers were big data, along with blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs).
All in all, the performance of Colombian fintechs is increasingly improving in a market where there is need for digital financial solutions. Recent data shows that more than half of the country’s adult population did not have a bank account, and less than five percent had a mobile money account. The gap gets even wider when one takes into consideration the share of women in Colombia using such services. Moreover, financial exclusion rises in less urbanized areas of the national territory.
