Financial services: Trends and opportunities for the ecosystem in Latin America

Published on Jun 29, 2023.

13 minutes reading

As a result from the democratization of technology in means of payment, associated with a favorable regulatory environment, we’re seeing a boom of new financial services in Latin America. But did you know how those new solutions may impact your business?

In this article, we’ll discuss the current top financial services, explore the trends for them to develop and the growth opportunities they bring for your company—whether you’re a bank, fintech or a company from any industry looking to expand your operations by adding a financial vertical. Check it out!

What are financial services?

A financial service is any service related to transactions of amounts of money, such as: payments (including instant payments), pay slip generation, wire transfers, loans, insurance plans, etc.

Although the most traditional financial services are already well known and used by general audiences around the world, new ways of making exchanges more quickly are emerging. Important factors driving evolving means of payment include the accelerated innovation in the banking and payment industry, digital inclusion and advances in phenomena like embedded finance,

Nowadays, companies from different industries can better understand and meet their customers’ needs by offering more tailored services, thus contributing to deepening financial inclusion and making transactions more streamlined and organic.

Top financial services: How can we organize them in categories?

Do you know the top existing financial services in Latin America? To explore more of them, we share insights from the study Land of Opportunities, conducted by our Research Team at Dock, which discusses the scenario in the region and also how those solutions can be organized in categories. Take a look below.

In-person payments

Since 54% of the Latin American population still doesn’t use digital means of payment, in-person payments are still very relevant in the region.

Although that scenario is rapidly changing, going to a physical establishment still brings a better sense of security for people who are not as familiar with technology.

The choice for financial services in that format consists of, for instance, cash and debit and credit cards.

Digital payments

As e-commercehas grown digital means of payment have gained momentum in Latin America, especially during the pandemic.

Some of them include more modern means of payment such as QR Codes and digital wallets, which today represent XNUMX% in transactions. Also, it is worth mentioning the widespread use of virtual cards and, of course, peer-to-peer payments.

Recurring payments

The convenience provided by recurring payments have made their use grow even more—whether helping so that customers don’t pay their bills overdue, or companies don’t spend on additional resources for charges.

This is the most used service, especially when contracting monthly fees and subscriptions, which can be done via cards, direct debit and with solutions such as Pix Automatic.

Pay slip

To this day, the use of paper-based means of payment—whether that is cash or pay slips/vouchers—is still very relevant in Latin America. Approximately 15% of online sales are paid in cash.

Although that trend is dropping, the choice to receive the payment in full still makes pay slip generation attractive for offering special discounts for buyers.

Digital account

A digital account is a financial service considered one of the most important gateways for more modern, digital means of payment. It is more convenient and cost-effective and less bureaucratic to open a digital account, which positively contributes to the banking movement in Latin America.

Conciliation

This financial service is especially important for businesses to control their banking movements. It involves checking a company’s banking flow and comparing it to a cash flow statement. It is designed to ensure that all incoming and outgoing amounts verified are precisely shown in the statement.

The more the use of modern tech-based financial services grows, the more streamlined the conciliation of payments and accounts receivable will be.

Payment split

Similar to conciliation, split payment services are streamlined as financial services and the use of digital means of payment get more popular.

That solution enables a business to separate accounts receivable between two relevant parties in a transaction, such as the ones occurring in marketplace spaces, for instance.

Opportunities and trends for financial services in Latin America

The study Land of Opportunity has also shown that there is a lot of space for growing the banking movement, even though digitization in Latin America is already disseminated—71% of the population already uses smartphones.

Generally speaking, Latin Americans still underuse the Internet for financial services or shopping. That gap shows a great potential for that industry: a lot of people have devices in their hands, but they don’t fully take advantage of them.

In that sense, we’ll further discuss the most promising trends at the moment, which should change that reality soon.

Embedded Finance <span style="color:#fff">now</span>

Embedded Finance refers to the recent phenomenon of companies from different industries enabling financial services outside of the financial industry, such as large Retailers, for instance.

That is, a customer can access financial services such as contracting a financing plan, applying for a credit card or making a payment within the customer’s own shopping journey and their trusted relationship with a retailer.

Embedded Finance can be the foundation for a winning strategy for stimulating financial inclusion for the population, especially in such a challenging context like Latin America.

Buy Now, Pay Later

BNPL, or "Buy now, Pay Later” is the fastest growing means of payment in the world. By leveraging it, a population that is still unbanked and lacks access to credit cards can now finance their purchases.

That innovation has only been enabled from extensively using technology, including in association with artificial intelligence, for monitoring each customer’s profile and ability to pay.

In the Latin American context, offering a service like BNPL is an opportunity that is especially interesting for reaching a portion of the unbanked and lower-income population.

Tailoring

As information has been more extensively shared through movements like Open Banking and Open Finance, in association with advances in tools for data handling, information sharing has become a solid source of insights for tailoring financial services. After all, the more a company knows about their audience, the more they’ll understand their customer’s needs.

Niche products

Similar to tailoring, we see a strong trend of emerging solutions for specific niches in the industry. As a matter of fact, by keeping an eye on those opportunities, a lot of niche fintechs have emerged offering specific products aligned with their target audience’s needs and behavior.

By focusing their efforts in a well-defined segment of the industry, companies can increase their sales when they use more effective conversion and communication strategies.

Tokenization

The advance in technology associated with the financial industry has recently enabled a variety of assets such as debentures or real estate to be fractioned and represented digitally by tokens.

The opportunity of conducting transactions for fractions of assets represented by tokens is an innovative way of receiving resources, without the need for intermediate parties from the banking industry or even from the venture capital industry.

It is a technology tool for conducting financial transactions, enabling the use of other financial services by association, such as financing plans, payments, wire transfers, etc.

Crypto economy

Although the cryptocurrencies are dropping in terms of use, the so-called crypto economy is responsible for moving approximately 1,2% of the global GDP, which represents 1,1 trillion dollars.

The use of crypto-based financial products and services is expected to keep growing, enabling users to protect themselves against volatile means of payment.

Advantages in providing financial services

Even if your company operates in an industry that is not directly related to the financial world, taking the initial steps to provide financial services can be an important aspect of your business strategy. That’s because it enables some advantages, including two important ones:

A new source of revenue for your business

By providing financial services, your organization has a bigger margin to negotiate commissions and grow sales with their customer base. It is an interesting strategy for diversifying your revenue.

Stronger relationship with your audience

Having more knowledge on your customer’s financial situation will enable your communication and sales teams to be more effective when it comes to your sales strategy.

The average ticket is likely to increase based on a wider variety of means of payment , and the conversion rate is likely to improv as your offering’s targeting gets more effective according to each customer’s needs. Therefore, the stronger your relationship is with your audience, the bigger your competitive edge will be for your business.

How to provide financial services in Latin America?

In general, companies interested in taking the initial steps to provide their customers with financial services are faced with two major challenges:

Having a back-office team to deal with the bureaucratic and financial procedures for enabling transactions;
Finding a partner in technology for means of payment for enabling financial solutions.

In case you choose to start building technological solutions from scratch, it will certainly take quite some time to provide financial services in the industry, while you’ll also have to invest a lot of resources.

Without proper attention, a lot of companies end up investing important resources to build a new business. And since their return only comes after scaling efforts, many of them abandon their strategy half way.

To avoid losses, the most practical and quickest way to start offering financial services in your company is to hire a technology platform. White label. It is a ready-made platform, connectable via APIs and highly customizable, focused on meeting the characteristics of your brand and the needs of your target audience.

Dock One is Dock’s white-label platform, which was designed to be a modern, secure and efficient technological solution for all companies interested in leveraging financial services for their growth strategy.

Today, Dock operates four basic lines of business, where specific solutions are enabled through our global platform Dock One.

Banking: provide your customers with a complete digital account with access to the most common financial services.
Cards & Credit: cards of the main credit card brands help you improve your customer loyalty.
Acquiring: cards of the main credit card brands help you improve your customer loyalty.
Fraud Prevention: cutting-edge technology in fraud management technology that identifies and prevents fraud at all stages of the transaction.

Leader in technology for financial services in Latin America, with operations in seven countries, Dock offers a single platform featuring solutions integrated with the entire ecosystem of banking and means of payment. By choosing Dock One, your company has access to the most modern and secure technology in financial services and takes advantage of quick time to market And the best part: without the need to invest a lot of time and money and build and manage new solutions.

Financial services: Takeaways from this article

A financial service is any service related to transactions of amounts of money that optimizes finance and business management, such as: payments, pay slip generation, wire transfers, loans, etc.
The top financial services in Latin America are in-person, recurring and digital payments, pay slips, digital accounts, conciliation and payment split.
Today, there are a lot of opportunities for financial services in Latin America, since a lot of people have access to smartphones (approximately 71% of the population), but those don’t take full advantage of them.
Embedded Finance, BNPL, tailoring, tokenization and cryptocurrencies are some of the most important trends to keep an eye on when it comes to financial services.
The advantages in providing financial services include a stronger relationship with a consumer audience and a more diversified source of revenue.
The most efficient way of providing your customers with financial services is to choose a promptly available white-label platform that is plug-and-play via APIs and highly tailorable for your brand, like Dock One.