Between the first quarter of 2019 and the same period of this 2021, Mexico has led the growth of mobile finance applications in Latin America. This is the information provided by the Fintech App Marketing Insights report: LATAM Edition 2021, from AppsFlyer.
According to this report, “Mexico stands out as the main potential market in Spanish-speaking Latin America, occupying the 7th position (worldwide) in number of app installations.” In the ranking, Mexico only appears below the Philippines, Russia, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil and India.
The answer is simple. The report explains that “much of the massive growth in financial applications has come from developing countries, as downloads were 70% higher than the market average, showing that there is much more room for scale. from emerging markets, where a considerable part of the population is not yet banked ”.
Although the report does not inform about the number of downloads that have been registered in Mexico (or in other countries), we know that in our country, specifically, the number of downloads multiplied by ten in the period studied. It is understandable if we pay attention, as pointed out by AppsFlyer, to the rate of the banked population in our country, which is 50%, which constitutes the exact half of the population. The other half is not banked, so logically the growth margin is much wider than in a country whose majority of the population already has a bank account.
The report also explains that the boom in finance apps in Mexico is largely due to the health crisis caused by COVID-19. The needs of the population have changed substantially due to mobility restrictions, limited access to services or the closure of branches, which has caused a massive transfer of customers to digital channels, the only useful means, for a time , to manage private banking and financial services.
This has also happened in other sectors that operate in the digital environment. With the pandemic, digitization has accelerated and those who have known how to adapt to new times and formats are the ones who have best weathered the storm. This has happened, for example, in sectors very close to the virtual world, such as the IGaming industry. In it, it is possible to find platforms such as VSO that offer participation in classic casino games such as roulette, Blackjack and Baccarat, with an also classic experience of real table gaming, with a physical dealer and participants of any origin live, but without having to leave home and expose yourself to the virus.
In the same way, other sectors, such as online sales applications (Ecommerce), have even managed to increase their income during the health crisis, by presenting themselves as a safe option for customers who did not want to take risks by making their purchases physically.
The breakdown by segments
Within the wide spectrum of financial mobile applications that exist, from AppsFlyer three segments stand out as the most dynamic in recent times: payment applications, investment applications and banking.
Logically, the new virus and distancing have pushed us to prefer payment without interaction, rather than payment in cash, and the management of bank accounts via the Internet, which explains the rise in downloads in payment applications and banks. .
Regarding investment, and perhaps due to the recently acquired popularity of Bitcoin, there has also been a greater interest in investment and trading applications and, more in short, in activity in the stock markets.
