Eréndira lives in Mineral de la Reforma, a community of just over 200,000 in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. She is a music teacher and supplements her income with remittances sent from the United States by a family member.
She used to travel to the town center or go to a nearby convenience store – which had high fees – to collect the remittances. However, for a little over a year now she's been receiving the money in seconds, with no fees, on her phone: she is using Mercado Pago, the payments app developed by South American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre.
Many communities in the country are largely reliant on remittances, said Ramiro Nández, User Director at Mercado Pago. "We've seen that we have a significant impact in those communities through the digitalization of remittances," he claimed.
Financial technology companies – also known as fintechs – are making financial inclusion more accessible throughout Mexico, even in areas far from major urban centers. "They're enabling users to save money, transfer funds, make payments, and access loans or insurance without having to visit a physical branch," added María Camila Quiñones, Delivery Director at Slalom, a U.S.-based technology consulting firm that operates in Latin America.
Mercado Pago began serving remote populations by offering their payment terminal to local entrepreneurs. Nández recalled that the company visited several small businesses to provide card payment terminals, and noted that although the company's overall growth rate is set at an annual 50%, it ranges from 60% to 70% in remote communities, mainly those in the south of Mexico.
At the user level, Mercado Pago is also growing at rates above 50% outside major cities in terms of digital account openings and loans. Nández stressed that around 60% of loans the company has granted have been the first ones ever received by applicants. But, "if we were to take a closer look at certain remote communities, the numbers would probably be even higher," he emphasized.
Credmex, an online platform for personal loans, reports that around 65% of its users live outside major cities. Data from the platform also shows that its loans are primarily used to start businesses or handle urgent situations; 26% of Credmex users resort to them for business expenses, 23% for emergencies, 18% for other purposes, and 14% for education.
Other neo banks are reaching into rural areas of Mexico to provide credit lines. Nu México, a subsidiary of Brazilian fintech Nubank, said in a statement that "today, 78% of Nu clients live outside of urban centers, and we've already reached 98% of the country's municipalities, including nine out of every 10 priority municipalities." "Although people who live in these zones represent less than 5% of our client base, we are firmly committed to bringing them into the financial system," the company added.
Nu México's rural customers are located mainly in Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Puebla and Guerrero. 37% of them only use a debit account, 31% use both credit and debit, 27% have secured a credit card, and 5% have solely a credit card. "These differences reflect different stages of financial inclusion in every context," Nu emphasized.
The fintech has 10 million clients in Mexico, and claims that one in two received their first loan through the neo bank. Moreover, six in every 10 began saving for the first time through their platform.
Despite these advances, the inclusion gap still has a long way to go, Quiñones said. The executive noted that only 59% of low-income individuals – and 40% of those who live outside urban populations – have a bank account. Overall 68% have never received financial education.
According to Nu, the fintech sector's biggest challenge is structural: that is, lacking infrastructure and limited connectivity. "This does not only limit physical access to financial services, but also the use of digital tools like apps or transfers," they said.
That's why access to smartphones is not enough to remedy this. "The real challenge is accessing those populations not just with the product, but also by offering advisory services tailored to their specific needs, and providing financial education programs so that credit is used for productive activities and not just for consumption, thus avoiding over-indebtedness, which can be highly detrimental," Quiñones said.
The sector faces another significant barrier: distrust. Nu highlighted that "four in 10 people don't believe their money would be safe in an institution; they prefer cash. Beyond this, they also doubt the benefits of being banked. Overcoming this requires time, relevant products, and clear, simple, and human communication," Nu concluded.
Credmex agrees with the premise, adding that many of the residents of rural communities have limited knowledge of formal financial products, and are wary of online credit offerings. This forced the platform to significantly invest in financial education and building trust.
Additionally, the company added that "the absence of traditional credit histories in these regions demands more localized and optimized risk management models, which allow for both accessible and sustainable credit services."
Hybrid financial services
Andrés Castillo is originally from San Salvador Huixcolotla, Puebla, a municipality with just 16,790 residents. He is an artisan who started out as an employee making plastic cut-out decorations, and then decided to build his own business, producing the same product.
Just over three hours from Mexico City, his municipality -- one of Puebla's 217 – has only one branch of the government-backed Bienestar Bank. No other commercial bank has reached the town, and if residents want to pay for services or make deposits, they can do so via the area's convenience stores. A department store that also serves as a bank arrived relatively recently.
The lack of formal credit could be a limitation for Castillo, who said he hopes to offer his daughters a better future through his work. But he found a financing opportunity in Aviva, a fintech founded in 2022 that offers loans to communities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.
Filberto Castro, founder and co-CEO of Aviva, identified structural problems such as low financial inclusion, high cash usage, and limited digital adoption among individuals with intermediate levels of education who are informally employed. After conducting research and field visits, the Aviva team decided to focus on this segment of the population, which, according to the company, encompasses nearly 60 million Mexicans.
Aviva bets on "transforming what a bank branch typically looks like in regional cities, which are key to the states but not necessarily metropolitan," Castro explained. In small spaces and without account executives, people can apply for loans in booths where they speak to an AI agent via video call to assess their credit risk.
Since 2022, 150,000 people have gone through Aviva's process – 40% of which were unbanked, according to the company. The average customer is 43 years old, and 62% are women.
Aviva has 70 kiosks throughout the states of Mexico, Puebla, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo and, more recently, Querétaro. It will also soon expand to Oaxaca and Veracruz, with the goal of having 150 locations by the end of 2025.
Banks have not reached – or have pulled out – of these far-away areas because it is not a profitable investment; a traditional bank branch costs roughly $1 million USD, whereas Aviva's kiosks (as the company calls its branches) cost $9,000 USD, Castro said.
But not all banks are foreign to less urban communities. Spanish multinational Banco Santander has Tuiio, a financial inclusion initiative in these areas. In this, the bank has 76 physical branches where customers can both apply for loans destined for productive activities, and access other products and services like savings accounts and medical insurance.
Despite Tuiio not being a fintech per se, the initiative promotes financial and technological education through its website, app, and even a video game designed for such purpose.
Norma Castro, Tuiio's General Director, assured that they are promoting the use of money through the app instead of cash; 67% of Tuiio clients had never used a financial app before, and 50% had never had a bank account. The executive shared that they have helped include 200,000 people into the formal financial system, and have issued 1.4 million loans.
"We begin by changing their behavior toward banking when they ask, 'Where am I going to leave my money?' If it's a bank like Santander, it builds trust," Castro said.
Both financial institutions and fintechs are breaking barriers when it comes to accessing financial services in areas far from major cities. For Quiñones, "it is essential to develop products focused on rural communities' needs, to understand customers so that we can grasp how their cash flow works, and to design products that address such demands. This includes programs of financial education and digital literacy to achieve not only greater, but better adoption of the products."
© 2025 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
