Ualá and ABC Capital have teamed to offer personal loans in Mexico.
This will be a new offering for both companies. It comes as Ualá, which is an Argentine FinTech company, is awaiting approval to finalize its acquisition of ABC Capital, which is a Mexican bank, Bloomberg reported Monday (Dec. 5).
“It’s a key milestone for what we’re building in Mexico,” Ualá CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri said, per the report. “It’s also one of the great benefits of having a banking license, which allows us to offer more complex products.”
The new service will offer loans of up to 20,000 Mexican pesos (about $1,011) over 12 to 36 months, will serve both middle-class clients and people who were unbanked, and will offer competitive rates enabled by the company being fully digital, according to the report.
Ualá provides financial services based on a prepaid card and a mobile app. It operates in Mexico, Argentina and Colombia.
ABC Capital offers loans to real estate developers and will now expand into personal loans.
The announcement comes about a year after Ualá reached an agreement to buy ABC Capital. Reuters reported in November 2021 that the FinTech company made the move to boost its expansion and growth plans in Mexico.
“Once we obtain the corresponding authorizations, the incorporation of ABC Capital to our group will allow us to offer better financial services to all Mexicans,” Barbieri said at the time, per the report. “This great step will accelerate our investment and growth in this beautiful country.”
It also comes two months after Barbieri told Reuters that Ualá plans to invest $150 million in the next year and a half to expand its Latin American digital banking operations, with Ualá focusing on Mexico and Colombia and aiming to grow its user base from 5 million to 25 million or 30 million over the next five years.
