There are different types of digital wallets available across Latin America including BBVA Wallet, PayPal, SamsungPay, Visa Checkout, MasterPass, MercadoPago, AvalPay, BillMo etc. however they still have not been able to successfully penetrate into Latin America market and there is no prominent leader yet. Many analysts believe that the reason is: digital wallet providers are not focusing on right areas.
Most of the digital wallets are offered by banks and financial institutions which require a credit card to work and since most of the consumers specially younger consumers less likely own a credit card or bank account so they are not able to use such digital wallets. Similarly, paying for mobile and utility bills is an issue in Latin America where you have to wait in lines at banks but not all digital wallets support it. New players like BillMo however support it and are trying to solve this problem in the region. Another niche is the audience with ages less than 40 years that probably have bank accounts and also own smartphones but needs to be targeted properly because most of them don’t have a credit card and hence many digital wallets are pointless for them.
In short, there is no digital wallet solution in Latin America that caters the needs of all types of the audience including youth, ones living in cities, ones living in rural areas, ones without a bank account or the ones without a credit card etc. However, most of the audience may have one thing in common and that is, they own a smartphone. So, a mobile wallet that only works with a smartphone for most types of the payments without requiring a bank account or credit card, might be what Latin America is looking for.
Tpaga, our new portfolio startup and fresh graduate from YCombinator’s Summer 2017 batch, aims to provide a mobile wallet solution for Latin America that may fulfill the needs of the whole population. So, If you own a smartphone, you can get Tpaga mobile app and start making payments. To cover most types of the payments, Tpaga has partnered with the largest supermarket chain in Latin America, top gas station chains in Colombia, 10 cell phone carriers and 25 utilities providers so that consumers can easily pay their bills through Tpaga mobile app.
Tpaga founders have already been running an Uber-like business in Colombia through another app, Tappsi which will also benefit from Tpaga and all drivers of Tappsi will be Tpaga’s early users.
Tpaga will officially launch on 1st October, 2017 however if you are interested in joining them as a partner or have any questions about their service, feel free to contact them.