Credit unions play a critical role in local economies of countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, serving as a vital savings and credit conduit to vast numbers of people, especially those in the lower rungs of the income pyramid who are in many cases, priced out of the traditional banking system
ATM maker Wincor Nixdorf is to expand its ATM business in Brazil, following a deal with Brazilian hardware company Perto. The deal comes as the BRIC market expands its retail banking infrastructure to serve the growing middle class of Brazilian society.
The Banking industry is at a digital crossroad as it faces both a wave of technology companies poised to disaggregate every facet of the business and a changing consumer that is increasingly demanding that banks products match the state-of-the-art digital services they are receiving from other industries
As Peru rapidly grows its economy, the country’s Bolsa de Valores Lima exchange hopes to turn itself into a regional hub for international investors. To that end, the exchange has gone live with a new trading platform, built by the London Stock Exchange’s MillenniumIT subsidiary.
Swift has hired David Lefferts as managing director, market initiatives for the Americas. Lefferts joins Swift after eight years at Markit, where he held product development, cross-product strategy, and senior business development roles over his eight year tenure.
Brazil’s capital markets IT spend is expected to reach $2.6 billion by 2017 as the country seeks to modernise its financial institutions, improve post-trade processing and integrate with global markets. The transformation creates both challenges and opportunities for foreign financial services companies in Latin America’s largest market, according to a new report by analyst firm Celent.
Earlier this month, the Ecuadorian Government announced its plans to introduce a digital currency, the first of its kind globally. In a country where 40% of citizens don’t have a bank account according to The Economist, this has the potential to transform banking and allow companies to gain access to those without a bank account for the first time
Argentina’s Banco Macro will use the Mambu cloud as the basis for a new business unit, which will offer loans to micro-enterprises and small businesses. The aim is to provide a lifeline to areas that have historically lacked access to financial services.
A sustained rally in frontier markets is leading an expansion of size and liquidity as investors seek opportunities that are not available in the developed or emerging markets, according to a new report by research house Aite.
Brazil’s BM&F Bovespa exchange has begun a major new project to bring all of its four clearing houses onto a single technology platform. Billed as the “world’s largest clearing project”, the Brazilian derivatives market – one of the world’s largest – has been moved first.
Citi has chosen the ‘headliner’ finalists for its mobile innovation competition in Latin America, the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, which aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
Citi is hosting a major new mobile innovation competition in Latin America. Called the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, the competition aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
Broker ICAP will use high-frequency trading infrastructure from specialist Perseus Telecom as it seeks to expand its coverage across Brazil and Latin America. ICAP is already active in the region, where it connects to São Paulo and Mexico City. The Perseus LiquidPath service provides connectivity, hosting, consulting, and real time monitoring, and includes HFT services […]
Brazilian banking group Bradesco is planning to roll out NFC mobile payments across Brazil by summer 2014, through a partnership with mobile operator Claro and technology provider Giesecke & Devrient.
After many years of struggle, Mexicans may be about to snatch the crown of Latin America’s most promising financial services market from their Portuguese-speaking cousins in Brazil.
Cross-border payments company Earthport has launched two new routes into Mexico and Colombia, as part of a drive to open up Latin America for faster, more efficient and transparent payments.
After nearly a decade of trying ATS Brasil is finally poised to launch an equities trading venue, bringing competition to Latin America’s largest market for the first time in many years.
Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depositos bank is planning to grow its trading business in Brazil, using a hosted service provided by SunGard.
Adoption of alternative payment mechanisms is growing more rapidly in developing economies as they leapfrog the legacy infrastructures deployed elsewhere.
Swedish payment company iZettle and Spain’s Banco Santander have launched a new ‘social payments’ system in Brazil, which is designed to help small businesses take card payments with Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.
A new mobile payments network called YellowPepper has launched in Colombia, marking the beginning of a massive project to bank the unbanked and sweep away the dominance of cash across the Spanish-speaking Americas.
Argentina’s Caja de Valores central securities depository has chosen the London Stock Exchange to be its technology provider, as the depository gears up to support the country’s new Bolsa & Mercados Argentinos exchange.
Spain’s CaixaBank is planning to target Brazil’s payments industry via a new joint venture with US transaction processing firm Global Payments that builds on the bank’s experience of digital channels its home market.
In our world of 100%+ mobile penetration, companies in Latin America will soon need to think like their next wave of prospective customers, most of whom are unbanked. This means understanding their lifestyles, habits and needs in order to decide how to best generate value.
A group of Chilean banks working on a new CCP for OTC derivatives have chosen Calypso technology to help build its core clearing platform, in an initiative that highlights Latin America’s efforts to match G20 financial sector reforms.
Next Bank Madrid has chosen the finalists for a competition that seeks to find the best financial services startup companies from the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world.
A new joint project between Spanish financial services project Next Bank Madrid and Swift’s Innotribe innovation wing aims to unleash the potential of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American start-up companies in financial services.
Brazil, according to a long-standing joke, is the country of the future and always will be. Founded by a mixture of Portuguese explorers and colonists, indigenous peoples, and European and African immigrants, Latin America’s largest country boasts a population of 200 million and a GDP that eclipsed that of the UK in 2011. The country’s banking infrastructure reflects both its rapid rise in recent years and its historic status as an emerging market.
As Brazil gears up to host the World Cup next year and the Olympics in 2016, a clutch of government reforms hold high promise for the country’s financial infrastructure, according to Aldo Mendes, deputy governor, monetary policy at Brazil’s Central Bank.
Brazil is to gain its first ever mobile payment service this month, with the launch of a joint service provided by Spanish and South American telecom firm Telefónica and MasterCard.
Brazilian exchange BM&F Bovespa has joined the BT Radianz Cloud, a financial community that connects 500 member locations in Latin America with BT’s global network.
Brazilian exchange BM&F Bovespa has installed a new market surveillance system from Nasdaq OMX, which it says will help ensure the safety of all market participants on the Brazilian market.
New trading systems in Brazil and Mexico are prompting high hopes that Latin America’s two largest markets will attract more international investors and grow their liquidity base, according to panellists at the TradeTech conference in London.
Emerging markets Brazil, India and Turkey took the spotlight at yesterday’s World Exchange Congress event in London, as senior executives highlighted rising technological investment, growing competition and successful index performance.
The London Stock Exchange Group has entered a partnership with Peru’s Lima Stock Exchange, in which the LSEG will provide trading and smart order routing technology to Peru.
