The promising future of digital payments for Latin America and the Caribbean

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Throughout my more than two decades of working at Visa, I have never seen such accelerated adoption of new payment technologies by consumers, businesses and financial institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We have achieved unprecedented levels of growth in the penetration of our most popular payment technologies thanks to the growing desire for convenience, immediacy and peace of mind by our consumers when paying for goods or services, as well as the desire of businesses to obtain the benefits of receiving digital payments.

The examples are clear: consumers are increasingly using contactless payments, micro and small businesses are using their smartphones to receive digital payments, financial and digital inclusion is growing along with the adoption how to get spain number for whatsapp of digital payments in urban transport, e-commerce continues to grow steadily, security continues to grow with the rise of token technologies, and consumers are increasingly transferring funds between each other using digital technologies.

If we dig a little deeper into this significant moment, what helped us tremendously to achieve these results is our continued emphasis on understanding consumer needs and priorities, and the strong focus on solving the particular needs of our clients in different markets, working very closely with our industry partners and financial institutions to bring all these technologies to market. These two fundamental elements have allowed us to accelerate the digital transformation of the entire payments ecosystem and coincide 100% with the reflections that LAC clients have recently shared with me and with colleagues from other regions of the world.

The path is clear and the pace remains rapid. Take for example Tap to Pay , where Visa has been one of the main drivers of the implementation of this technology around the world. We recently reached 50% penetration of contactless transactions in LAC, in just four years since we started implementing the technology. This means that across the region, more than half of Visa transactions made in person are contactless. In most key markets, penetration is even much higher. We have also seen healthy growth in other metrics in the region, including 69% growth in contactless transactions as of December 2022, compared to December 2021.

What we are seeing here is that once consumers try contactless payment technology for the first time for their everyday errands, there is no turning back. They love the technology because it is fast, secure and convenient. Consumers simply tap their contactless card, cell phone or wearable device to a payment terminal to pay for their purchases in a matter of seconds. And the same is happening in the public transportation segment with Tap to Ride.

We have seen impressive growth in recent years with Tap to Ride technology , which works by tapping your contactless card, cell phone, or wearable device to a payment machine before boarding a bus, subway, or any other transportation system where this new technology is offered. We recently surpassed the milestone of 1 billion transactions on public transportation systems around the world during fiscal year 2022. Our urban mobility transactions in LAC have also grown 75x since December 2019. We have launched 22 urban mobility projects in 10 cities and 7 countries for public buses, subway systems, and tolls, and we will launch many more this year. This is exciting, particularly in LAC where the transportation segment has a key role in driving digital and financial inclusion.

Along the same lines, we have Tap to Phone , a solution where small businesses can simply download an app on their smartphones, which instantly turns them into contactless terminals to easily accept payments. We are also at the forefront of accelerating this implementation with more projects in development in LAC and elsewhere in the world. Together with our partners, we have managed to enable more than 250,000 mobile phones as terminals and affiliate more than 25,000 businesses in Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and, very recently, Colombia.

Another crucial area that is seeing accelerated growth in the region is e-commerce , where we have made significant progress in digitally enabling over 40 million micro and small businesses around the world by the end of fiscal year 2022 with a variety of digital platforms and tools to help them start selling online. Cybersource , a Visa solution for accelerating secure online commerce, has also played a key role in bringing together thousands of acquirers and merchants in the region to accept digital payments in the e-commerce space, while effectively managing fraud detection, leading to higher consumer satisfaction and more online sales.

But with all of these advancements comes a growing obligation to protect digital transactions. What we are seeing now is an accelerated adoption of tokens in the region, and we expect this to have a very positive impact on our issuers and merchants in terms of fraud. With Visa token technology , transaction data is protected by replacing sensitive cardholder information with a unique digital token or identifier that can be securely deployed across devices or stored in the cloud. In fact, by the end of September 2022, more than 90% of Visa payment credentials in LAC were token-ready, and we recently surpassed the historic milestone of issuing more than 4 billion tokens worldwide, surpassing the total number of our physical cards in circulation, which is also incredible.

I also want to highlight our growth performance in the real-time money transfer segment. Visa Direct , our solution for sending or receiving money almost instantly within or outside the country between people (P2P) or companies (B2B) where programs are active, grew by more than 35% by the end of fiscal year 2022, reaching almost 6 billion global transactions. In LAC, we continue to lead this space with Visa Direct programs already launched in 11 countries as of December 2022, and if we analyze it by country, we have more than 25 domestic and cross-border P2P relationships.

All of these results are incredible and give us a glimpse of what is to come. Our journey of breaking down barriers and connecting more people in the global digital economy is more alive than ever. This also highlights an important point which is the responsibility we have to continue to pioneer in payment technologies to help drive the new innovations that we believe will shape the future of money movement, including greater interoperability, digital identity, open data, contextual commerce, Web3, new models such as the creator economy and the Metaverse.

That’s why the future is bright for Latin America and the Caribbean. With our industry leadership and influence, we have a unique perspective on how payments are evolving, and this inspires us to continue accelerating and scaling the adoption of more accessible digital technologies to help everyone thrive and boost the power of digital commerce for everyone, everywhere.