How FinTech is Growing in LATAM with Martin Naor | Bankingly #25

One of the most exciting and active sectors of business for new startups all over the world is FinTech – Financial Technology. Briefly, that’s the application of information technology to the world of finance. The term FinTech really shot to fame – or perhaps infamy - with the rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin in the last two or three years. But, whilst there are a lot of recent startup companies working with such cryptocurrencies, it would be a big mistake to assume that’s the whole story.

If you use a mobile app for banking or make a card payment with your mobile phone, that’s FinTech at work. If you transfer money to friends or family abroad over the internet, that’s FinTech at work too. It’s become the norm rather than the exception.

And it’s revolutionising money management in developing countries. There are now easy to use tools that can be used by people in remote villages who’ve never had access to a bank.

Some of the most successful new FinTech apps and services have been developed in countries that are themselves developing, or have reached full development but still recall the stages of development they went through to get where they are today.

There are so many new developments in so many countries that big international meetings to present and discuss the latest – FinTech summits – seem to happen almost every week of the year somewhere in the world.

One of the biggest and most important in Latin America is the annual Montevideo FinTech summit. Uruguay is a good example of a country that has itself developed over the last 20-30 years and is now really active in building new IT tools – not just FinTech – that are particularly apt for developing countries in Africa and parts of Asia.  

When our host, Oliver Dowson, was there recently, he met with Martin Naor, the President of the Uruguay FinTech Chamber. He’s also the Founder and CEO of Bankingly, where they’ve developed digital tools for financial institutions, no matter how small and no matter where they are. In our conversation that we recorded for this podcast, Martin talks with Oliver about this development, how Uruguay is leading in Latin America in development of Fintech solutions, and why international delegates should plan on attending the Montevideo FinTech forum