From Cash to Platforms: Fintech and the Making of Latin American Financial Inclusion

Santiago Mandirola

Between 2017 and 2021, the proportion of Latin American adults that had a bank account grew from 55 to 74 percent. In just four years, the region went from lagging in financial inclusion to almost reaching the global average. How did this happen? When the COVID pandemic forced most business to take place remotely, a nascent set of digital financial infrastructures was ready to tend, for good or for ill, to those population sectors historically excluded from formal financial networks. Drawing on insights from economic sociology and science and technology studies, this research examines the technical work and forms of expertise that governments, banks, and financial technology (fintech) platforms deployed to broaden financial inclusion using digital technologies in twenty-first century Latin America. The project follows a qualitative design that combines archival research; participant-observation in Latin American fintech and digital banking events, conferences, and seminars; and semi-structured interviews with practitioners from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, and Uruguay.