MercadoPago Has Become MercadoLibre's Biggest Business
MercadoPago pioneered Fintech in 2003, years before the term was cool, now it's MercadoLibre's core.
You can now think of MercadoLibre as a Fintech business and a pioneer in the field. Its top product nowadays is MercadoPago. The service started as a solution for the largely unbanked population of Argentina (and Latin America) to pay for things on MercadoLibre’s marketplace. Its payments solution was exceptionally early; it was launched in 2003, just four years after the company’s founding.
The payments division has evolved outside of MercadoLibre’s marketplace by pioneering a wide range of features that are now more widespread in the industry:
Ensuring payments for both businesses and consumers
Quick debit card account openings
Deposits in convenience stores
Payments with QR codes
Extending credits
In other words, MercadoPago was Fintech before Fintech was cool — according to Google Trends, the term “fintech” started getting big until 2015.