Nu is Taking on the Big Banks, But Can Oxxo's Spin Do It Faster?

In the LatAm Fintech race, Nu is the current winner. Its rate of growth has been nothing short of amazing: In less than ten years after its founding, the company has surpassed some of the biggest banks in the world in terms of the number of customers, including HSBC and BNP Paribas (founded in 1850 and 1822, respectively), becoming the largest of the so-called neobanks in the world. Now, none other than Mexico's Oxxo is on track to break some of Nu's records.

Oxxo, the Mexican convenience store with a bigger presence than some of the world's most prominent chains, is now one of LatAm's fastest-growing Fintech companies. By leveraging its more than 20K locations and its well-recognized and trusted brand, the company is adding users to its Spin debit card at an unprecedented rate. In just 3 quarters, Spin has surpassed 3M users, with over 61% at least once every 2 months. For perspective, it took Nu 15 quarters to reach the same number of users.

Mexicans had relied on Oxxo for transactions like deposits and e-commerce purchase payments for some time already. In December, FEMSA, Oxxo's parent company, got more serious about becoming a bank and spun off its Fintech division — FEMSA Digital. Femsa Digital's offering goes beyond Spin; it includes OXXO Premia, a rewards Program (itself now has 15M users) that allows customers to collect points and redeem them for free products and discounts.

Whereas Nubank had to work diligently to build a brand and earn customer trust, Spin by Oxxo was born with both. Advertising is being blasted (at minimal cost to the company) to the 13M people that shop at Oxxos daily. Spin holds a key advantage over the fintech startups that have competed to penetrate Mexico's substantial unbanked population — retail space. Physical shops might be the right approach to acquire customers into the digital banking space successfully. Mexican supermarket chain Chedraui pioneered that approach with its own fintech, Bankaya.

This week’s opportunity:

Nubank has so many open roles

3 in Argentina 🇦🇷

27 in Brazil 🇧🇷

15 in Colombia 🇨🇴

1 in Germany 🇩🇪

11 in Mexico 🇲🇽

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