Published / Updated:
May 14, 2019

Fortumo's latest market report gives an overview of the mobile payments landscape in Latin America: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Ecuador.

Latin America has historically been a strong region for carrier billing, thanks to fast adoption smartphones coupled with low access to traditional payment methods such as credit cards. As a result, carrier billing commands either the most popular or second most popular position amongst payment methods for digital gaming transactions in the region.

On the other hand, the region has somewhat lagged behind in deployment of modern direct carrier billing solutions by telcos, as well as the commercial terms offered to merchant. Complicated taxation further makes doing business in the region challenging. Partially due to these reasons, telcos have launched their own offerings in certain segments, such as Vivo with its Android app store in Brazil and Claro with its music streaming service across the entire region.

Despite these challenges, carrier billing should not be overlooked for Latin America by game developers and merchants selling virtual content, as 60%+ of the 640 million strong population owns a smartphone while bank-based payments remain inaccessible for many. Carrier billing solves this issue by allowing any telco customer to charge purchases to their phone bill instead.

In this report, we bring out data on Latin America is aimed at giving an overview of the local digital ecosystem as well as guidance on how to modify your payments strategy to maximize results in the region.