Why mobile payment technology is leapfrogging in Latin America

MIAMI (TNS): THE WORLD of mobile payments is one of the hottest segments of the financial technology industry. Based in Miami, Yellow Pepper has been a pioneer of mobile payment technology in Latin America, where an immense market need and a millennial-rich population of early adopters converge.

Yellow Pepper has done this before. Years ago, the Yellow Pepper team targeted the untapped Latin American mobile banking market and developed a state-of-the-art platform to enhance the overall consumer experience. While continuing to grow the mobile banking side of the business, Yellow Pepper is now focused on another untapped opportunity: mobile payment solutions for consumers in the region. The company, founded in 2004 in Boston, provides financial institutions with the latest technology that alters the way in which consumers and retailers transact.

Yellow Pepper is undergoing a growth spurt, recently deploying its mobile payments technology in Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico, and looking to expand to other Latin American countries. To further power that growth, Volta Global, run by emerging markets specialist Marko Dimitrijevic, recently became an investor in Yellow Pepper. The terms of the investment weren’t disclosed, but Miami-based Yellow Pepper has raised more than $40 million in venture capital to date, making it one of the highest-funded early-stage fintech companies in Miami.

With such a large market opportunity, mobile payments continues to attract attention in the venture capital community. The global mobile wallet market is expected to reach $635 billion by 2020 from $113.5 billion in 2015, increasing 41 per cent annually between 2015 and 2020, according to Research and Markets. The turning point, many experts cite, is the growing availability and use of mobile phones. With the mobile and financial expertise of CEO and co-founder Serge Elkiner, coupled with the emerging markets and investment experience of Volta, Yellow Pepper is poised to exceed its expansion goals in the coming months, the company said.