May Events – Fintech Focus

The two big events in the startup ecosystem this month center around fintech. I am looking forward to both of them:

• Lima Fintech Forum, May 9th and 10th, hosted by EmprendeUP
• Fintech Conference LATAM, May 30th and 31st, hosted by Alta Ventures

Both conferences have excellent speakers lined up, including many local founders.

Lima is home to great founders that are building global and regional fintech startups. In 2017, EFLGlobal, led by Jared Miller from Peru, merged with fellow Omidyar portfolio company Lenddo to create LenddoEFL. The LatinFintech founders were selected as Endeavor Entrepreneurs and Apurata entered the 500Startups program. SeguroSimple nows operates in Mexico and Solven is in Argentina. Already in 2018, TiendaPago, which launched in Peru under the leadership of Jesus Lopez, raised a large round of capital from top-notch investors. There are many other startups making progress in lending, payments, factoring, foreign exchange, etc.

There is also important knowledge base on the investor side, with Miguel Herrera, partner of Quona, based in Lima.

Lima has great potential to become a fintech hub in Latin America. Peru has a large underbanked population, deep microcredit market, and a concentrated banking sector ripe for disruption. Founders are already taking advantage of this opportunity, as  Finnovista has identified 47 fintech startups across multiple segments.

People have asked me why there are two fintech events in the same month, but I think the better question is why don’t we have two fintech events every month in Lima!