Great article Vera! I would highly encourage you to read Nicolas’ medium post, he has an interesting take on the fact that only 55% of LATAM’s population have a bank accounts, which complements the points you make about neobanks in South America. Prior to business school I got the opportunity to be staffed on a project where I defined the go-to-market strategy for MACH resulting in +1M users enrolled first year post-launch. It started as a ‘peer-to-peer’ solution but targeted the 70%+ Chileans with no access to financial products, revolutionizing the payment landscape (https://www.somosmach.com/). Although to this date MACH is not considered a neobank, it still is a financial technology firm that offer internet-only financial services and lacks physical branches.

I firmly believe that over the coming years, neobanks o “challenger banks” will continue to make significant advances in attracting customers away from the big incumbents by providing more modern, user-friendly tools to manage their money. I know you focused on South America, but here goes another interesting example you might want to take a look at: https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/kuda-raises-25m-more-led-by-valar-to-become-the-neobank-for-every-african-on-the-planet/ (this one in Africa!)