App helps Mexican tortilla makers join digital economy

Lengthy marginalized by the banking trade, Mexico’s neighborhood tortilla producers are cautiously embracing monetary know-how, in a rustic the place money remains to be king for a lot of.

The Nationwide Tortilla Council and know-how agency Finsus have developed a cellular software that enables distributors of the staple meals to cost prospects utilizing playing cards, QR codes or a cellphone quantity.

“It is revolutionizing the trade,” stated the group’s president, Homero Lopez Garcia, whose bold purpose is for 90 % of tortilla makers to make use of the app inside three years.

The suggestions from those that have tried it has been constructive: “They are saying ‘I prefer it, I perceive it’,” he stated.

The hope is that the app will even allow tortilla producers to generate further earnings by providing their shoppers cellphone top-up and invoice cost providers.

For a lot of, the app is their first hyperlink to the formal monetary trade.

Solely round half of Mexico’s 129 million inhabitants have a checking account and most tortilla retailers function informally.

Though it’s nonetheless within the testing section, the app is already making life simpler for tortilla producer Abel Garcia, who has been within the enterprise for 25 years.

The 60-year-old stated that he began out utilizing household financial savings after failing to get a financial institution mortgage, and now owns a number of shops.

“It was tough to get credit score—very, very tough!” Garcia stated, within the working-class district of Iztapalapa.

His success lastly gave him entry to banks, however with restrictions that put him off utilizing them.

“That is why we tore up the checkbook,” he stated.

Casual economic system

Tortillas are consumed by tens of millions of Mexicans daily and an estimated 110,000-135,000 companies are concerned of their manufacturing, in accordance with official and trade figures.

Most of them function within the casual economic system, as do many Mexican staff.

Mexico Metropolis for instance is house to round 18,000 tortilla retailers, in accordance with the nationwide statistics institute INEGI.

However solely round 10 % of them are legally registered, figures from Metropolis Corridor present.

With out entry to the formal monetary system, lots of them desire dealing in money.

A 2021 survey by the banking regulator CNBV discovered that 64 % of Mexicans most well-liked notes and cash over debit or bank cards.

Maria Adelaida Francisco, who works in a tortilla store in Mexico Metropolis, had by no means used a monetary software till her boss Jorge Ramirez urged she attempt the brand new one.

Now the 40-year-old makes use of it to pay her electrical energy invoice, she stated.

Some tortilla producers keep away from banks for worry of paperwork or money owed.

“They are a bit terrified of the tax challenge or they do not know about it,” stated Ramirez, 35.

A number of of his eight workers now use the applying to gather their salaries.

The change displays a wider embrace of economic know-how in Latin America’s second-largest economic system.

In response to a examine by the Inter-American Improvement Financial institution and the enterprise capital firm Finnovista, Mexico is house to twenty % of the area’s monetary know-how ventures, behind solely Brazil.

The variety of fintech startups in Latin America and the Caribbean elevated greater than four-fold between 2017 and 2023, to three,069 throughout 26 international locations, the report stated.

Regardless of the advances, the monetary inclusion of Mexico’s tortilla makers remains to be “zero,” Lopez Garcia, the Nationwide Tortilla Council president, stated.

“The banks do not imagine within the trade,” he stated.

© 2024 AFP