In Mexico is where e-commerce is growing the most worldwide: Mercado Libre

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David Giesen, CEO of Mercado Libre México, affirms that 288,000 Mexican families obtain most of their income from this platform.

David, as CEO of a technology company leading e-commerce and financial services in Latin America explained that the last three years, Mexico has been the country with the highest growth in electronic commerce worldwide. In 2019, it grew 35%; in 2020, it grew 81% due to the pandemic. Last year growth slowed but continues at a good pace: 27%.

The electronic commerce industry will continue at an accelerated speed in the country, and we will continue investing in infrastructure; punctually, with new stores that we will open next year in different areas of the country. We will also expand our logistics network. More than 90% of everything sold on the platform is delivered by our own logistics network.

Mexico is the second largest market in Latin America for the group, after Brazil, in terms of volume and units of products sold on Mercado Libre.

Another strategy for next year is to improve the service and strengthen our air fleet. We already offer same-day delivery within 16 cities, and we operate four aircraft a day in the country. In addition, we will continue to bet on sustainable transport. This year we added 150 electric vans.

On the other hand, we will continue to strengthen our Fintech business, in which we also participate with various solutions for our MercadoPago application. With this app, users have a digital wallet that allows them to pay for any service, send money, sell cryptocurrencies, make investments, obtain returns, have access to credit, on which we will continue to bet heavily next year, because has greatly facilitated growth within the ecosystem of Mercado Libre solutions.

We give credit to businessmen and entrepreneurs who need working capital to grow their business and who had not had the opportunity to have a traditional loan, because they do not have the necessary requirements, such as audited financial statements.

We are also adding millions of people who require credit and who previously had not had access to them. The average value of these microcredits is 100 dollars.

Financial inclusion represents a great opportunity in Mexico, since there are 54 million adult Mexicans who do not have a bank account or access to formal credit, so we will promote these issues with the MercadoPago application.

What are the challenges facing the industry in the coming year?

Lots of challenges, but the main one is how to continue to innovate and, at the same time, improve service levels. We are constantly launching new e-commerce and fintech solutions in many dimensions, and new solutions always add to the complexity of how we manage them internally. How are we going to combine speed of innovation with excellence in execution? That is one of the important challenges within the organization.

On the external side, I don’t see too many challenges, because we operate in growth industries that add a lot of value to the user. At the external level, the challenges are mainly macroeconomic, such as inflation.  However, I am sure that we will play an important role in this difficult economic situation, because today 288,000 Mexican families receive their main income from the Mercado Libre ecosystem: sellers on the platform, physical world businesses that use our point-of-service terminal solutions for sale or to receive money, for example, or small logistics companies that deliver Mercado Libre packages.

That is why we are focusing on how to improve the solutions we offer to these thousands of families, so that they can continue to grow their business and their income, in a difficult macroeconomic environment.

Source: Alto Nivel