In the past decade, Mercado Pago has been rolled out across the region in eight key countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Today, the company offers a wide variety of financial services, ranging from payment processing and gateway services to mobile payments and credit cards. Mercado Pago launched its mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) machines to small and midsized merchants in 2015, and QR codes in 2018. Following those advancements, offline payments made with the platform's app and mobile wallet skyrocketed.
Of all the Latin American countries it’s active in, Mercado Pago has been most widely adopted by consumers in Argentina. The platform has processed more than 8.5 million payments there since it began offering QR code payment services in 2018. These transactions were also subject to discount incentives for consumers and merchants (zero transaction costs for any payments made with a QR code for a limited time earlier this year).
Its success in Argentina is also a result of a lack of major competitors in the market—payment services from Apple, Google and Samsung are currently unavailable there—which has given Mercado Pago a first-to-market advantage. According to a July 2019 study from mobile data company Ogury, Mercado Pago was present on 16.5% of Android and iOS mobile devices, a significantly greater share compared with PayPal (0.7%) and Todo Pago (0.5%).