Mercado Pago — online payment platform
Brief historical background
Mercado Libre was founded in 1999 in Argentina. In a short period of time, the platform gained popularity among users and, in 2003, launched its own payment system, Mercado Pago. The launch of its own platform gave the company greater control over transactions and improved the protection of client funds from fraud.
The reason for the growing popularity of Mercado Pago lies in the innovative approaches of the company's management: already in 2010, against the background of active development of social networks, the Mercado Pago platform integrated links and buttons to pay for goods. This allowed customers to make payments via text messages and social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.
The Mercado Pago app on iOS and Android smartphones appeared in 2015 — at the same time, the company introduced the ability to pay for purchases by QR code, including utility bills. The company even released its own POS-like device that allows it to accept credit and debit cards for offline point-of-sale payments.
Mercado Libre is currently the leading online shopping platform in Latin America and has branches in 18 countries.
Financial performance and ratings
Mercado Pago has shown steady growth in financial performance since its inception in 2003. For example, in 2016, following the launch of its own payment acceptance devices, the number of transactions processed grew by 75 per cent year-on-year to 138.7 million.
For 2022, Mercado Pago's online platform processed over 5.4 billion transactions — that's about 173 transactions per second. In total, more than 123 billion transactions were processed during this period.
The number of unique users of the platform has exceeded 64 million, including over 21 million investors. The sum of their investment portfolios exceeds $2.8 billion.
What services Mercado Pago provides
The online payment platform provides its clients with a range of services, which include:
- Sending and receiving payments via QR codes, social media or links;
- Paying for goods and services on online marketplaces;
- Online money transfers to any bank;
- Credit card issuance, loan issuance and opening a line of credit;
- Deposits with interest rates up to 3.4% per annum;
- Investment products and services;
- Mobile phone top-up and payment of utility bills.
Mercado Pago also provides services to corporate clients:
- Payment for goods and services through the app by transfer to a digital account;
- Payment of business expenses by credit card;
- Use of payment devices from Mercado Pago.
Creating a digital account
To make payments with Mercado Pago, you need to open a digital account — the process is roughly the same as creating an e-wallet. The platform makes online payments and fund transfers easy and fast for users.
There are two types of accounts on Mercado Pago: personal and merchant accounts. A personal account can be created for free and used as a regular digital wallet for payments.
A merchant account provides users with advanced business tools: you can accept online and offline payments in various ways: by QR code, via device, transfer, and so on. As with a personal account, merchant account features are free of charge.
