Fintech President, Mercadolibre
Search every verified Osvaldo Gimenez interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Osvaldo Gimenez, Chief Product Officer at Mercado Pago and Mercado Libre, has discussed the company's growth in Latin America, noting that both e-commerce and fintech have taken off in the region. He stated that 50% of the population lacks access to financial services and that e-commerce accounts for less than 5% of retail sales, but that the basic infrastructure is now in place. Gimenez emphasized the company's focus on driving digital payments and financing to close the gap with more developed markets, and acknowledged the margin pressure from offering free shipping to drive top-line growth. Gimenez has also highlighted the company's technological investments, including deploying AI to improve code development and customer support, and launching a stablecoin called Melly Dollar for its loyalty program. He described the challenges of maintaining culture as the company grew to over 70,000 employees and of building compliance mechanisms as MercadoLibre became regulated in every country it operates in. Gimenez characterized failure as acceptable when trying new things, stating that "the only time you are not allowed to fail is the last time you try something."
“We realized soon that fixed price was better than auctions for Latin America. We also realized we had to go head on into payments and fulfillment, which were two things we didn't know how to do initially but learned from the best in the world, including PayPal and eBay.”
“Thanks to technology, we have been able to democratize and facilitate access to financial products throughout Latin America, a region with over 650 million people where many did not have access in the past, because the cost of reaching them is significantly smaller.”
“We have tens of billions of people doing this with us throughout the region, releasing products every quarter or two, continuously tweaking to address specific customer needs and improve net promoter scores.”
“We have probably one of the largest IT teams in Latin America with 18,000 engineers across the region, and we have had to reinvent ourselves many times, scrapping and rewriting all our code from scratch several times to keep up with scale and technology changes.”
“We are deploying AI in many ways: to build better code faster, to provide faster and more accurate customer support, and to summarize complex cases for agents, enabling them to respond more effectively and quickly.”
“One of the challenges in Latin America is the significant lack of financial education, which takes time to address. AI can help by acting as an agent that explains alternatives and helps customers make better financial decisions.”
“We launched our own stablecoin called Melly Dollar, initially used as part of our loyalty program, allowing users to earn cashback in Melly Dollars and spend or transfer them. We see huge opportunity to grow this, especially to reduce expensive cross-border payments in the region.”
“Maintaining culture as we grew from a small team to over 70,000 people has been a challenge. We codified our culture into the DNA of MercadoLibre and include it in hiring, firing, and performance reviews to ensure alignment.”
“We started MercadoLibre in 2003 when fintech was not even a word and were unregulated in every country we operated in. Today, we are regulated in every country and have had to build extensive compliance mechanisms to meet all regulations.”
“Failure is okay. When you try to do something that has not been done before, you may fail, and that's part of the process. The only time you are not allowed to fail is the last time you try something.”
“The opportunity in Latin America is very big, and both e-commerce and fintech have taken off in the region. Despite 50% of the population lacking access to financial services, all the basic pieces are now in place and working well.”
“Our focus is on growing our business in Latin America, not so much on driving margins at this stage. We believe the enormous opportunity outweighs short-term profit pressures.”
“We are raising money to drive digital payments and grow our financing business, which is expanding rapidly in Latin America. Our goal is to close the gap in e-commerce penetration compared to the US and Europe.”
“The last mile logistics in Latin America is particularly challenging due to the region's vast size, mountains, jungles, deserts, and scattered small towns. We are investing in fulfillment centers, service centers, and hardware/software integration to address these issues.”
“Brazil is a huge market for us. Last year, some issues arose due to increased postal costs, but this year the market is growing very nicely, and the economy is poised to start growing faster than in the past.”
On the Finance of Tomorrow Podcast, Bianca Lopes welcomes Osvaldo Gimenez, Chief Product Officer at Mercado Livre, for a ...
Jul.10 -- Marcos Galperin, MercadoLibre Inc. chairman and chief executive officer, discusses the growth of e-payments in Latin America with Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney at the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on "Bloomberg Markets: The Close."
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Osvaldo Gimenez.
The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →