Latin American payments fintech Kushki is preparing a significant expansion beyond traditional payment processing, developing services around stablecoin payments, merchant credit, cash management and artificial intelligence as competition intensifies across the region’s financial infrastructure market.
From payments to financial infrastructure
Kushki is building a new layer of financial services around its existing payments network, with plans including reconciliation, stablecoin payments, cash management, advances and loans delivered together with financial partners.
The strategy represents an important shift.
Rather than generating revenue primarily from processing transactions, Kushki wants to use the information flowing through its infrastructure to provide merchants with broader financial and analytical services.
At the centre of the strategy is Kushki One, the company’s physical acquiring operation, which expands its existing digital capabilities into in-person payments and creates a more complete omnichannel infrastructure.
Data becomes a financial product
One of the potentially most important elements is data.
Kushki CFO Lucas Medola told financial publication Iupana that the company intends to help merchants better understand sales, product conversions and customer behaviour, allowing services to become increasingly customised.
That could position payment processors differently within Latin America’s fintech ecosystem.
Every transaction creates information about when consumers buy, what they purchase, how frequently they return and how businesses generate cash flow.
AI can potentially transform that transaction history into tools for fraud detection, merchant analytics, credit assessment and personalised financial services.
Stablecoins enter the payment layer
Kushki’s plans to incorporate stablecoin payments are particularly notable.
Stablecoins are increasingly being explored for cross-border transactions, where traditional international payments can involve multiple intermediaries, currency conversions and settlement delays. Their strongest potential advantages remain in cross-border corridors and other high-friction payment environments, although regulatory, consumer-protection and conversion costs remain important challenges.
For Latin America, that development could be especially significant because the region combines large remittance flows, extensive international commerce and rapidly developing digital-payment infrastructure.
Latin America builds its own fintech rails
Kushki’s strategy illustrates a broader transformation taking place across Latin American fintech.
The next competitive battle may no longer simply be about which company offers the best payment app.
It is increasingly about who controls the infrastructure underneath the transaction — acquiring, settlement, data, credit, cross-border payments and merchant relationships.
For fintech companies capable of combining those layers, processing a payment may become only the beginning of the financial relationship.
Newshub Editorial in Latin America – 15 September 2026
Ask NF GPT
If you have an account with ChatGPT you get deeper explanations,
background and context related to what you are reading.
Recent Comments