• Rodrigo Puig-Mir, Head of Product Development at PayR


• 17.11.2020 04:42 pm

The Barcelona-based startup PayRetailers (PayR) helps companies that want to enter the markets in the LATAM region with its diverse suite of payment options through a single integration.

Founded recently in 2017, PayR has already managed to build a strong network of partners in multiple Latin American countries with operations that span from north to south. After starting out in Mexico, the business quickly grew to the population heavy countries of Brazil and Argentina. with later adding Chile, Peru and 5 other countries in the region to the portfolio and more countries already in the pipeline. This remarkable growth shows the viability of the companies’ approach.

Key advantage of PayR over competitors

The key advantage of PayR over its competitors is the focus on running local brick and mortar offices in each operating country, with employing country managers that understand the local markets, form local partnerships with payment servicers and banks, and build strong teams. The latter is an important factor for the overall success of the companies’ operations for which PayR carefully picks its staff to employ experts with a diverse background in every field, especially finance and technology.

Setting up local branches helps PayR grow quicker and offer better services compared to a traditional approach of just offering an online presence as an easy extension to existing systems located in another country. This way PayR is able to gather a deep understanding of the clients’ needs and offer a better adaptability to market changes and developments.

Rapid development of new technologies

Rodrigo Puig-Mir, Head of Product Development at PayR, explains how the company is able to already cover over 200 payment options in LATAM and talks about the product suite: “Our motto “enter new markets with local payment methods” especially holds value in LATAM, where there are major differences in payment habits between countries and many small service providers that offer their ways of payment. We partner with many servicers, banks and processors to be able to offer our huge suite of payment options. Our big advantage is the focus on a single integration approach via one API so that our merchants can easily access the payment jungle in LATAM. Our solution is fully localized to meet the consumers demands and an integral part of our suite is the very popular method of Pay-Ins that are being used by consumers that don’t own a credit or debit card. They can simply scan a barcode to make their payments. Our highly integrated system allows us to send real-time notifications to consumers that make or receive payments, providing convenience, speed and faster availability of funds.

Another important factor is that we designed our gateway in the way that the international merchants are able to settle payments without hassle and in multiple currencies, with USD and EUR being the most prominent, but we cover e.g. BTC as well.

From day one we worked closely together with our merchants to help them cover their existing markets and develop payment solutions for uncharted territory. With our quick IT-team and the combination of company-wide knowledge we can always come up with a solution that fits the requirements. This way we are able to harvest the synergies so newly developed technologies can be shared with other clients quickly. A good indicator for this approach being successful is our track-record of being the first to market with many payment options throughout LATAM. The most anticipated being the PIX QR-code based instant payment system recently launched by the Central Bank of Brazil.”

From B2B to B2C in the future

With the heavy technological focus there comes the opportunity for PayR to harvest its ever-growing database for launching B2C products in the future. Already more than 500.000 consumers use the companies’ services and this opens up possibilities for products like payment accounts, prepaid cards or specially computed and region-specific scoring models.

Licences to be acquired

The combination of all described factors lay a solid foundation for big growth in the coming years. Although the company is adaptive in finding viable ways to conduct business and implementing state-of-the-art processes, an important step is to enter licensing procedures for every major operating country in the coming years.

In 2018 Mexico enacted the Financial Technology Institutions Law (FinTech Law) with the Mexican National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) issuing respective licences, the first of which having been granted in January 2020. The country was the first in the region to start regulate the FinTech-sector much to the liking of the companies with established business models. PayR aims to be among the first receiving institutions to further cement the operations and aspirations in the LATAM region. The process should be finished and the licence granted in the beginning of 2021. Furthermore, PayR is in the process of acquiring the European Licence as a Payment Institution for following best practices and clear regulation on the path of its growth in the coming years.

More information about PayR can be found here:

PayR website

PayR on LinkedIn

PayR on Instagram

For inquiries please write a message to marketing@payretailers.com.