UniTeller’s More acquisition strategy: CEO Alberto Guerra on global expansion and beyond
Latin America-focused UniTeller has completed its acquisition of More Payment Evolution. But how does the move feed into its wider strategy and plans for global expansion? CEO Alberto Guerra shares his insights.
In August, Mexico-headquartered international bank Grupo Financiero Banorte confirmed that its cross-border payments-focused subsidiary UniTeller had completed its acquisition of More Payment Evolution.
First announced in November 2023, the acquisition is a key development for UniTeller, giving it a significant geographical reach not only in Latin America, where it already has a key presence, but also in markets across Europe and Africa. It also enhances the company’s capabilities across its consumer remittances and B2B solutions, as well as its B2B2X-focused network business.
The acquisition of More has been significant enough to earn a rare mention in Banorte’s latest earnings, with the company citing the resulting larger fund transfer dynamics as a key driver of an uplift in income from fees in Q3 2024. It has also been a key boost to the company’s operations, helping drive the number of countries UniTeller serves from 84 in 2023 to more than 120 in 2024, while contributing to its send volume growing from $14bn to $17bn over the same period.
Given this, how has UniTeller approached the acquisition of More, and where does it see the key opportunities now that the process has been completed? We caught up with UniTeller CEO Alberto Guerra to find out more.
Topics covered:
- The strategy behind UniTeller’s acquisition of More Payment Evolution
- UniTeller’s changing corridor mix
- Opportunities to develop business payments
- Expanding consumer digital capabilities
- Trends in cross-border payments
The strategy behind UniTeller’s acquisition of More Payment Evolution
Daniel Webber:
You’ve now completed your acquisition of More Payment Evolution. What was the strategy driving that move?
Alberto Guerra:
As part of the mandate that we have from our parent company, our business plan is focused on achieving growth through global expansion, digital capabilities and product mix. When we were looking at More as a potential opportunity, we saw that it had all three of these avenues that we’re looking at for growth, and that complemented what we had at UniTeller.
Through the More acquisition, we’re getting roughly 11 additional licences in LatAm, we have a couple of licences in Africa, in Senegal and Nigeria, and then we are in the process of getting a licence in Europe.
That was very attractive for us because UniTeller was initially only licensed in Canada, Mexico, the US, Guatemala and the Philippines, so by adding additional licences in the main South American countries, in Africa, in Europe, that complements the global reach of UniTeller very well.
We see benefits in the three core areas of our business plan – global expansion, product mix and digital expansion – so it became very attractive because of that.
It is a good-sized company, roughly 30, 40% of the size of UniTeller, so a great cultural fit. The communication between the teams, between the top management and their top management and the founders has been really, really good since the beginning.
Now that we are now two months into the integration, we have really shown a great team buildup in terms of making sure that we’re getting synergies and making sure that one plus one equals 11. Obviously there’s a lot of work ahead, but we’re excited.
UniTeller’s changing corridor mix
Daniel Webber:
How has the acquisition changed the mix of corridors that you can serve?
Alberto Guerra:
Through this geographic expansion, we see that we can take better advantage of corridors. For example, UniTeller was doing the North America to LatAm and North America to Asia corridors. Now with More, we have the inter-LatAm, we also can take the opportunities of Europe to LatAm; Europe to Africa; North America to Africa; and then Europe to Asia as well.
There’s a lot of corridors that we were not capable of serving, but with the More acquisition, we’re going to be better positioned to do so. With the presence that we have in Europe now – with the commercial team and the commercial agreements that we now have in Europe – we’re going to be able to push not only Europe to LatAM and Europe to Africa that More was doing, but also the Europe to Southeast Asia or to South Asia that UniTeller had.
There’s also very good opportunities through the expanded network we have through More in Africa. At UniTeller we were not doing North America to Africa, so that also opens new avenues.
Opportunities to develop business payments
Daniel Webber:
The More acquisition has also added capabilities on the B2B payments side. What are the benefits there?
Alberto Guerra:
More has made very good progress on the development of business payment solutions. They have a very good design; they designed a product mix for business payments that became very attractive for us.
At UniTeller, we were not doing pay-ins, but More already has a pay-in business in South America. Obviously we can take that capability and that know-how in the pay-in business to other regions. We can take it to Mexico, we can take it to the US, to Central America. We do see it as an initial entrance to the pay-in business model.
Also, at UniTeller we have been working on developing front-ends for business payments for small and medium-sized companies. More has developed a very good platform for API integrations for business payments, so now with the integration of More, not only do we have the digital front-ends for small companies, but also we have the API capabilities and, again, the global reach for doing business payments.
When you combine business payments and you combine the licensing and presence that we have, not only in North America and Central America but now in South America, we have probably around 13 licences across the major economies in the Americas. That gives us a very unique position to be a leader in business payments in the way we improve our capabilities in terms of settlement rates, in terms of transaction fees, and by having those capabilities we can take a very good position in foreign trade transactions.
You have huge economies like Mexico, Brazil, even countries like Colombia that have very strong activity in foreign trade with North America, with Europe, that we see that as an opportunity. You have other countries like Chile, like Peru, even in Brazil, that have strong ties commercially with Southeast Asia, so we also see potential opportunities there.
Expanding consumer digital capabilities
Daniel Webber:
Beyond geographies, where do the opportunities lie on the consumer side?
Alberto Guerra:
UniTeller has been developing very competitive consumer digital products. We see the acquisition as an opportunity to take these products to the rest of LatAm for both our own brand and our platform.
We have our own brand, which is uLink, but we also have a very successful as-a-service platform where we open up our platform for business partners. Especially fintechs in the US and North America that are using our platform not only from a technology perspective, but the network, the compliance and the regulatory umbrella.
We are able to extend that to players that are interested in the South American market and even extend our product or support our product capabilities to South America.
Trends in cross-border payments
Daniel Webber:
Looking more broadly, what trends in the cross-border payments industry excite you at the moment?
Alberto Guerra:
One of the big trends in the industry is digitalisation and mobile wallets. In LatAm countries and in some countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, they’re growing as payment methods for P2P payments.
This acquisition is going to help us into that. More had already very good connections with the top wallets in South America, so through this acquisition we’re saving a lot of time to market and getting access to the major wallets in South America. That’s a big trend.
When you talk about digitalisation, you’re also talking about financial inclusion. The more digitalised the industry, the more efficient it becomes in terms of transactional costs. For us, there is no better way than to be more efficient, having local presence in the local markets, having access to local trading, having access to the local payment networks. This acquisition helps us build into that.
Digitalisation on the sending side and digitalisation through mobile wallets on the receive side is one big trend. The other big trend is cross-border payment companies, especially the ones that were specialised in P2P, moving up and starting to take advantage of their platforms and their network to process business payments. The More acquisition is helping us go through that trend.
Financial inclusion, digitalisation and different product mix other than P2P: those are the big trends that we’re seeing.
Daniel Webber:
Alberto, thank you.
Alberto Guerra:
Thank you.
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