The Argentina-based e-commerce and online auctions company Mercado Libre is set to invest almost US $1.5 billion in Mexico this year, 34% more than it invested in 2021.

The $1.47 billion the company plans to invest in the country is equal to 67% of what it has invested in Mexico in the last five years.

The funds will go toward innovation and technology, strengthening logistical operations and reaching new customers.

The head of Mercado Libre in Mexico, David Geisen, said the company has confidence in the country.

“Mexico is a priority country for us. We believe in it and its talent, so we’ll continue to speculate with a constant and growing investment that allows us to add value and build better opportunities for our users,” he said.

Geisen added that serving customers with improved technologies and promoting financial inclusion were priorities.

“This year we will focus on bringing sellers closer to buyers, promoting digitization and providing financial tools to Mexicans in an innovative and sustainable way … For us, fintech development is essential to continue democratizing access to financial services in the country. Therefore, we are working on new online and offline solutions that we will make available to everyone and thus contribute to generating true financial inclusion,” he said.

One way that the company has promoted such inclusion is through the Mercado Crédito (Market Credit) payment option, whereby customers can borrow small sums of money to pay for individual products.

The company said that during the pandemic more than 288,000 Mexican families drew their principal income from the platform. In 2020, more than 38,000 small businesses in Mexico joined Mercado Libre, according to a study carried out last year by market research organization Euromonitor.

Mercado Libre was Latin America’s highest valued company in late 2021, the newspaper The Financial Times reported in October.

With reports from eSemanal and Marketing4ecommerce