“Can a Bancolombia spin-out become Latin America's default consumer-and-SMB financial OS by combining a 27M-user wallet, embedded SMB acquiring, and exportable wallet infrastructure?”
Born in 2015 as an intrapreneurship inside Grupo Bancolombia, Nequi launched as a mobile-first wallet for unbanked Colombians and scaled to 27M+ users. It then matured into a regulated 'Compañía de Financiamiento' (Nequi S.A.) under Grupo Cibest, and expanded its product surface from a P2P wallet to a full SMB-and-consumer platform: card acquiring via Wompi, lending (Salvavidas, Propulsor, Crédito Negocios), embedded insurance, Payoneer cross-border inbound, and open APIs (Nequi Conecta). A parallel international play launched in El Salvador in 2025 on Inswitch's wallet-as-a-service, signaling a model where Nequi can be packaged for other LATAM banks.