Uala
“Can a LATAM neobank built on prepaid wallets become a full-stack chartered bank serving the financially underserved across Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia?”
Founded2017
HQBuenos Aires, Argentina
Total raised~$695M+
Latest roundSeries E, March 2026
Valuation$3.2B post-money (2026)
IndustryFintech / Neobank
The story
Founded in 2017 as a prepaid card and digital wallet for unbanked Argentines, Ualá rapidly expanded its product suite to include loans, investments, and savings. The 2022 acquisition of Wilobank transformed Ualá from a PSP into a chartered bank in Argentina, unlocking deposit-taking and SEDESA insurance. In parallel, Ualá pursued full banking licenses in Mexico (obtained as Institución de Banca Múltiple) and scaled to 11M+ users across three LATAM markets, becoming one of the region's largest digital financial conglomerates.
Product timeline
2017
Ualá founded in Buenos Aires as a digital wallet and prepaid card provider targeting unbanked Argentines.· banking
2021
Expanded operations into Mexico and Colombia, scaling to millions of users across Latin America.· pivot
2022
Acquired Wilobank, gaining a full Argentine bank charter (now operated as Ualá Bank S.A.U.), enabling deposit-taking with SEDESA coverage.· acquisition
2022
Implemented Mambu's cloud-native core banking platform to support scaling across Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico.· banking
2023
Obtained full banking license in Mexico (Institución de Banca Múltiple), becoming a regulated bank in two countries.· banking
2026
Raised $195M Series E led by Allianz X at a $3.2B valuation with 11M+ users across three countries.· banking
Regulated entities
5
regulatory licences held by Uala
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
4 layers disclosed in Uala’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Ualá Payments (self-operated)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
4 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.