A story by the Miami Herald, “Why mobile payment technology is leap-frogging in Latin America,” features a Q& A with Marko Dimitrijevic, a recent investor in the mobile payment technology company YellowPepper, and the company’s CEO and co-founder Serge Elkiner. The Miami-based company began my tapping into Latin America’s mobile banking market, and is now experiencing a growth spurt as it expands into Columbia, Mexico, Ecuador and other Latin American countries. With $40 million raised in venture capital to date, YellowPepper has become one of the most highly-funded early-stage fintech companies in Miami.
In the article, Marko explains what frontier markets are, talks about his new book, and explains why mobile payment technology is a worthwhile investment in frontier markets.
On YellowPepper and mobile payment tech, Marko says: “We have been early investors before in several frontier markets and we saw a leap-frogging in some of those countries. For example, in some countries only a fortunate few had a fixed-line phone and basically [the countries] skipped directly to mobile and everyone has a mobile five years later. We see that in payments in countries like Kenya, where very few people had a bank account but went directly to apps and mobile and we think the same story is happening in Latin America, particularly in Ecuador and Colombia, which are frontier countries. And we believe YellowPepper is really at the forefront in Central and Latin America and that is really exciting.”
For more, visit the Miami Herald’s article, or purchase “Frontier Investor” on Amazon.