Argentina Opens Its Banking Gate: BCRA Green-Lights Mercado Pago's License and Revolut's Cetelem Acquisition

Argentina Opens Its Banking Gate: BCRA Green-Lights Mercado Pago's License and Revolut's Cetelem Acquisition

Mercado Pago becomes a bank (announced ~Oct 1, 2026). Dolarhoy reports that "el Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA) formalizó el otorgamiento de la licencia bancaria a Mercado Pago¹," announced by a BCRA director at the Nuevo Dinero conference — roughly a year after the fintech applied. Scale context from the same report: 88M+ users across Latin America, 25M+ active accounts in Argentina, and "aproximadamente ocho de cada diez personas con ingresos utilizan la plataforma."

What the license unlocks — the payroll prize. With bank status, "la compañía queda habilitada para operar como una cuenta sueldo formal y captar depósitos directamente en el mercado laboral" — formally holding salary accounts and taking public deposits, targeting a payroll pool dolarhoy estimates at "más de 20 billones de pesos al mes" (20 trillion pesos/month). Bank status also permits deposit-funded financial intermediation at market rates (previously lending ran on the firm's own capital), plus investment products — and, critically, first-party visibility into user income for credit underwriting, which dolarhoy notes could gradually lower financing costs for consumers and SMEs. Notably, dolarhoy highlights this was done from scratch — the first such direct BCRA process in six to seven years — unlike Ualá (Wilobank), Revolut (BNP Paribas/Cetelem), or brokers that bought Banco Voii. The prize comes with friction: full BCRA supervision, minimum capital, IT audits, and a live union fight — La Bancaria is contesting representation for wallet employees and the cuenta-sueldo terrain (mundogremial, InfoPlatense).

Revolut's parallel entry. Revolut received BCRA approval to acquire Banco Cetelem Argentina from BNP Paribas Personal Finance (deal first announced June 2025); the entity will be renamed Revolut Bank Argentina S.A.U., with 150,000+ Argentines already waitlisted (Latam Republic). Agustín Danza, slated to lead the local entity: "This is an important milestone in our long-term commitment to Argentina." The company frames its January 2026 Mexico launch — now at 500,000+ retail customers, the first independent digital bank licensed via direct application there — as "a blueprint for expansion into other high-growth markets," and is pursuing licenses in the US, UAE, Peru and South Africa.

What a strategy team should take from this. Argentina is the newest licensed battleground where global wallet platforms convert payments scale into deposits and credit data. The BCRA is demonstrably willing to grant bank charters to foreign and domestic fintechs before end-2026 (a BCRA director expects both Mercado Pago and Revolut licensed before 2027), which lowers the entry barrier that historically forced acquisition routes — but the cuenta-sueldo labor/political fight will determine how much of the payroll pool is actually capturable.