Rappi redoubles its commitment to enter the banking business

Rappi delivery men receive orders on their cell phones in Bogota, on September 12, 2019. LUISA GONZALEZ (Reuters)

Rappi's menu of possibilities, the powerful application created in 2015, will have a new product in Colombia since March 1.

With the announcement of a savings account named, how could it be otherwise, RappiCuenta, the company with the white mustache promises users to withdraw money at ATMs without a card, buy with debit online, make payments by PSE and transfers banking, among other benefits.

This is one more step in the consolidation of the

segment , which for market analysts is more profitable than its founding line of home delivery based on a debatable strategy of intense capital consumption and a controversial contractual model with homeowners, which has produced shaky financial results.

The new banking function stems from an alliance with Davivienda.

In fact, users will be able to open their account through Rappipay, which was the first step in this financial and digital exploration undertaken by the company in 2020 and which was done in partnership with the same financial institution.

For the analyst Camilo Zea, this new product constitutes an interesting decision that will surely benefit Rappi "because they will be able to count on a new dimension of important information from their users to offer more precise credit and greater amounts to their users."

It specifies, for example, that they will be able to identify the disposable income that each person has or their borrowing capacity.

This tool also combines the skills of traditional banking with the advantages of information technology.

For Zea, a well-run alliance can be synonymous with benefits for customers and for Rappi. "In the end, this is what the banks that lend people money to buy goods and services want."

For the administration and innovation expert Iván Hässig, for his part, it is the natural evolution of a

that aims to become a

He recalls that

is a business that is, by all accounts, more attractive, and in Colombia "tremendously scalable."

He also explains that the supply of user data that Rappi has amassed through the delivery application is not worth losing sight of.

This is probably the great asset on which this new product can move forward: “The more people you have in your network, the more your company is worth.

Now the task is to monetize that network where there are already many transactions that have not been profitable”.

In reality, concludes Hässig, it is a complement to the delivery line: "If the company already knows your shopping habits, your tastes, your preferences, how much you buy, it can more easily discern if you are a good candidate to offer you an account of savings or a financial product”.

From Rappi they have emphasized that the RappiCuenta will pay rates of 7% effective per year in a savings account with a commitment to "zero management fee, zero transaction costs."

After its decision, the company argues in a statement, there is a need to offer "innovative tools" to mitigate the "effects of inflation" that this month reached 13.25% year-on-year, according to DANE data.

Gabriel Migowski, CEO of RappiPay, said: “We follow the Jeff Bezos mantra:

products at non-

prices .

The RappiCuenta is a transparent product with a small profitability and without high costs”.

The French economist David Bardey, from Los Andes University, considers the emergence of a new actor in a “fairly well-controlled” financial scene “interesting”: “It strikes me how technological capacity is capable of erasing the borders between businesses” .

He recalls the case of Silicon Valley where many

, supported by the huge amount of user data, migrated to the health business to try their luck.

Many succeeded.

Others don't.

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