App helps Mexican tortilla makers join the digital economy

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Photos by Alfredo Estrella. Film by Carlo Echegoyen

Mexican tortilla producers, long marginalized by the banking sector, are cautiously embracing financial technology in a country where cash is still the most important means of payment for many people.

The National Tortilla Council and technology company Finsus have developed a mobile app that allows sellers of this staple food to collect payment from customers using cards, QR codes or a mobile phone number.

“This is revolutionizing the industry,” said the organization’s president, Homero Lopez Garcia, whose ambitious goal is for 90 percent of tortilla makers to use the app within three years.

The opinions of those who have tried the product are positive: “They say, ‘I like it, I understand it,'” he added.

It is hoped that the app will also enable tortilla makers to generate additional income by offering customers mobile top-ups and bill payment services.

For many, the app is the first link to the formal financial industry.

Only about half of Mexico’s 129 million people have a bank account, and most tortilla shops operate informally.

Although the app is still in the testing phase, it is already making life easier for tortilla maker Abel Garcia, who has been in the industry for 25 years.

The 60-year-old said he started by using family savings when he couldn’t get a bank loan. He now owns several stores.

“It was hard to get a loan — very, very hard!” Garcia said in the working-class Iztapalapa neighborhood.

His success eventually allowed him access to banks, but certain restrictions discouraged him from using them.

“That’s why we tore up the checkbook,” he said.

According to official and industry figures, tortillas are eaten daily by millions of Mexicans, and approximately 110,000-135,000 enterprises are involved in their production.

Most of them operate in the informal economy, as do many Mexican workers.

For example, according to the national statistics institute INEGI, there are about 18,000 tortilla sales outlets in Mexico City.

However, data from city hall shows that only about 10 percent of them are legally registered.

Without access to the formal financial system, many of them prefer to make cash transactions.

A 2021 survey by banking regulator CNBV found that 64 percent of Mexicans prefer banknotes and coins to debit or credit cards.

Maria Adelaida Francisco, who works at a tortilla shop in Mexico City, had never used a financial app before until her boss Jorge Ramirez suggested she try a new one.

Now the 40-year-old uses it to pay her electricity bills, she said.

Some tortilla makers avoid banks for fear of paperwork and debt.

“They are a little afraid of the tax issue or they just don’t know about it,” said Ramirez, 35.

Several of his eight employees currently use the app to collect payroll.

The shift reflects broader interest in financial technology in Latin America’s second-largest economy.

Mexico is home to 20 percent of the region’s fintech ventures, second only to Brazil, according to a study by the Inter-American Development Bank and investment firm Finnovista.

The number of fintech startups in Latin America and the Caribbean more than quadrupled between 2017 and 2023, reaching 3,069 in 26 countries, the report said.

Despite progress, funding levels for Mexican tortilla producers are still “zero,” said Lopez Garcia, president of the National Tortilla Council.

“Banks don’t believe in this industry,” he said.