Fintech Alone Won’t Build Financial Inclusion in Colombia
Santiago Quintero | Kevin Daniel
Across Latin America, financial literacy remains strikingly low, even among well-educated populations. This lack of financial literacy is not unique to the region, but in Latin America it plays a significant role in sustaining inequality across borders. With the advent of fintech—that is, financial technology—you would expect that financial literacy would improve accordingly. However, in Latin America, where fintech adoption is skyrocketing, an interesting paradox exists: access is expanding, but comprehension is lagging.
Colombia offers a striking example. Despite a thriving fintech sector and growing digital-payment infrastructure, most Colombians remain financially uninformed. According to Banco de la República, only 16 percent of adults can answer basic financial-literacy questions correctly. The surprising part: 80 percent understand inflation. Sustainable financial inclusion in Colombia cannot rely solely on mobile apps or bank accounts. It instead requires culturally tailored education models that cultivate financial understanding alongside access.
Colombia’s financial literacy challenges are well-documented. While the country has made significant gains in bringing more citizens into the formal financial system—as discussed earlier—significant knowledge gaps about how to make informed financial decisions remain. Research has shown that while Colombians are gaining basic familiarity with financial concepts, structural and educational gaps mean this knowledge does not consistently lead to effective behavior, such as protecting themselves against inflationary shocks and managing debt.
In recent years, Colombia has become a leading regional player in fintech. According to a 2025 study on fintech and inclusion by Isaza Lopez and Moreno Renteria, the advent of mobile banking, peer-to-peer lending, and digital wallets has ushered millions into the financial ecosystem. Apps such as Nequi and Daviplata today serve as on-ramps for the unbanked, providing seamless transfers and micro-savings capabilities that were previously unavailable to large swaths of the population.
According to the OECD, financial literacy involves more than knowing the definitions of basic financial concepts like inflation; rather, it is the ability to apply knowledge to real-life decisions. In Colombia, the gap between theoretical awareness and practical understanding is wide. The result of this disconnect is that when economic fortunes ebb and flow—as they have during recent periods of inflation—citizens who do not possess keen financial reasoning suffer the most.
Although millions have adopted digital financial tools, this growth masks a more profound problem: technology alone cannot ensure financial empowerment. According to the World Bank in the report, “Digital Economy For Latin America and the Caribbean” (2023), digital access can outpace users’ comprehension of the tools at their disposal. Most of them are using fintech platforms for convenience, never really taking an interest in understanding how fees, interest rates, or data privacy work.
This sets up a number of disturbing contradictions in Colombia. While digital transactions have significantly increased, the quality of the engagements remains superficial. People understand how to send money, but not why certain products may hurt or help them in the long term. Missing robust educational frameworks, fintech can be a double-edged sword: it empowers superficially but disempowers substantively.
Access isn’t enough. As mentioned in OECD’s “Toolkit for Measuring Financial Literacy and Financial Inclusion” from 2022, inclusion policies tend to focus more on account and credit availability instead of encouraging critical thinking about money management. Colombia is no exception; even with government initiatives like Banca de las Oportunidades, there has been little to no improvement in financial comprehension.
Cultural and socioeconomic factors exacerbate this issue. As stated by CAF’s 2023 regional report on “Financial Education and Inclusion in Latin America,” communities with lower levels of formal education are less likely to trust financial institutions and more vulnerable to informal credit systems, seeing as though they often carry predatory interest rates and perpetuate cycles of insecurity. Further, the diversity that has characterized the country, from indigenous to rural and urban, means one-size-fits-all education campaigns often fall flat. Taken together, these persistent inequalities compound and contribute to economic stagnation, ultimately undermining emerging market development.
What’s missing is context. Most literacy programs are based on Westernized, textbook approaches to finance; local economies may be quite different. For instance, informal savings pools, variously called cadenas or natilleras, are a common tradition among rural Colombians. Building on such culturally familiar models in formal education programs could create a more intuitive bridge between informal and institutional finance.
Closing the literacy gap in Colombia requires that policymakers and private actors treat financial education as infrastructure that is invested in, maintained, and localized. One promising blueprint comes from Mexico, where a 2023 study about Mexico’s “Fintech and Financial Education Ecosystem” by the Inter-American Development Bank shows that hybrid partnerships between fintech firms and educational NGOs can effectively merge digital access with personalized learning. In this case, these partnerships have taken the form of community workshops with app-based learning modules, allowing users to refine their understanding of crucial concepts like budgeting, interest rates, and credit.
In Colombia, this might look like community-driven financial literacy centers that are codesigned with fintech startups and a university. These hubs could match smartphone-based simulations with culturally relevant lessons, explaining inflation through food prices or saving through agricultural cycles. A 2022 UNDP report on “Digital Inclusion in Colombia” underlines the need to combine digital and human interaction to engender trust and retention in marginalized communities.
In addition, the fintech leaders in Colombia, like Nequi, RappiPay, and Movii, could consider a “teach-first” strategy by embedding interactive financial quizzes in the local language into their applications, along with transparent and clear breakdowns of fees. The idea is not to trivially gamify finance but to make learning about finances as automatic as checking a bank balance. It is important to note, however, that while these ideas may benefit them in the long run via increased recognition and engagement, fintech leaders may still need to be incentivized by the government in the short run, for instance through tax benefits and innovation grants.
Financial literacy is the invisible backbone of economic empowerment. Without it, financial inclusion risks becoming performative–an illusion of progress leaving citizens more vulnerable than before. Colombia’s fintech revolution has proven that access can expand rapidly. But comprehension, trust, and sustainable behavior take time, culture, and education.
If true economic inclusion is to be achieved in Colombia, it may need to look beyond the next digital app and invest in the human capacity to understand money. It is financial literacy, not just fintech, that helps determine whether or not true inclusion occurs, rather than just another form of dependency.
Santiago “Santi” Quintero is currently a first-year at Columbia College planning on pursuing a bachelors in Economics and Mathematics-Statistics. He is interested in the intersection of financial markets and statistics, with a focus on understanding the patterns that influence global economies. A firm believer in the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats, Santi seeks to financially empower those in his community through both in-person workshops and online discussions.
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