It’s Tuesday, and today we’re discussing Grupalia, a Mexican fintech company. Founded in 2023 by Rogelio Rea and Ramón Echeverría, the company recently completed a $7.7 million round led by Tantauco Ventures, with participation from Semilla Ventures and Innogen Capital, and Addem Capital providing debt capital.

I’ve mentioned before that the “99% of all enterprises in a country are MSMEs” stat doesn’t make sense. The vast majority of companies in any country will naturally be small.

There are levels to how important MSMEs are to the economy, however.

In Mexico’s case, they are important. They contribute 54% of business value added and 72% of business employment. That’s higher than most developed markets: in the US MSMEs account for 39% and 58% respectively, in the UK 48% and 52%, and in Spain 56% and 68%.

But then there are micro enterprises, which are responsible for 39% of business employment in Mexico. While that figure is lower than, say, Kenya (78%), it’s still substantial: there are over five million micro enterprises in the country.

Despite their scale, they are not particularly productive. Their share of business value added is just 12%, meaning there’s a 25 percentage point gap between employment and value contribution. Compare that to Italy (17), the US (13), Germany (7), and the UK (0).

Lower productivity among these enterprises has been the story for decades. A 2013 study showed that Mexico’s micro enterprises contributed 18% to total output, while in Italy, where they play a similar role in employment, the figure was 32%. So while their role as employers is comparable, their economic output is not.

The main driver behind this gap is informality. The informal sector accounts for 24.8% of GDP and 55% of employment. Being informal brings some advantages, but it limits access to skilled workers, reduces the ability to innovate, and weakens legal protection.

Most importantly, it restricts access to credit.

In 2023, just 10.7% of MSMEs had access to any kind of financing. Their share in outstanding business loans was under 15%, lower than in any other OECD country. At the same time, interest rates are among the highest at 15.6%, and are about 5 percentage points higher for MSMEs than for large companies.

For 85.1% of firms, interest rates are the biggest obstacle to accessing a loan. The second biggest issue is the number of requirements (53.9%), followed by unfavourable payment conditions (41.8%). Lack of collateral (15.6%) and credit history (12.8%) also play a role. There are at least three broad consequences of this lack of funding:

There has been some movement from the government to improve access to financing. Mexico launched “Plan México,” which targets financing for 30% of SMEs by 2030 through coordination between the government, the Bank of Mexico, and the Mexican Banking Association, including preferential rates.

There is also room for fintech companies to enter the market and address gaps left by incumbents, which is what Grupalia is trying to do.

Grupalia is a digital group lending platform. The company targets micro enterprises without access to banking that operate informally, with monthly revenues between $500 and $1,000. Around 90% of its clients are women.

The product is built around groups of at least six people. The group serves as both the social and financial foundation of the loan, removing the need for traditional collateral or an external guarantor. There aren’t really any other major requirements: borrowers need to be over 18, have a business or income-generating activity, a valid ID, and a phone with internet access.

Loans are cycle-based and laddered. The first loan is up to ~$850, the second ~$1,150, and the third ~$2,900. As borrowers repay on time, their credit limits increase. Most loans are short-term, 16 to 20 weeks.

To apply, users go through three steps:

After that everything’s done through the app. Users can apply for new loans, track payment history, view group members, access contracts, receive reminders, and follow repayment instructions.

There are three points I want to get across that are both integral to the business and what makes Grupalia interesting.

1. The actual core of the model. While not new, it’s worth looking at how group lending reframes borrowing. A borrowing transaction consists of three elements: the transfer of capital or an asset to the borrower, a defined (or implied) purpose for which the funds are used, and a credible claim on future repayment, which may be supported by expected cash flows, collateral, or guarantees.

With group lending, that repayment piece is supported not by tangible assets or money, but by relationships. And the part of those relationships that matters most in a lending context is trust. It’s interesting, then, that group lending has spread across emerging markets, many of which are notoriously low trust.

For the business model to work, instead of making sure that a borrower has the capacity to repay the loan in the traditional sense, the lender first and foremost has to make sure that the relationships are real and strong.

While Grupalia uses basic information collected during the application process to score potential borrowers, like education level or marital status, it also seems to use some less obvious ways to assess clients. Without going into details, in one of the interviews Rogelio mentions that they use digital footprints, such as contact lists and WhatsApp interactions, to verify social connections and manage risk. It would be interesting to see which specific indicators they use and how predictive they are, but regardless, it’s a novel way to think about borrower assessment, to say the least.

2. Advisor network. Another core part of the business model is the advisor network. Grupalia recruits these advisors directly, offering them an opportunity to earn up to roughly $300 per week. These advisors act as the connective tissue between Grupalia and its customers. They can invite groups, review each application, schedule meetings, consult borrowers, and manage groups in their portfolio.

So customer acquisition, onboarding, and portfolio management are, to a large extent, outsourced, while Grupalia handles the financing and tech parts of the business.

Aside from helping Grupalia differentiate through its scoring capabilities and fully digital offering, it also reduces costs. It puts a cap on how much a single borrower or a group can cost, which makes a key part of the unit economics, CAC, more predictable.

3. OXXO’s role. Mexico’s leading retailer, OXXO, is also a major fintech service provider. It has a product called Spin by OXXO, which is a digital account that clients can use to store, send, and manage money. Which’s useful to Grupalia, because borrowers can use Spin for disbursement, so they don’t even need a bank account. The company doesn’t have the license required to create bank-like accounts for customers, so it uses OXXO’s account infrastructure to distribute cash.

An added bonus is that this opens up additional distribution channels. Grupalia targets people living in remote areas that might not have bank branches. Mexico’s largest banks have a branch footprint in the low thousands. OXXO operates almost 25,000 stores in Mexico. That means tens of millions of customers can access Grupalia’s product simply by shopping at OXXO.

The company makes money from issuing loans through their platform and earning lending income from those loans.

By the end of 2025, the company had 10,000 active clients and had issued 18,000 loans, for a total of $7.5 million. On its website, it currently mentions 40,000 loans worth over $17 million, implying that the business more than doubled in roughly 6 to 9 months. The company says its non-performing loan ratio, defined as loans overdue by more than 90 days, is 3.6%.

Any lending business is risky, and one where so much hinges on relationships rather than hard assets only adds to that risk. It’s an open question how NPLs will hold up as the business scales. At launch, the company can afford to be picky and more diligent about who it brings on. As it grows, and as competitive pressure increases, it may end up onboarding borrowers who are less reliable and less able to repay.

There’s also the fact that, as I’ve mentioned, the biggest barrier to borrowing is cost, and in Grupalia’s case that cost doesn’t seem dramatically lower than what other sources offer. Yes, the company is solving the physical access problem, but I’d guess that for many borrowers the affordability issue is still very much there. And any turbulence or slowdown in the Mexican economy will hit businesses with the least capital first, which means micro enterprises.

As time goes on, and as more borrowers come on board and more groups repay successfully, underwriting should improve. If Grupalia’s underwriting model is genuinely unique, it should get better at predicting who is worth lending to and who isn’t. Since CAC should be capped, better borrower selection allows for a non-linear increase in LTV, both through lower NPLs and through repeat financing.

There’s also room to expand internationally and move into more product categories. The company’s 2026 goal is to launch individual productive loans, and if it gets a banking license, it would have many more avenues to pursue, including on the financing side alone.

What’s the one lesson investors and founders can take away from Grupalia?

There’s always a non-obvious way to take advantage of some part of the local environment. To exploit a feature of the economy or culture that either unlocks something for the business or strengthens is. That’s the case with Grupalia and OXXO.