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After the Retreat from Bogotá: What Mexican Fintech Had to Learn the Hard Way Before It Could Teach the World

Imagine a future where Mexican “fintech for the underbanked” fails abroad—Colombian users abandon Stori, SMEs switch away from Kapital and Xepelin, and regulators sideline Tala’s risk models. Starting from that failure scenario, this essay works backward like a war historian re-reading a lost campaign, tracing how products built in Mexico’s cash-heavy, low-trust economy quietly rewrote the global playbook for credit, SME finance, and financial inclusion—and what tactical shifts they must make now to avoid that imagined defeat.