fintechvenezuela

The banking business has relied for centuries on a simple idea: people entrust their money to an institution that safeguards it, lends it out, and charges for the service. That model hasn’t disappeared, but the playing field has changed. Technology, fintech, artificial intelligence, and the need to adapt quickly are no longer conference topics; they’ve become conditions for survival. In Venezuela, where the financial system operates amid de facto dollarization, currency controls, and inflation that distorts every projection, those unwritten rules carry twice the weight.

📊 A regional investor surveys the Venezuelan landscape
Andrés Bilbao, a Colombian entrepreneur and one of the people behind Rappi’s founding, made a remark that quickly resonated across the local ecosystem: in his view, Venezuelans today are more focused on entrepreneurship than political disputes. He said this during a meeting with the media as part of the Venezuelan edition of the Inmersivo Ejecutivo 30X program, and added a sign of commitment: he intends to visit the country four to six times a year and build bridges with businesspeople from Argentina, Brazil, and other markets with a track record in agribusiness.

Caracas is back in the spotlight. The sixth edition of the Startup Venezuela Summit kicks off this week with a lineup that seemed unlikely just three years ago: 25 investment funds, nearly 40 international guests, and Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, as the headline act. Behind the event is a thesis we at PitbullChain have been following closely: foreign capital has begun to see Venezuela not as a risk to avoid, but as a market with costly problems to solve and few competitors lining up to tackle them.

Horse Consulting published a new edition of its report _Thought Leaders 100_, a ranking that measures the influence of Latin American executives based on the analysis of hundreds of thousands of news articles, conversations on social media, and attendance at corporate events. The headline that drew the most attention here: five Venezuelans appear on the list of the 100 most influential names in the region.
Rafael Segrera (Schneider Electric), Francisco Aristeguieta (Scotiabank), Ricardo Arias-Nath (Starbucks), Carlos José Fiorillo Martínez (Fitch Ratings), and Leonardo Romero Domínguez (Procter & Gamble) hold positions ranging from 42 to 93. All of them lead or are part of the regional senior management teams of multinational companies in energy, banking, mass consumption, and risk rating.