Citi & ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ College Business School's Centre for Financial Technology
The Problem:
Despite the well-documented benefits of digital money, over 220 million people across Latin America remained outside the formal economy, with cash still dominating transactions across much of the region. Existing global frameworks for measuring digital money readiness were failing to capture the pace of change in developing markets, leaving policymakers and financial institutions without the reliable, actionable data needed to make informed decisions.
The Research Design:
Building on nine years of experience co-developing Citi's global Digital Money Index, CFT and Citi overhauled the methodology for Latin America, creating a purpose-built framework incorporating factors specific to the region's modernisation priorities. Drawing on diverse open sources and deploying data science techniques, the index was constructed to deliver nuanced, actionable insights rather than broad generalisations.
The LatAm DMI assessed countries across five pillars: Government & Market Support; ICT Infrastructure; Financial Market Infrastructure Modernisation; Digital Money Solutions; and Propensity to Adopt. Two key methodological innovations strengthened the analytical rigour of the index: scaling normalisation ensured that disparities in data scales across different indicators and countries did not skew results; and clustering algorithms grouped countries into tiers of digital readiness, enabling deeper comparative analysis, identification of best practices and more targeted recommendations. Together, these techniques allowed the research to surface meaningful patterns across economies at very different stages of development — and to distinguish between countries that had enacted digital policy and those that had gone further, translating policy into targeted investment and measurable outcomes.
The Results:
Brazil emerged as the clear regional leader (0.75), followed by Argentina (0.69), Chile (0.68), Mexico (0.56) and Colombia (0.50). Brazil's Pix instant payments scheme, Open Finance framework and DREX CBDC pilot demonstrated that developing economies can achieve advanced economy adoption rates when holistic digital policy is combined with targeted investment.
The Impact:
The LatAm DMI has become an essential strategic tool for policymakers, financial institutions and public sector clients across the region — directly informing digital policy formulation, financial inclusion strategies and infrastructure investment decisions. It represents CFT's research model at its most impactful: independent, data-led and designed from the outset to drive real-world change.
Co-developed by the Centre for Financial Technology, ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Business School, and Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions. Published March 2024.Section 5 — The voice
³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Business School is perfectly positioned to play an integral part in the global fintech revolution. The London-based School is part of a top-ranked science and technology institution with a wealth of research talent in computer science, data analysis, mathematics, and finance.