Since there are only about 22 million credit cards in use in the Mexican population of almost 120 million people, Amazon recently announced it would accept gift cards from the local grocery store chain Oxxo as a payment option on its Mexican site. But the country’s e-commerce has more problems to handle than the one of a population who still prefers to pay cash.
Tech Crunch looked into the logistics challenge that is the Mexican infrastructure, and come to the conclusion that taxi-service Uber might be offering exactly what is needed for the e-commerce business of the country.
- Uber Mexico however has shown how quickly an entire industry deemed too strong or too difficult to overtake can be transformed. With more than ten thousands Uber partners and over 100,000 thousand completed trips every day, the transport giant is living proof to large incumbents that a technology company can reach a meaningful scale without a government concession or a buyout within a few years of operations, read the article.
"Can Create Very Large Companies"
Uber entered the Mexican market in mid-2013 and has since then grown to "a size most observers deemed impossible".
- As Uber prepares to deploy additional e-commerce services in the next few years, it will certainly lift the industry by leveraging its impressive infrastructure. In the meantime, I think Uber has already given its best impulse to the industry. It has shown that a crisp value proposition and a great execution can create very large companies in Mexico.
Apart from a slow development in the online payment area and well-needed investments in the infrastructure, Mexico has everything that could be asked for in terms of a population ready for e-commerce. The country’s Internet penetration is higher than many others. Mexico had 75 million smartphones last year in a country of 120 million people.
