Latin America’s digital commerce giant, MercadoLibre, continues to demonstrate its influence across the region’s evolving financial and retail landscape, extending its reach beyond transactions into areas critical for future growth and user engagement.
The company’s first-quarter 2025 results, reported Wednesday (May 7), highlight strategic advancements in bolstering its ecosystem, particularly in user acquisition, payments infrastructure and value-added services, which underpin its financial performance.
A key driver has been the substantial growth in unique active buyers, which rose 25% year-over-year (YoY) in Q1’25, reflecting improved brand preference scores in major markets like Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile.
This expansion contributes significantly to gross merchandise volume (GMV) growth, notably driving FX-neutral GMV increases of 30% in Brazil and 23% in Mexico, outpacing market trends despite intense competition. Argentina showed exceptional FX-neutral GMV growth of 126% year-over-year, spurred by a stabilizing macroeconomic environment and broad category strength, including supermarkets.
In FinTech, Mercado Pago continues to scale its digital account, reaching 64 million monthly active users (MAUs), a 31% increase year-over-year. This growth is attributed to a competitive product suite and user experience, including offering yields on deposits that meet or exceed benchmarks with immediate liquidity, a disruptive approach compared to incumbent banks.
The strategy fosters user stickiness, increased engagement with other digital account products and more frequent marketplace purchases, illustrating the strength of the ecosystem. Acquiring total payment volume (TPV) maintained consistent FX-neutral growth of around 30% in Brazil and 50% in Mexico for the ninth consecutive quarter, while Argentina saw a real-term acceleration despite receding inflation.
Complementary initiatives are also gaining traction. The logistics network is viewed as critical for long-term growth, aiming for speed and low cost to increase purchase frequency and bring offline retail online. The company reported declining local currency cost per fulfillment order YoY in Brazil, Mexico and Chile, supporting investments like free shipping. Advertising revenue saw robust 50% YoY FX-neutral growth, partly driven by the expansion of inventory beyond the marketplace, including the launch of the Mercado Play app on TVs.
Mercado Pago’s credit portfolio also demonstrated strong growth, increasing 75% YoY to $7.8 billion, while maintaining delinquency at comfortable levels, supported by data utilization and the attractiveness of their marketplace buyer target audience.
Financially, MercadoLibre reported net revenues & financial income of $5.9 billion in Q1’25, up 37% YoY (64% FX-neutral). Income from operations reached $763 million with a 12.9% margin, and net income was $494 million, an 8.3% margin. TPV grew 43% YoY (72% FX-neutral) to $58.3 billion. These results reflect the momentum built in 2024 and the impact of continued investment in user value propositions and strategic growth areas.
Most recently, MercadoLibre announced plans to increase its investment in Brazil by 48%, from 23 billion reais (about $3.7 billion) in 2024 to 34 billion reais (about $5.8 billion) in 2025.
The eCommerce and FinTech firm will focus its investment on logistics, technology, marketing and increasing its staff in the country by 14,000, to reach a total of 50,000, Bloomberg reported April 7, citing an emailed statement from the company.
MercadoLibre’s investment in Brazil follows its announcement that it plans to invest $3.4 billion in Mexico, which is the company’s second largest market behind Brazil, according to the report.
The firm has not disclosed its plans for Argentina, where it was founded more than 25 years ago, the report said. MercadoLibre is Latin America’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $92 billion and operations in 18 countries across the region, per the report.
