French payment solutions firm Ingenico is bullish on opportunities in five Latin American countries due to rapidly growing demand.

“We see great opportunities in all 20 countries where we operate in Latin America, but notably in markets such as Chile, Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica, in addition to Brazil,” Helcio Beninatto, general manager for Latin America, told BNamericas.

In Brazil, its largest market, demand for payment terminals continues to grow as well as for new tap on phone (smartphones turned into payment machines) solutions, said Beninatto.

The world’s largest card acquirers use Ingenico's solutions and it reports having over 40mn payment terminals installed globally and 2,500 payment apps. 

The company, which last year was bought by Apollo funds, does not release regional financial figures.

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DigitalBridge’s Scala signed a long-term supplier contract with Caterpillar’s Cat Electric Power subsidiary for its LatAm datacenter projects.

Caterpillar said the agreement was enabled by its Brazilian reseller Sotreq and involves annual supply of multiple gensets (diesel generators) in the region through 2025.

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Regional unicorn Globant said it made two recent deals to accelerate its expansion plans.

The Argentine software group bought Mexican digital marketing firm KTBO to reinforce its business intelligence, content management, and research and media areas.

Through the Globant Ventures arm, it also made a non-disclosed investment in US cloud-based solutions provider Fivvy, which focuses on Latin America. Globant plans a two-year investment of US$4mn in the startup.

Globant Ventures said it would continue to search for firms to invest in.

The company operates in 25 countries globally and nine in Latin America.

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The first quarter saw Chile stand out in terms of tech deals involving venture capital, private equity, asset management and M&A, according to TTR Data, Datasite and AON.

The Andean country was the only among the major regional economies to see an increase in dealmaking: up 6.49% year-over-year with 82 operations, according to the Q1 report. The combined value of the deals that disclosed such information dropped 66.4% to US$1.56bn.

TTR registered 604 transactions in LatAm, down 38.6%, with a total disclosed value of US$7.9bn (-69.3%). 

Brazil led with 370 deals, followed by Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Peru. 

Source: Business News Americas / BN Americas - Chile