When a journalist from Frecuencia Money asked him about the $200 million technology investment in Bankaool, Moises Chaves explained what sets his approach apart. “Unlike other banks, which have traditionally focused on their products,” he said, “we decided to focus on people, on eliminating friction when withdrawing money, when sending it, or when using credit responsibly.”
Chaves goes on to say that Bankaool is focused on using fintech tools to:
- Generate trust
- Create belonging and engagement
- Promote financial education
Moises Chaves is the chairman of Bankaool, a regulated Mexican commercial bank supervised by Banco de Mexico and CNBV. He’s also the founder of OMNi, an investment group focused on financial ecosystems and digital infrastructure across Latin America. Since assuming leadership of Bankaool in 2023, Chaves has led an operational and technological transformation, repositioning the institution as a digital leader with national ambitions.
The consumer-first philosophy extends well beyond the initial investment. Chaves has spoken extensively about what he sees as the demands of the near future for digital banking, especially in Mexico.
The gap between financial innovation and genuine financial inclusion remains wide in the country. To close it, Chaves points to seven growth areas for the industry as a whole.
1. Decreased Reliance on Cash
Cash remains the dominant form of payment across much of Latin America, and Chaves sees that as a problem the banking industry has perpetuated, often inadvertently.
Speaking at the 89th Banking Convention, he observed that many financial institutions promoting digitization are prolonging cash dependency by prioritizing products that generate a here-and-now fee-based revenue stream rather than those that would genuinely move users toward full digital transactions.
The result, Chaves argues, is a vicious cycle:
- Banks resist infrastructure investments that reduce cash use
- Cash use persists because digital alternatives are out of reach for many consumers
- Financial institutions may see continued consumer cash use as a market trend to lean into
Chavez points out that cash-based systems are expensive to maintain. ATM networks represent a significant cost burden for traditional banks. Chaves encourages banks and fintech companies to look past short-term transaction fee revenues and invest in digital payment infrastructure that makes cashless options faster, cheaper and more accessible.
2. Products That Serve the Consumer First
Chaves has been consistent in his critique of financial products designed around corporate revenue rather than user benefit. He’s warned that digital banking products sometimes create “the simulation of financial inclusion.” Products appear accessible but may not deliver actual useful functionality or could drive consumers toward debt.
The standard, says Chaves, should be a well-served customer. Corporate health and growth stem from this foundation.
Current and future products that might align with Chaves’s consumer-first philosophy include:
- Fee-free or low-fee online checking and savings accounts
- Responsible micro-credit products designed around repayment capacity
- Digital wallets integrated with real-time payment systems like SPEI
- Remittance tools with transparent, low-cost transfer rates
- Financial health dashboards that help users track and manage spending
3. Digital Finance Education as a Service
Chaves has framed financial education as a core function of modern banking products. In his view, onboarding underserved users into digital finance without equipping them to navigate it responsibly and safely is an incomplete solution that can even cause harm.
At Bankaool, Chaves seeks to embed educational tools directly into the customer experience. Chaves says the goal is to build the kind of financial literacy that makes customers more capable over time.
4. Engaging the Unbanked and Underbanked
According to World Bank data, 51% of adults in Mexico were unbanked as of 2024, a figure that represents an untapped opportunity for fintechs in the country. For Chaves, that gap points to an R&D problem. The institutions and products that exist aren’t built for the people who remain outside of the system, and incremental digital improvements to existing bank structures aren’t enough.
Chaves has argued that closing the gap requires meeting users where they are, not expecting them to adapt to an existing system that isn’t serving them. At Bankaool, that’s meant:
- Maintaining physical branches in underserved communities
- Pairing physical locations with digital onboarding tools
- Building products that function well for people who are currently cash-dependent but could (and would) transition to digital with the right support
5. Trust as a Product Feature
Chaves has argued that trust must be deliberately built into financial products. Simply providing “good banking” opportunities doesn’t do it. In markets where large portions of the population haven’t had a reason to engage with formal banking, a well-designed app or competitive interest rate isn’t enough to get them over the barrier.
Building that trust into digital finance products will likely require the industry to prioritize:
- Transparency in fee structures and terms
- Consistent and accessible human support
- Clearly communicated data privacy practices
- Product interfaces that are simple enough to support first-time users
6. Interoperability and Real-Time Payment Infrastructure
The super app model Chaves is building toward requires systems that talk to each other. A platform that integrates banking, healthcare, grocery delivery and other essential services can only deliver on its promise if the underlying payment and data infrastructure is seamless. Fragmented systems that require users to re-authenticate, re-enter information or navigate separate payment infrastructure at each touchpoint aren’t convenient, and certainly don’t serve newcomers to digital personal finance.
Real-time payment infrastructures like Banco de Mexico’s SPEI already demonstrate what’s possible when transactions move freely across institutions. The next decade will demand that the same logic be applied across sectors, platforms and service categories.
7. Regulatory Infrastructure as a Foundation
Chaves knows that banking’s next decade won’t stand on technology alone; the regulatory framework that governs financial institutions isn’t a constraint in his eyes. For Chaves, operating within a supervised, compliance-driven environment forces institutions to build products and follow through on services carefully. That’s a discipline, he argues, that produces more durable platforms compared to processes that prioritize agility and time-to-market and see regulations as an obstacle to navigate around.
In Mexico, where the CNBV and Banco de México set the standards for how institutions operate, that framework provides a foundation of institutional credibility that technology-first platforms can’t easily replicate. For the broader industry, Chaves’s position is that regulatory infrastructure should be treated as a competitive asset: something to be built into digital products from the ground up rather than retrofitted after the fact.
This article was originally published in English by Ritz Herald. You can read the original piece here: Moises Chaves and What the Next Decade of Digital Banking Will Demand.