In 2025, 72% of adults in Latin America and the Caribbean already had a bank account. 74% of users would use a conversational AI that actually resolves their issue, and 38% would switch banks for that experience (Delto + Mercoplus study). The core expectation isn't a polished channel: it's real resolution, 24/7, on WhatsApp, with context that travels across channels.
There's a gap that almost every bank in Latin America knows about but few measure precisely: the difference between what customers expect from their bank in the digital world and what the bank actually delivers. This article is not an opinion about that gap, but what the data says. Which customer are we talking about? In 2025, 72% of adults in Latin America and the Caribbean already had a bank account, compared to 30–50% in 2019 across several Latin American countries. Smartphone penetration exceeds 74% of internet users, and in countries like Argentina, Chile and Brazil it reaches 87–88% of the population. This customer didn't choose digital out of convenience, but because it's their natural channel: they hail a ride with one tap, pay with QR, order food, look up reviews, and so on. So their banking expectations follow that same pattern. Expectation 1: real resolution on first contact The most fundamental expectation of the digital banking customer is not that the channel be pretty, fast or modern. It's that it solves their problem: not route them, not tell them they have to call a hotline, but resolve it. With the immediacy of today's world, customers get frustrated fast. This has direct implications for how automation is designed in banking. A chatbot that answers FAQs and escalates 80% of cases to the call center doesn't meet this expectation; it adds a step to the process without removing any. The customer is just as frustrated, but now they've lost additional time. "The customer doesn't demand to speak with a human. They demand to solve their problem without repeating their story, without going through five channels, without waiting. If AI can do that, they accept it." The data point from the study we ran at Delto and Mercoplus is telling: 74% of surveyed banking users would use a conversational AI that actually resolves their issue, and 38% would consider switching banks to access that experience. The demand is there; the problem is the supply: most current digital banking channels aren't designed to resolve, but to inform or deflect. What does the customer value when resolving an issue? Expectation 2: availability 24 hours, 7 days a week The banking customer in LATAM doesn't handle their financial tasks from 9 to 6. They do it when they have time: at 11 at night from their phone, on the bus on the way to work, or on Saturday morning before the branch opens. This isn't a luxury wish; it's the widespread digital consumption pattern in Latin America. The same person who orders delivery in the early hours, who transfers money on a Sunday, expects their bank to be available with the same logic. The branch-hours-and-call-center-with-waiting-lines service model in banking didn't disappear because technology replaced it. It disappeared because the customer simply stopped using it when they found alternatives that satisfied them more and fit their lives better. Those who still call the hotline are the ones who didn't find another option, not the ones who prefer that channel. Expectation 3: service on the channel the customer already uses This point is key and often underestimated in digital banking strategy. It's not about being on every channel, but about being on the channel where the customer already lives. In Latin America, that channel is WhatsApp; it's the main communication channel for most of the active population in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and the rest of the region. More than 70% of consumers in LATAM prefer to resolve queries by chat rather than by phone call. This isn't an emerging trend; it's the current state of the market. For banks, this means that a conversational banking platform that doesn't operate natively on WhatsApp isn't where the customer is. Opening WhatsApp as a banking channel is not just a technology decision; it's a decision about regulation, security, authentication and governance. A conversational banking channel on WhatsApp that can't authenticate the customer, access their data -with the customer's permission- and execute actions in real time is not a banking channel: it's a glorified customer service channel. The difference is made by core integration. Expectation 4: genuine personalization, not generic Personalization is the expectation banks most easily confuse with something they already do. "We show them relevant products based on their history" or "We send them communications based on their preferences." That isn't personalization for the customer; it's segmentation. The personalization the Latin American banking customer expects is for the bank to know them. To know they had a charge in dispute three months ago and not offer them the same card they already rejected. To know they have an upcoming due date and warn them before they fall behind. To suggest a fixed-term deposit at the right moment for them, not at the best moment for the bank. The Accenture data adds another dimension: banks with the highest advocacy index, meaning customers who actively recommend their bank, grow their revenue 1.7 times faster than their peers. And the main driver of advocacy, meaning what leads those customers to actively recommend their bank, is not the rate or the product: it's that the customer feels known and valued. However, only 42% of banking customers recall having received guidance from their bank, according to JD Power. So the gap between intention and customer perception is enormous. Expectation 5: context that travels with the customer across channels This expectation is the most technical, but its impact on the customer experience hurts the bank a lot when it's not met. The most frustrating scenario for a digital banking customer is not that the channel fails to resolve; it's having to repeat everything they already explained in another channel, over and over (possibly because they couldn't resolve it in the previous channels). In a world that constantly demands that users solve their queries on their own through technology, what's useful and valuable is being able to resolve it easily, efficiently and quickly without depending on going to a branch, on how they're treated, on the lines, without having to repeat their problem again and again across different channels. They start in the app, make a query about an unknown charge. The system tells them to call the call center. They call. They're asked for their customer number. They're asked to explain again what happened. The human agent has no record of the previous conversation. The customer is already upset before they begin. The perception gap: what the bank thinks it offers vs. what the customer experiences There's a pattern documented in many industry studies: the distance between how internal teams evaluate their digital experience and how customers evaluate it. Banks invest in platforms, apps, chatbots and journey mapping. What they don't see is that the customer's benchmark isn't the bank they had before, but the best digital service they use in any industry. Differences by country: not all of LATAM is the same Brazil leads digital payment adoption with Pix, which reached R$ 2.5 trillion in monthly transactions in July 2024, with more than 70% of the population using it actively. The immediacy standard that Pix set is hard for any other banking channel to match. Mexico has internet penetration of 72% but with strong adoption of mobile banking and a fintech ecosystem that constantly pushes the experience standard upward. Colombia and Peru show one of the fastest-growing rates of financial inclusion through conversational platforms and wallets (Yape in Peru already exceeds 13 million users), which creates a customer base accustomed to managing money by chat. Argentina presents an interesting paradox: high digital sophistication of the consumer combined with high institutional distrust, which exponentially raises the weight of trust and transparency in the banking experience. What all this means for banking decision-makers Experience is no longer a differentiator; it's the baseline. 48% of Latin American banks believe that adopting a digital ecosystem approach is the main evolution of their business model over the next 12 to 24 months, according to Economist Impact. Those who don't move in that time won't be "a bit behind"; they'll be competing against an experience standard they can't reach with their current architecture. WhatsApp is not optional for most markets. If the channel where the customer lives is WhatsApp, and the bank has no functional presence on that channel (functional means authenticated, integrated with the core and able to resolve), the bank is not on its market's main channel. Personalization at scale requires AI, not segmentation. Personalizing for millions of customers, in real time, across multiple simultaneous channels, with access to each one's history and context, is an AI infrastructure problem. It isn't solved with more segmented campaigns or more detailed journey maps. The right metric is resolution, not deflection (diverting users to another channel). A channel that diverts 80% of call center traffic but doesn't solve the customer's problem didn't improve the experience; it redistributed it, and in fact generated more frustration in the customer and worse perception of the bank. The right question is not how many conversations the digital channel handles, but how many problems it resolves without human intervention.
What does the digital banking customer in Latin America really expect? They expect real resolution on first contact, 24/7 availability, service on the channel they already use (WhatsApp), genuine personalization, and context that travels across channels. According to the Delto and Mercoplus study, 74% would use a conversational AI that actually resolves their issue and 38% would switch banks to access that experience.
Why is WhatsApp critical for banking in LATAM? It's the main communication channel for most of the active population in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Peru. More than 70% of consumers in LATAM prefer to resolve queries by chat rather than by phone call. A bank without a functional presence (authenticated, core-integrated and able to resolve) on WhatsApp is not on its market's main channel.
What is the right metric for a digital banking channel? Resolution, not deflection. A channel that diverts 80% of call center traffic but doesn't solve the problem only redistributes frustration. The right question is not how many conversations the channel handles, but how many problems it resolves without human intervention.