How is MELI Holding its Lead in LATAM's Acquiring Business Space?

MercadoLibre’s MELI acquiring business has grown into the most dominant fintech acquiring engine in Latin America (LATAM). Instead of following traditional players who targeted large retailers, MELI built its empire from the bottom up, empowering small and informal sellers with tools to accept digital payments.

What sets MELI apart is the full-stack ecosystem it offers. Sellers don’t just receive payments. They access credit, invest idle balances, use linked debit cards and even buy insurance. As these services grow more integrated, so does MELI’s grip on its merchant base. The success is clear. In the first quarter of 2025, MELI achieved 59% year-over-year FX-neutral growth in Acquiring Total Payment Volume (TPV), reaching $40.3 billion. Mexico and Brazil marked their nine straight quarters of double-digit expansion, while Argentina’s acquiring TPV surged 144% year over year, FX-neutral. 

Looking ahead, MELI is focusing on serving small and medium-sized businesses while continuing to support its base of micro-sellers. It is improving its recurring payment features, adding more point-of-sale devices and offering easy-to-use business tools to help sellers with things like inventory, billing and selling across multiple channels.

In countries like Mexico, where many people still use cash, MercadoLibre sees a big chance to grow. By bringing credit, banking, payments and software together in one platform, MELI is helping more people and businesses go digital and take part in the broader financial system. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter 2025 total TPV is pegged at approximately $64 billion.

MELI’s Competition in the Acquiring Space in LATAM

MercadoLibre faces rising competition in acquiring services from StoneCo STNE and DLocal DLO, both expanding across key Latin American markets.

StoneCo processed R$133.5 billion ($24.7 billion) in TPV in the first quarter of 2025, supported by strong adoption of PIX QR Code payments and growth in its banking and credit products. StoneCo’s active client base reached 4.4 million.

DLocal focuses on cross-border payments and serves global merchants like Amazon and Spotify. It supports more than 900 local payment methods across 40-plus emerging markets, including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. DLocal reached $8.1 billion in first-quarter 2025 TPV, up 53% year over year.

MELI’s Share Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

MELI shares have gained 41.2% in the year-to-date (YTD) period, outperforming the Zacks Internet – Commerce industry and the Zacks Retail-Wholesale sector’s growth of 7.7% and 4%, respectively.

MELI’s YTD Price Performance

From a valuation standpoint, MELI stock is currently trading at a forward 12-month Price/Sales ratio of 3.90X compared with the industry’s 2.17X. MELI has a Value Score of D.

MELI Valuation

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter 2025 earnings is pegged at $12.01 per share, which has remained steady over the past 30 days, indicating 14.60% year-over-year growth.

MercadoLibre, Inc. Price and Consensus

MercadoLibre, Inc. price-consensus-chart | MercadoLibre, Inc. Quote

MercadoLibre currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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