Plaid alternatives for Latin America: an honest comparison

The right Plaid alternative for Latin America depends on whether you need a live connection or a period of history. There are two fundamentally different approaches. Aggregators (Plaid, Belvo) connect to the bank on the user’s behalf and sync continuously. They are excellent when you need live balances, weaker when coverage or connection drop-off is your bottleneck. PDF-first extraction (finO$) parses the statement the user already downloads. It is excellent for coverage and one-off analysis, but it is not a live feed. This is a comparison of when each actually wins, written by one of the three. We have tried to be fair about where we lose.

The two approaches

Aggregation means the provider maintains a connection to each bank. The user authenticates (through OAuth where regulation provides it, or by handing over online-banking credentials where it does not), and the provider pulls accounts, balances and transactions on an ongoing basis.

PDF-first extraction means the user gives you the statement file they can already download from their bank, and the provider parses it into structured data. There is no connection to maintain and no credential involved.

Almost every real trade-off follows from that difference.

Plaid

Plaid is the reference implementation of aggregation and is deeply established in the United States, Canada, the UK and parts of Europe.

Where it genuinely wins: breadth and maturity in its core markets, a well-designed developer experience, and products beyond raw transactions: identity, balance checks, payment initiation. If your users are primarily in the US, this comparison is largely academic: use Plaid.

Where it struggles for LATAM: Latin America is not Plaid’s home market. Coverage of Mexican, Colombian, Argentine, Chilean and Peruvian institutions is thin compared to what it offers in the US, which is the main reason teams building for the region look elsewhere.

Belvo

Belvo is the aggregator built specifically for Latin America, with meaningful presence in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.

Where it genuinely wins: it is the strongest option if you need continuous access to LATAM accounts: recurring balance checks, ongoing transaction sync, account verification for a product that must stay current. It is aligned with Mexico’s Open Finance regulation and Brazil’s Open Finance framework, which is where the ecosystem is heading long-term.

The honest trade-offs, which are inherent to aggregation rather than specific to Belvo:

• Coverage depends on integrations. An institution is supported only if it has been integrated, and connections need maintenance when banks change their login flows.
• Connection friction costs conversion. Asking a user to hand over online-banking credentials is a real drop-off point, particularly for consumer products and for SMB owners who are (reasonably) reluctant.
• Pricing is commercial and custom. Expect enterprise contracts rather than self-serve pay-as-you-go.

finO$ (PDF-first)

Full disclosure: this is our product. Here is where it wins and where it does not.

Where it genuinely wins:

• Coverage does not depend on partnerships. Because it parses the statement rather than connecting to the bank, adding an unsupported layout takes 48-72 hours from an anonymized sample, not a new integration. That is how it works with any bank or neobank, with especially deep coverage across Latin America.
• No credentials, no OAuth. The user uploads a file they already have. Nothing to store, nothing that breaks when a bank redesigns its login.
• Retrospective data is native. Two years of history is 24 files, not a permission scope. That fits underwriting, due diligence and accounting close naturally.
• Self-serve, per-page pricing ($5 MXN ≈ $0.28 USD per processed page), with 30 free pages every month.

Where it genuinely loses:

• It is not a live feed. You get data as of the statement’s issue date. If your product needs today’s balance, PDF-first is the wrong tool; use an aggregator.
• It requires a user action. Someone has to fetch and upload a file. In a consumer flow that is friction an OAuth connection does not have (though it is friction many users prefer over sharing credentials).
• No account-verification or payment-initiation products. Extraction is the whole scope.
• No official SDKs or webhooks yet. The REST API is live with a published OpenAPI spec, but you generate your own client and poll for processing status instead of receiving a callback. Workable, just less turnkey than an aggregator’s SDK.

Side by side

	Plaid	Belvo	finO$
Approach	Aggregation	Aggregation	PDF extraction
LATAM focus	Limited	Strong (MX, BR, CO)	Strong (MX, CO, AR, CL, PE)
Live balances	Yes	Yes	No
Needs bank credentials / OAuth	Yes	Yes	No
Historical data	Limited by scope	Limited by scope	Any statement the user has
Coverage model	Per-integration	Per-integration	Per-layout (48-72h to add)
Pricing	Commercial	Commercial	$5 MXN per page, self-serve
Public REST API	Yes	Yes	Yes (OpenAPI published)

How to choose a Plaid alternative

Pick the approach from what your product actually needs:

• You need live balances or ongoing sync (neobank, PFM with real-time view, payment initiation) → an aggregator. In LATAM that means Belvo; in the US, Plaid.
• You analyze a defined period (credit underwriting, due diligence, monthly accounting close, expense analysis) → PDF-first. You need 3-24 months of history once, not a persistent connection, and coverage matters more than latency.
• Coverage is your blocker: your users bank somewhere the aggregators do not reach → PDF-first, because it does not require the institution to be integrated.
• Credential sharing is killing your conversion → PDF-first, or offer it as a fallback path alongside a connection flow.

These are not mutually exclusive. A common pattern is aggregation as the primary flow with PDF upload as the fallback for unsupported banks and for users who decline to connect, which recovers applicants you would otherwise lose entirely.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the best Plaid alternative for Latin America?

It depends on what you need. If you require live balances and continuous sync, Belvo is the strongest LATAM aggregator. If you analyze a defined period (underwriting, due diligence, accounting close), PDF-first extraction such as finO$ covers more institutions because it parses the statement rather than connecting to the bank, and it needs no credentials.

Does Plaid work in Mexico?

Plaid is built primarily around the United States, Canada, the UK and parts of Europe. Its coverage of Mexican and other Latin American institutions is limited compared to its home markets, which is why teams building for the region typically evaluate Belvo or PDF-based extraction instead.

What are the downsides of PDF-based extraction?

It is not real time (you get data as of the statement date, not the current balance), and it requires the user to upload a file. It also offers no account verification or payment initiation. If your product depends on live account state, use an aggregator.

Can I use an aggregator and PDF extraction together?

Yes, and it is a common pattern. Use the connection flow as the primary path and PDF upload as the fallback for institutions that are not supported and for users who decline to share credentials. That recovers applicants who would otherwise abandon the flow.

Is the finO$ API available today?

Yes. The REST API is live at api.getfinos.com with a published OpenAPI spec. You create a key in the app under Settings → API, send it as a Bearer token, and read transactions, accounts, balances and monthly summaries as JSON, or upload PDFs programmatically. Official SDKs and webhooks are the parts still on the roadmap.

Related reading

• Bank statement OCR vs screen scraping: the technical version of this trade-off
• How to convert a bank statement to Excel
• Bank statement to CSV
• For developers: bank data as JSON · API reference