Evertec’s Third Quarter Shows What a Puerto Rican Company Can Build by Selling to the World

Evertec, the San Juan-based payments and financial technology company, reported third-quarter revenue of $283 million, up 24% from a year earlier, and raised its full-year outlook to between $1.088 billion and $1.096 billion.

The company that runs the ATH network and ATH Móvil is on track to become a billion-dollar business for the first time.

The more important number, though, may be a revealing ratio. Close to half of Evertec’s revenue now comes from outside the island, compared with 14% in 2015, the company said in a prepared statement. In the third quarter, its Latin America segment alone produced $143.6 million.

That makes Evertec one of few Puerto Rican companies to scale at such a high level by exporting services rather than serving a shrinking or stable home market or relying purely on local incentives. For an economy where the latest indicators point to growth of well under 1%, the lesson is worth studying.

For this story, we went beyond the prepared statement and dove into the company’s public documents and other sources, to reveal a telling picture.

In Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, Payment Services revenue grew 9% to $60.1 million, driven by point-of-sale volumes and double-digit growth in ATH Móvil transactions, especially through ATH Business, the version used by merchants. Merchant Acquiring rose 9% to $51 million. Business Solutions fell 5% to $58.6 million, which the company’s filings attribute mainly to a contractual discount to Popular, its largest client.

Latin America grew 59%, or 52% at constant currency, helped by acquisitions in Brazil and by organic growth from new clients and services such as digital recovery, analytics and cloud solutions.

“We have built a broader, more diversified company with greater scale, deeper capabilities and more opportunities to grow across Puerto Rico and Latin America,” said President and CEO Mac Schuessler.

Evertec’s path offers a template. It built expertise in a small, sophisticated home market, then sold that expertise to larger markets where governments were pushing the same transition it had already made.
Few Puerto Rican firms have followed that route.

Half the business, mostly Brazil

Evertec says it operates in 26 Latin American countries. Its footprint grew through a series of acquisitions: Chilean software firm BBR in 2022; Colombian online payments platform Place to Pay; and, above all, Brazil.

In Chile, it signed a multi-year processing agreement this year with Transbank, the country’s main card processor, which the company has called one of the most significant commercial wins in its history.

Brazil is the largest bet. Evertec bought Sinqia, a provider of software to more than 900 Brazilian financial institutions, in a 2023 deal valued at about $591 million including debt. It then acquired 75% of Tecnobank, which registers vehicle financing contracts digitally, for about $150 million in October 2025, and all of Dimensa, which supplies risk, insurance, banking and fund-management technology to financial institutions, for about $203 million in April.

In July, Sinqia bought 67% of blockchain startup BBChain for about $5.5 million, according to the company’s quarterly filing.

Together, those deals represent close to $950 million committed to one country. The logic is scale. Brazil has more than 210 million people and the region’s largest financial system, and Evertec is selling it the back-office software, data and processing that banks need, rather than competing for consumers directly. That is the same business it built at home, applied to a market with more than 60 times Puerto Rico’s population.

Governments pushing payments onto phones

Evertec’s timing is helped by public policy. Brazil’s central bank built Pix, an instant-payment system now used by about 170 million individuals and businesses. In September, Pix processed 7.1 billion transactions, and in the first half of 2026 it accounted for 55.2% of all payments in Brazil, according to central bank data.

Every bank that connects to Pix and to the country’s Open Finance system needs the kind of software Sinqia and Dimensa sell.

Colombia followed with Bre-B, an instant-payment system launched by its central bank in October 2025 that requires all financial institutions to interoperate. According to an analysis of central bank data by payments firm EBANX, Bre-B reached 83% of Colombian adults in its first year, a faster pace than Pix, with about 36 million active users and more than 8 million transactions a day.

Similar real-time systems are spreading in Chile, Peru and other markets where Evertec operates.

Brazil’s approach to digital assets is more cautious. Its central bank said last year that Drex, its planned digital currency, would launch on a centralized platform without blockchain, leaving tokenization of funds, bonds and receivables largely to private companies.

That is the space BBChain occupies and largely explains why Evertec bought a small stake rather than a large platform.

From processor to fintech platform

Evertec describes its goal as becoming a one-stop technology provider that connects payments, software, banking infrastructure and emerging technology for financial institutions and businesses across Latin America. The model is to sell many products to the same bank: core software, payment processing, fraud tools and, eventually tokenization services.

Artificial intelligence is part of that plan, though at an early stage. The company said pilots involving ATH Móvil and engineering teams in Brazil are testing AI to speed software development, with other applications in incident management, cloud optimization and commercial operations. With its second-quarter results, it cited fraud prevention and risk monitoring as additional uses and said it expects larger benefits starting in 2027.

BBChain gives Evertec infrastructure for asset tokenization and digital custody. The company plans to expand its offerings for investment funds, fixed-income and credit markets and to use Brazil as a hub for the rest of Latin America.

Here at home, ATH Móvil and its rivals

In Puerto Rico, ATH Móvil remains dominant, with more than 2 million users on an island of about 3.2 million people, according to published reports. Its double-digit growth this quarter suggests that alternatives such as Venmo, PayPal and Zelle have not taken significant share.

No public data measure their use on the island, and anecdotal evidence suggests residents default to ATH Móvil for person-to-person transfers.

Digital wallets are a different story. Retailers report that tap-to-pay with such tools as Apple Pay and Google Pay, tied mostly to bank cards, is growing wherever stores accept it, and that cash now accounts only for about 25% to 30% of in-store purchases, down from roughly half a decade ago, as José “Pepe” González, president of the Retail Trade Association (Acdet), said recently in published remarks.

A Mastercard survey of 405 adults on the island, conducted in February, found that 50% use digital wallets and 88% want more businesses to accept digital payments, yet 58% still use cash at least monthly despite preferring to pay digitally.

For Evertec, wallets are less a threat than a source of volume, since its merchant-acquiring business processes card payments regardless of whether they arrive on plastic or a phone.

Demographics are moving in the same direction. Federal Reserve data for the U.S. mainland show that in 2025, consumers under 25 paid in cash for about 6% of their purchases, those 25 to 54 for 10%, and those 55 and older for 19%. The Fed’s 2024 survey found that adults under 35 made about four in-person mobile payments a month, double the rate of those 55 and older.

Older consumers are shifting too: in 2016, cash accounted for about 30% of payments in every age group. Puerto Rico’s population is older than the mainland’s, which helps explain some of the island’s lingering cash use, but the Fed’s data do not include Puerto Rico and no comparable local study by age exists.

A model for Puerto Rico’s exporters

Evertec’s growth carries risks, but its path offers a template. It built expertise in a small, sophisticated home market, then sold that expertise to larger markets where governments were pushing the same transition it had already made.

Few Puerto Rican firms have followed that route. Most local companies serve local customers, and the island’s export base is dominated by multinational manufacturers. A technology services company earning half its revenue abroad, and paying taxes and employing professionals in San Juan, is the kind of homegrown exporter that development strategies often promise but seldom produce.

Puerto Rico’s advantages, a bilingual workforce, U.S. regulatory standing and proximity to Latin America, become valuable when a company decides to sell beyond the island.

Evertec’s third quarter shows what that decision looks like ten years in: slower growth at home, faster growth abroad, and a business that is larger and more resilient for having made the bet.