DineroMail or starting to pull back the curtain

While summarizing my trip in Argentina in January, I did not mention that I spent 10 days in Buenos Aires investing in one company and building the tech team for another.

I made a small investment in DineroMail. DineroMail is a Latin American Paypal equivalent allowing person-to-person payments in Argentina, Mexico and Chile. Like Paypal it is mostly used for auction payments.

The company was created during the bubble days but has withstood the subsequent Internet and Argentinean crashes. It is break-even and has been growing 10-15% month to month for the past 18 months.

What’s interesting is that it’s not just a carbon copy of Paypal. In Latin America credit cards are far and few between and ACH transfers are not common either. As these represent more than 95% of the funds into Paypal, adapting the model required creativity. DineroMail ended up doing partnerships with local convenient and retail stores allowing you to put money in your account and withdraw it from thousands of retail locations.

The company is also rolling out a program by which it gives a debit card to all its customers with a non-zero balance in their account. It also provides shopping carts to over 1,000 Internet sites in Latin America.

The fee structure is somewhat higher than Paypal’s – DineroMail charges 5-8% of the retail price for the transaction, as a result of the added costs of allowing funds to be obtained and deposited at retail.

Combined with a further Latin American roll-out and continued increases in Internet and ecommerce penetration in the region, I am reasonably optimistic on the fate of the company even though it may take a fair amount of time (5-10 years?) before it reaches a respectable scale. However, for me it’s a project worth doing no matter what as DineroMail is an enabler and complement to my core project which I will be describing shortly!

Conclusion: If you are looking for a Latin American billing system, contact me 🙂

  • Fabrice,

    Je pense avoir une super idée pour accélerer ton ROI avec DineroMail. Envoie moi un mail avec tes dispos pour que l’on discute de vive voix.

  • Hello Fabrice,

    I have being looking at ways of accepting credit card transactions in my Argentinean business as none of my segment competitors are doing it and profit margins more than allow for it.

    I found dineromail and loved the idea that finally someone adapted paypal to the local needs. However, doing some research I found some negative feedback on Google, accusing dineromail of being almost a ghost and fraudulent company.

    I want to believe in it and start using it but would appreciate some means of dissipating this doubts. And if these guys accusations aren’t true, if dineromail was mine I would take fast legal action!

    regards.

  • Hi Diego,
    My name is Juan Pablo Bruzzo, I’m DineroMail’s CEO. We know that there is a post with negative feedback, full of false and unfounded accusations. Even though we prefer not to reply nor take legal actions, but we prefer to answer with facts and hard work.

    To dissipate your doubts, you should know that only in Argentina DM has more than 2,000 merchants that are currently using our payment platforms. These merchants vary from hundred of small -sized enterprises to more established companies like DeRemate.com, Editorial Atlantida, Segundamano, Pagina 12 or even NGO’s like Asociacion de Trabajadores del Estado, Un Techo para mi Pais and many others.

    Anyhow, if you have any doubt you can contact me at [email protected] and we can schedule a call or a meeting (I am in BA).

    Saludos, Juan Pablo

  • Hello Juan Pablo,

    Thanks for the reply and sorry I took time to answer. I am happy to say that I found that post to be unfounded even before I read your reply and I will definately be using dineromail in my new website. It’s a pity people have time to spread false rumours that in the end cost the consumer/supplier a fortune in time and effort to prove them wrong!

  • I have been cheated by this company, try checking their password recovery system, thet never send an email to the account holder and then they change it, after that the process of recovery is nothing to do with any normal internet procedure, the critics are well founded and I will gladly repeat my experience, the one of a hard working argentinian living overseas, they are crooks of the worst kind

  • Eh bien, je me raffole d’avoir frappé dand le clou corrècte et je constate que mon message en anglais est lá, a coté d’avoir reçu un mail de quelcun de Dineromail…Quel Savoir- faire vôtre slide show des photos du BBQ Dineromail Monsieur Grinda, surtout le Cannon Pachèbel…Je me demande si maintenat j’aurais la bonne chance de que ma fille en Argentine reçoit la petite somme que j’avais gagné durement comme musicien de la rue et l’avait envoyé par Dineromail. Je suis un bosseur argentin a ‘l éxterieur, demèurant à Sydney, +61 2 901 28801 mais ceux qui ne peuvent se plaindre en français ou anglais, comment vont ils faire pour récuperer leur fric? Dans le monde des affaires il vaut bien savoir avec qui on se mélange. Ne c’est pas?Je vous remercie bien Monsieur Grinda.

  • Just to fairly acknowledge that all my inconveniences with the company were solved properly and efficiently after my outburst in this site, I can see Mr Grinda is a doer and he knows how to steer the wheel of a busines, now well, I forecast a huge success for a well managed Dineromail and praise the vision and fresh blood Mr Grinda brings to this badly needed service. All the best Sir. Well done and thanks

  • Hey Fabrice, I am an Argentinean Internet Entrepreneur living in Canada and I been a Customer of DineroMail for almost 5 years (back when its was DigiCuenta)…

    Since we have several freelance employees in Argentina, we depend of their services to pay their salaries… but last week with no apparent reason and no previous notice they banned the use of International Credit Cards, leaving us and several others with out a way to add funds to our accounts.

    I don’t understand why DineroMail do this kind of thinks all the time or don’t have a special policy to deal with high trusted accounts, so we can count with them when we need them… after all we all are in business to make money… right?

    Thanks!

  • Sebastian,
    Unfortunately it was not our decision; we received a notification with this requirement, and we had to comply with it. I apologize for all the problems it could cause to your operation. If you need further info you can contact me any time.

    Thanks

  • (SET 2008)
    please make possible to send funds from dineromail users beween DM countries.
    it’s no sense i can’t sell a DM customer in mexico, as a DM seller in Chile or Argentina.
    also some kind of paypal fund to DM accounts method will rock in this market. as is quit IMPOSSIBLE to latam people obtain a US Bank account. so DineroMail IS THE alternative.

    seems that you dont know what you have in your hands. And of course its incredible that you didnt open DM Peru to the date. Peru is the most fast growing economy in the region, and you will be amazed on what peruvian entrepreneurs have to do to have a usable paypal (prem) account. just think on it and act now!

    and why im trying to write in this bad english si yo hablo castellano? hey dineromail se ve bien, pero obviamente no estan haciendo lo correcto y suficiente en cuanto a GANARSE LA CREDIBILIDAD de la gente.

    no es posible que los foros de programadores web esten LLENOS de gente clamando por integracion de DM en los carros de compra mas usados y que la unica respuesta que obtengan es “NO NOS INTERESA”!!!!. Ya quisiera cualquiera tener potenciales clientes asi pidiendome darme sus dineros.
    cuanto les puede representar a uds contratar a un programador para hacer las lineas de codigo necesarias? cientos? miles? incluso hay gente que esta dispuesta a pagar por ello (ver el foro de magento por ejemplo)

    si alguna vez van a querer vender a paypal , como es obvio que pretenden, deben armar mejor el estado actual del servicio.

  • Juan Pablo,

    My name is Mato and I’m partner of a small company in Chile that works making web sites and applications for internet.

    I agree with Charlie in the topic of how necesary is for DM to grow and be more accesible from other regular ecommerce platforms, specially the ones that are givin us the line of how the future will be, and more important, to be more powerful in your day by day competition. I say this, because in countries like mine (Chile), DM is almost unknown, even between developers and specially between the regular users. And that’s because theres a local company (WebPay) that is more important and well known by everybody (And not specially a better one, in fact, the integration of this payment module it’s terrible, and very burocratic, and worst… expensive). So, what are you doing (like company) to grow, to improve your services, etc? For how many time have DM been in Chile? For how long can DM be between the shadows?

    Look, I know that I’m nobody, but the fact is the I’m and active part of the developer community, and an active part of the online customers, and I can tell you, you can definetively be more of what you are right now. You have a very powerful tool that can, literally, kick asses (sorry for that, but it’s true) in every local market (Understand Argentina, Chile, Peru, whatever).

    DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR STAFF!!! Be part of the changes!

    That’s it. Hope you can read this and take just a little bit of the msg.

    By the way, we already and succesfully integrated DM with Magento. Even when we called DM in Chile to ask for help or some guide (or interest) and they said to us that they didn’t care about this.

    Anyway, if you need some help (of any kind), please feel free to contact me and talk about this.

    Saludos,

    Mato

  • Hello!

    I’m trying to open an online store in Argentina using Magento and find this post. I want to accept payments with DineroMail but I live in Europe and I can’t receive payments in my country.

    With PayPal I can receive payments from India and receive money with no issues at home.

    Is this goig to change sometime in DineroMail? If not, I will use PayPal, MoneyBookers and 2Checkout for the moment.

    Thank you.

  • Hello

    I’m from Peru aswell, I was looking for a way to transfer money with some bussines partners, buying/selling, paying, in Argentina. I also have some bussines with some ppl in USA and Canada, who are interested on this way to make some payments (cause it’s cheaper for some stuff we use), having me as a intermediary, but I couldnt find a way to do it from Peru.

    I dont know if you can tell me if there’s a chance to open this service to Peru, since it cover’s some countrys on LA, and I’m pretty sure a lot of ppl is trying to get a way to pay on the web in this country, just check some forums.

    If there’s no chance of getting this service can you tell me? so I can find a way to do it… that wont be that easy, and I’ll prolly find another way not that easy as this one, but I like this, and looks easier to get it than others like PayPal.

    Thanks,

    Xtian

  • juan pablo all here need to upload Dineromail component to magento connect and this instal automatic, this is a pending work.

    i looking for a investing to microcredit in argentina p2p lending