Interactive Brokers Latin America clients now have a new way to fund their brokerage accounts, after the broker integrated SafetyPay, a payment platform owned by Paysafe, into its deposit infrastructure. The move connects eligible clients directly to their local bank accounts, letting them transfer funds in local currencies without routing money through international payment channels first.
Why Bank Transfers Matter So Much in This Region
The integration addresses a structural reality of Latin American finance. Paysafe reports that approximately 42% of Latin American consumers do not hold a credit card, which means payment options that depend on card infrastructure simply exclude a large share of the population from the outset.
SafetyPay plugs that gap by supporting multiple payment routes. According to Paysafe’s own resource centre, the platform handles bank transfers backed by more than 175 banking partners across nine countries in Latin America, as well as barcode and numeric code payments (such as Brazil’s boleto system), QR payments, and cash payments through a physical collection network. That breadth matters for reaching clients in markets where digital banking infrastructure is uneven.
Interactive Brokers Latin America: What the SafetyPay Network Offers
Paysafe completed its acquisition of SafetyPay in 2022, having first announced the deal at USD 441 million in an all-cash transaction. The purchase was part of a deliberate strategy to build out Paysafe’s position in Latin American open banking and eCash payments, alongside a separate earlier acquisition of Peruvian payments platform PagoEfectivo.
The resulting network is substantial. SafetyPay operates across 11 countries in Latin America, with over 180,000 cash collection points in addition to its banking connections. For Interactive Brokers, attaching to that infrastructure means clients in the region can fund accounts through channels they already use for everyday financial transactions, rather than having to navigate cross-border wire transfers.
Milan Galik, Chief Executive Officer and President of Interactive Brokers Group, framed the rationale plainly. ‘Funding an account should be straightforward,’ Galik said. He added that SafetyPay gives clients ‘a simple way to transfer funds from their local bank accounts’ and reach the markets available through the broker. Galik said the company would continue adding local funding options to ease the process further. His titles are confirmed in Interactive Brokers Group’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Once accounts are funded, clients can access stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds and funds across more than 170 global markets. The funding method is new; the product range is not, but the access point is what has historically been the obstacle.
A Broader Push by Brokers Into Latin America
This integration is not an isolated move. Interactive Brokers previously worked to reduce friction in the funding process closer to home: in 2021 the broker introduced a Request for Payment service in the United States, allowing investors to fund accounts around the clock as an alternative to standard bank transfers.
Latin America is now drawing attention from several directions. In April this year, CFI secured a Brazilian licence and opened a representative office in Colombia. Polish broker XTB also obtained Brazilian regulatory approval. The common thread is that brokers operating globally are finding that reaching local clients requires local payment infrastructure, not just local licences.
For retail investors watching Interactive Brokers as a stock (IBKR trades on Nasdaq), the Latin American expansion represents an effort to grow the client base in a region where card-based payment exclusion has historically kept potential investors off platforms designed around Western payment rails. Whether that translates into material account growth is a question for future earnings disclosures, but the funding infrastructure is now in place. The next signal to watch is whether IBKR’s quarterly client account figures show acceleration from the region.
