When talking about online gaming and sports betting in Latin America, Argentina stands out as one of the most compelling markets: it has provincial regulation, a deeply rooted football culture and users who are already comfortable with digital payments.
That is the reality Juan Carlos Loza Mendoza, Head of Sales for Latin America at Pronto Paga, knows first-hand. He has spent years moving between e‑commerce, online betting and football stadiums.
Loza began his career in e‑commerce at the age of 20 and came into the payments world after working with an Ecuadorian payment service provider. From there, he moved into his current role, leading the gaming vertical across Latin America from Ecuador, with a growing focus on markets such as Argentina, Chile, and Peru. He readily admits that the online gaming sector allows him to combine his two passions: e‑commerce and football, an industry that online gaming, he says, is more closely linked to than almost any other, without his being a footballer.
A fragmented market with huge potential
When he talks about Argentina, Loza insists on a dual picture: it is a complex market and, at the same time, one of enormous potential. The complexity stems from fragmented regulation, since licences are granted at the provincial level. That forces operators and payment providers to understand multiple regulatory frameworks and to work very closely with each local jurisdiction. But for him, that very fragmentation also helps build more tailored responsible‑gaming models, aligned with each authority.
The opportunity lies in the country’s size, its large base of digital users and, above all, its relationship with football. Argentina is a country that “bets with the heart more than with the head,” Loza says, and that translates into a strong emotional connection with clubs and with the national team. With a World Cup on the horizon and projections that the gaming industry could multiply in size, the country is shaping up as fertile ground for operators and providers who know how to read this combination of passion, regulation and digital adoption.
Fraud, minors and a new layer of responsibility
The payment-verification ecosystem is often seen as the Achilles’ heel of payments, both in e-commerce and in online betting, particularly when it comes to fraud linked to credit and debit cards. Loza speaks of chargebacks as one of the most serious pain points for operators and merchants.
Against that backdrop, one of the key technological approaches he describes is the combination of anti‑fraud tools with robust identity‑verification checks, with the aim of validating the card directly and cross-checking the data against that of the cardholder, so that card-related fraud can be reduced without affecting the fluidity of the payment experience.
Another issue raised on that same verification foundation is the prevention of underage gambling. Loza describes solutions that can detect, even before a payment is completed, if a minor is attempting to place a sports bet and block the transaction from the outset. This, he stresses, is not a laboratory project, but production‑ready technology designed to respond to the growing concern of regulators and the general public.
Instant payments: from friction to competitive advantage
The other major silent shift in the Argentine gaming industry concerns payment speed. For years, in many regional markets, withdrawals could take days; today, instant payments are the benchmark. Loza recalls that, for example, payments could previously take up to 72 hours or more, and that the industry has moved towards models in which winnings or payouts land in bank accounts and digital wallets almost immediately. That user expectation is now crossing borders and landing in Argentina.
Loza adds that, in markets such as Ecuador, this approach extends even to cash‑based methods, following a well‑defined rule: ensuring that whoever makes a withdrawal or deposit is the legitimate holder of the card, the identity document and the account, as well as preventing payments to and from third parties.
In this context, Pronto Paga is positioning itself as one of the players bringing instant-payout logic into the Argentine ecosystem, enabling prize payments to private banks and relevant payment methods in near‑real time.
Will instant payments become a mandatory standard in gaming?
The speed of payments appears to be moving beyond a purely technical detail and becoming a key commercial tool for operators.
Juan Carlos envisions a scenario in which Argentina’s online gaming industry enters a new phase: more regulated, more demanding in terms of responsible gaming and more focused on user experience, where instant payments and fraud prevention cease to be add‑ons and instead become basic requirements for any operator that wishes to compete in the top tier.
This article was first published in Spanish on 20 March 2026.
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