MEXICO CITY, June 17 (Reuters) - Latin American

e-commerce giant MercadoLibre's ( MELI ) fintech arm, Mercado Pago, has

seen adoption of its slim mobile credit-card readers more than

double in the past year, gaining on competing options from banks

and Clip, an executive said.

In Mexico, cash is still king - and as Latin America's No. 2

economy, it still lags far behind Brazil in terms of

digitalization, Brigitte Brousset, Mercado Pago's head of

financing for merchants in Mexico, told Reuters.

Brazil had been in a similar situation, but credit card

adoption was quick and central bank-backed system Pix is now

threatening to take over digital payments.

In Mexico, "we're still behind other countries," Brousset

said on Friday, "but market penetration has been speeding up."

Five years ago, around a million credit-card readers

provided by traditional banks and another million from third

parties such as Mercado Pago and Clip, a Mexican digital

payments platform, were used by sellers and stores in the

country, according to the company.

Now, the number of bank-provided credit-card readers, which

are bulkier than the Mercado Pago devices and print paper

receipts, has stagnated while third parties have rolled out more

than 4 million, the firm said.

Percentage growth in Mercado Pago readers in Mexico is in

the "low triple digits" over the past year, Brousset said,

"which is really quite fast." She declined to share comparisons

with other countries where the firm operates.

Obtaining a traditional reader from a bank can require a

drawn-out visit to a branch where sellers hold an account,

Brousset said. She touted the ease of ordering one online from

Mercado Pago, where readers are priced as low as 149 Mexican

pesos ($8.07).

Beyond its credit-card readers, Mercado Pago in Mexico also

offers loans, credit and debit cards and transfers from abroad.

The firm signed off on more than 1 million small-business

loans in the country last year and is looking to top 2 million

in 2024, Brousset said.

Mercado Pago is set to apply for a banking license in the

country in the next few months, which would allow it to provide

services like savings and checking accounts, certificates of

deposit (CDs), commercial loans and mortgages.

Brousset said it was too early to discuss how the license

would affect options for merchants.

($1 = 18.4540 Mexican pesos)