LATAM mobile apps: finance sessions surge 62%, installs grow 13% in 2025
Adjust's LATAM 2026 spotlight report reveals finance app sessions up 62%, ATT opt-in rates at 49%, and e-commerce installs outpacing global benchmarks in 2025.
Data
Adjust today published the Mobile App Trends Spotlight Edition: LATAM 2026, a regional benchmarking report analysing app install, session, retention, and engagement data across six Latin American markets. The report, released on 22 April 2026, draws on aggregated and anonymised data from Adjust's top 5,000 apps and the full dataset of all apps tracked by the company between January 2024 and March 2026.
The findings cover five verticals - finance/fintech, shopping/e-commerce, gaming, utilities, and social - across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, as well as a LATAM regional aggregate benchmarked against global figures.
Regional context
Latin America's mobile market has developed structural characteristics that set it apart from other regions. According to the report, smartphone penetration across LATAM is projected to reach 93% by 2030, with nearly 500 million people currently accessing the internet via mobile devices. The app development market in the region is forecast to reach $56.1 billion by 2034. Brazil and Mexico ranked third and sixth globally for app downloads in 2025, with in-app purchase revenue reaching $2.5 billion and $1.9 billion respectively.
The region's e-commerce market alone represents a $200 billion ecosystem, driven by marketplace platforms such as MercadoLibre - which spans logistics, payments, credit, and advertising - alongside real-time payment infrastructure including Brazil's Pix and Colombia's newer Bre-B instant transfer system. The growth of buy-now-pay-later models and super apps has added further layers to the mobile economy. As Adjust's broader 2026 Mobile App Trends report showed in February, LATAM finance installs had already grown 76% at a global level, signalling a pattern that this regional edition examines in greater granular detail.
Overall install and session growth
According to the report, app installs and sessions across LATAM grew 13% and 20% year-over-year in 2025. Within that annual figure, install growth accelerated from mid-year: July 2025 saw installs reach 12% above the yearly average, while December sessions finished 8% above average. The momentum carried into Q1 2026, when January alone recorded installs up 13% and sessions up 10% year-over-year.
At the country level in Q1 2026, the picture varied considerably. Brazil posted the most dramatic session increase, up 29% year-over-year. Sessions rose 12% in both Argentina and Peru, and 13% in Chile. On the installs side, Peru and Chile led with 21% and 19% growth, followed by Colombia at 17% and Argentina at 7%. Mexico's installs declined 2% and sessions fell 4%, the only market with negative readings in that quarter.
At the regional aggregate, Q1 2026 produced install growth of 3% and session growth of 1% year-over-year, reflecting the moderating pace that follows a strong 2025 base.
Session lengths and retention rates
Session lengths across LATAM averaged 17.9 minutes in Q1 2026, slightly below the 18.13 minutes recorded for full-year 2025 but above the 17.6 minutes of 2024. Within that, Colombia recorded the longest sessions at 24.57 minutes and Peru at 22.34 minutes, while Argentina remained consistently around 11 minutes across all three measured periods.
Brazil showed notable growth in session length, rising from 12.93 minutes in 2025 to 14.62 minutes in Q1 2026, a 13% increase. Peru and Colombia also gained, up 5% and 3% respectively from the prior year. Mexico held relatively steady near 16 minutes.
Retention rates for the full app market in 2025 showed day 1 retention at 16% across LATAM, with Argentina and Chile a percentage point above. By day 7, retention fell to around 5% across most markets, with Brazil at the lower end at 4%. The curve settled near 3% by day 14 and around 1% by day 30. These figures hold broadly across messaging, gaming, and utility categories, with gaming maintaining notably higher day 1 retention - 20% regionally, and 21% in Argentina.
ATT opt-in rates: LATAM leads globally
One of the more distinctive findings in the report concerns App Tracking Transparency consent rates on iOS. According to Adjust data for Q1 2026, LATAM's aggregate ATT opt-in rate among users shown the prompt reached 49%, well above the global figure of 38%.
Brazil stood out at 54%, the highest of any market in the dataset. Mexico followed at 46%, while Argentina and Peru both recorded 44% and Colombia reached 42%. Chile was the closest to the global benchmark at 39%.
The report attributes these higher rates partly to marketers integrating consent prompts into the user journey more deliberately, experimenting with pre-permission messaging and timing. Privacy-centred measurement and predictive modelling, the report notes, remains important for extracting value from opted-in data in markets where iOS penetration is meaningful. This matters for the marketing community because ATT opt-in rates directly affect the volume of signal available for mobile measurement and attribution - an area that Adjust and Google Ads addressed jointly in their web-to-app handbook released in September 2025.
E-commerce and shopping apps
Shopping app activity in LATAM accelerated sharply during the second half of 2025. According to the report, e-commerce app installs and sessions grew 17% and 30% year-over-year during 2025, with installs up 15% in July and engagement peaking in Q4. November sessions rose 23% and December sessions climbed 32%, driven by events including El Buen Fin (13-17 November), Black Friday (28 November), and Cyber Monday (1 December). January 2026 continued the trend with installs up 23% and sessions up 16% versus the Q1 average.
In Q1 2026 specifically, e-commerce app sessions rose 20% year-over-year across the region. The strongest growth was in Peru (+48%), Chile (+35%), and Brazil (+26%). Install growth was led by Argentina and Chile, which climbed 37% and 30% respectively. Colombia and Mexico recorded declines in installs at -11% and -12%.
The discount event data illustrates how individual promotional periods can move engagement sharply. During Black Friday 2025, Chile recorded a 52% session increase over the monthly average, Colombia saw sessions jump 54%, and Brazil climbed 37%. During Cyber Monday, Peru's sessions rose 25% and Argentina's rose 18%. Peru's shopping apps also recorded a 141% session increase compared to Q1 2025, the most dramatic figure in the shopping sub-vertical.
Session lengths for e-commerce apps averaged 8.43 minutes in Q1 2026, slightly below the 8.58 minutes of both 2024 and 2025. Mexico maintained the longest e-commerce sessions at 8.44 minutes, followed by Argentina at 8.22 minutes and Brazil at 8.23 minutes. The report notes that rising session volumes alongside shorter session lengths can be a positive indicator, as it may suggest improvements in user experience and faster transaction completion rather than disengagement.
Day 1 retention for shopping apps stood at 11% regionally in 2025, declining to around 5-6% by day 7 and approximately 2% by day 30, with Brazil holding slightly better at 3% on day 30.
The marketplace and classifieds sub-category showed strong session growth across markets in Q1 2026, with Chile posting a 32% increase and Brazil 27%. Chile's shopping apps also recorded extraordinary combined figures - 47% install growth and 103% session growth year-over-year - though the report does not provide a qualitative explanation for the outlier magnitude.
The August 2025 Adjust shopping report had shown global e-commerce installs falling 14% in H1 2025 even as sessions grew, reflecting a pattern where existing users deepened engagement while new install acquisition slowed. The LATAM data for the same period showed the region resisting that global install decline, with 18% install growth and 27% session growth in H1 2025.
Finance apps
The finance vertical recorded the most dramatic numbers in the report. According to Adjust, LATAM finance app installs grew 18% and sessions grew 62% year-over-year in 2025. Session activity was strongest in Q4, with October and November sessions rising 17% above the yearly average and December sessions climbing 26% above average. Install growth, while uneven, improved toward year-end, rising 14% in December. January 2026 saw a further 31% year-over-year jump in sessions.
In Q1 2026, Peru recorded the largest absolute gains across the region: finance app installs climbed 150% and sessions rose 98% compared to Q1 2025. Brazil's sessions increased 68%, Chile's rose 65%, Mexico's gained 36%, and Argentina's increased 18%. At the regional level, sessions rose 34% year-over-year. Colombia was the outlier, with installs falling 26% and sessions declining 1%.
Breaking the finance category into sub-verticals reveals further distinctions. Payment app sessions grew 44% across LATAM in Q1 2026, with Mexico recording 45% and Chile reaching 75%. Payment app installs rose 9% regionally, with Mexico up 11% and Peru up 22%. Crypto app sessions grew significantly in Peru (96%), Colombia (43%), Argentina (26%), and Brazil (9%). Banking app sessions rose 15% regionally, with Mexico also at 15%. Stock trading app installs grew 33% in Mexico and 10% in Colombia.
Finance session lengths showed a clear upward trend from 2024 through Q1 2026. The regional average reached 6.03 minutes in Q1 2026, up from 5.5 minutes in 2024. Argentina and Peru had the longest sessions at 7.32 minutes and 7.34 minutes respectively. Colombia reached 6.83 minutes. Brazil was the only market where session lengths declined, falling from 7.93 minutes in 2024 to 7.07 minutes by Q1 2026.
Day 1 retention for finance apps stood at approximately 11% across LATAM in 2025, with Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico at 10%. Crypto apps outperformed banking on retention: crypto day 1 retention reached 18% regionally, with Argentina at 20%, Brazil at 19%, Colombia at 15%, and Mexico at 18%. Banking app day 1 retention was 10% regionally. By day 7, retention held between 4% and 5% for finance apps generally, before settling at 1-2% by day 30.
Eduardo Martinelli, Head of Marketing at Serasa Experian, commented in the report: "In the financial sector, mobile has established itself as the primary point of customer interaction, while the user journey is no longer linear and increasingly spans multiple channels. In this context, sustainable growth depends not only on acquisition, but on the ability to engage and retain users through personalized experiences, contextual communication, and the intelligent use of data."
Category callouts: messaging, utilities, gaming
Messaging apps across LATAM grew 2% in installs and 15% in sessions in Q1 2026. Peru recorded 34% session growth in messaging. Utility apps gained 4% installs and 20% sessions regionally, with Brazil showing a particularly sharp 38% session increase and Mexico recording 39% session growth. Gaming install growth for full-year 2025 was modest across most markets, though gaming day 1 retention held at 20% regionally - the highest retention category measured.
Fernando Cabral and Bruno Lopes perspectives
Fernando Cabral, Director of Growth, LATAM at Adjust, observed in the report: "LATAM offers massive opportunities for app growth - the fintech and ecommerce verticals are significantly digitally evolved. However, this comes with high user expectations. To succeed, developers and marketers need to create connected experiences with tools like deep linking, and accurate data attribution to measure channel impact. The ability to develop app acquisition journeys and unify performance is what generates growth."
Bruno Lopes, Head of Sales at TikTok, contributed a perspective in the report noting that in LATAM, engagement is high but conversion paths are not linear, and that "advertisers can move beyond last-click models and embrace full-funnel strategies to mirror real consumer behavior."
Why this matters for mobile marketers
The marketing and advertising community operating in Latin America deals with a set of conditions that differ structurally from more mature markets. Multi-device usage, highly variable user journeys across six distinct country economies, and the coexistence of formal banking with cash-heavy segments create attribution complexity that single-channel or last-click models struggle to capture accurately.
The ATT data is particularly relevant for iOS-focused campaigns. A 49% opt-in rate - 11 percentage points above the global average - means the data environment in LATAM is meaningfully richer than the global iOS baseline. That signal density affects modelling accuracy, audience building, and the efficiency of predictive measurement tools.
For e-commerce marketers, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday data provides a calibration point. Chile's 52% session spike and Colombia's 54% during Black Friday represent budget allocation moments where timing and creative responsiveness can produce materially different outcomes. PPC Land has tracked how MiQ's acquisition of Adsmovil and Rocket Lab in early 2026 is assembling programmatic LATAM mobile infrastructure - developments that contextualise where investment capital is flowing in parallel with the organic growth Adjust documents.
The finance figures are the most striking in aggregate. A 62% session growth rate is not a measurement artefact; it reflects genuine time spent inside financial apps, which in Latin America means payment flows, credit access, crypto activity, and savings management through platforms that have displaced traditional banking relationships for tens of millions of users. Peru's 150% install growth in finance apps in Q1 2026 is the kind of figure that typically signals either a major platform entry into the market or a period of concentrated acquisition spending - context the report does not elaborate on.
The methodology note in the report is worth reading carefully. The dataset is drawn from Adjust's top 5,000 apps and its full tracked universe, using two country lists - one covering 45 countries and one covering approximately 250 under the ISO 3166-1 standard. Data is aggregated and anonymised. Adjust acknowledges that results may vary by vertical, region, and business model, and that the dataset may not reflect the entire global app market.
Adjust is an AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) company, registered in Germany as Adjust GmbH, with its registered address at Saarbrücker Str. 37A, 10405 Berlin. The company is represented by Andrey Kazakov and Egor Lukomsky.
Timeline
- January 2024: Data collection period begins for the LATAM spotlight report
- H1 2025 (to June 2025): LATAM e-commerce shows 18% install growth and 27% session growth, resisting global install decline trend documented in the August 2025 shopping report
- July 2025: LATAM app installs reach 12% above yearly average; Amazon Prime Day (8-11 July) drives e-commerce activity
- August 2025: Adjust publishes Shopping App Insights Report for H1 2025, showing global e-commerce installs down 14%
- 3-6 November 2025: Cyber WOW shopping event; Argentina installs up 13%, Peru sessions up 26%
- 11 November 2025: Singles' Day; Brazil sessions rise 21% above monthly average
- 13-17 November 2025: El Buen Fin; Mexico sessions rise 26%, LATAM sessions rise 26%
- 28 November 2025: Black Friday; Chile sessions up 52%, Colombia sessions up 54%, Brazil sessions up 37%
- December 2025: Finance app sessions peak 26% above yearly average; e-commerce sessions up 32% versus monthly average; Cyber Monday (1 December) sees Peru sessions up 25%
- January 2026: App installs rise 13% and sessions increase 10% year-over-year across LATAM; finance sessions up 31% year-over-year
- February 2026: Adjust releases global Mobile App Trends 2026 Edition, covering gaming, e-commerce, and finance across six regions
- 25 March 2026: MiQ signs agreement to acquire Adsmovil's Latin America business
- 7 April 2026: MiQ acquires Rocket Lab, adding mobile app growth capabilities for Latin American markets
- Q1 2026 (January-March 2026): Brazil finance sessions up 68%; Peru finance installs up 150%; LATAM ATT opt-in rate reaches 49% versus 38% globally
- 22 April 2026: Adjust publishes Mobile App Trends Spotlight Edition: LATAM 2026
Summary
Who: Adjust, an AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP) company registered as Adjust GmbH in Berlin, Germany. The report includes contributions from Fernando Cabral (Director of Growth, LATAM at Adjust), Eduardo Martinelli (Head of Marketing at Serasa Experian), and Bruno Lopes (Head of Sales at TikTok).
What: The Mobile App Trends Spotlight Edition: LATAM 2026 - a regional benchmarking report covering app install, session, retention, session length, and ATT opt-in data across finance, e-commerce, gaming, messaging, and utility verticals in six Latin American markets. Key findings include 13% install growth and 20% session growth for all apps in 2025, 62% finance session growth, 49% ATT opt-in rates in Q1 2026, and country-level breakdowns for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.
When: Published on 22 April 2026, covering data from January 2024 through March 2026.
Where: Latin America, with country-level data for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Adjust's registered offices are at Saarbrücker Str. 37A, 10405 Berlin, Germany.
Why: Latin America's mobile app market is projected to reach $56.1 billion in development spend by 2034, with smartphone penetration forecast at 93% by 2030. The report provides benchmarks that help mobile marketers, app developers, and advertisers calibrate campaign performance, plan around seasonal events, and understand how measurement and privacy consent dynamics in the region compare to global baselines.