It hasn't made much noise. But the Latin American e-commerce market has an ambitious new competitor from Southeast Asia: Shopee, based in Singapore and controlled by Sea, a company of the Chinese technology group Tencent, dedicated to digital entertainment, e-commerce and digital financial services.

This year, Shopee landed in Mexico, Chile and Colombia, after two years of development in Brazil, where it is already the most downloaded e-commerce platform in the country, according to Reuters. Shopee offers a low-cost model, with low commissions, to bring buyers and sellers together, but also publishes games in which players can accumulate points to buy on the platform.

Shopee began its journey in 2015 in Southeast Asia and in four years became the leading e-commerce platform in that part of the world. Although its parent company, Sea, still generates losses, its stock has attracted the market: its price has risen 118% between January 1 and August 31, 2021, with a market capitalization of US$182 billion. Quite a threat to Mercado Libre.