You could say that January is the month of the financial “hangover.” After the holidays, the bonus spent and the vacations, a large number of people find themselves with an uncomfortable reality: accumulated debts, maxed out cards and a phone that rings insistently. On the other side of the line, a collection system that historically chose to pressure rather than accompany.
But there is something that changed in 2025, and the Central Bank data reflects it: in November, 666.3 million immediate transfers were made in pesos, with a year-on-year growth of 20.3% in quantities, while payments with interoperable QR reached 75.8 million operations. The digitization of money has advanced, but the digitization of solutions for those in trouble is just beginning.
For more than eight years, at Alprestamo we have been observing the same pattern: the traditional financial system punishes default with intrusive calls, increasing interests and a narrative of blame that ends up expelling the user instead of reinstating them. It is a vicious circle where the over-indebted person, far from receiving tools to regularize, receives pressure. And when pressure is the only response, the result is predictable: disconnection, fear and chronic debt.
This approach is not only inhumane, it is also inefficient. The data we manage internally shows something revealing: when people have access to clear information, can compare options and decide in a digital environment without pressure, the recovery rate improves substantially. Not because they pay faster, but because they trust again.
From collection to support. The difference between collection and educational recovery is not semantic. It is structural. Migrating from a call center that puts pressure on you to a self-management platform where the user can understand their situation, see their options and choose how to organize themselves is not only an improvement in experience: it is a paradigm shift.
In 2025 we detected something key: there was no lack of willingness to pay. There was a lack of clarity, accessible tools and trust. People who avoided answering the phone but who, when offered a digital, transparent outlet without fine print, took action immediately. There we understood that the real problem was not the default itself, but the absence of financial education applied at the critical moment.
One of the most damaging myths of the financial system is that a debt withheld is equivalent to being a bad payer forever. It’s exactly the other way around. In our scoring models and those of the entities we work with, regularizing a debt—even partially—is always a better sign than remaining in indefinite default or in total informality.
Paying is ordering. And ordering is the first step to regain access to credit, to a card, to financial mobility. It is not about erasing the past, but about enabling the future. And that is where the system must evolve: from punishing the error to accompanying the reconstruction.
This January, with credit beginning to recover in a more stable macroeconomic context, we have the opportunity to propose a different model. A model where the financial saturation at the beginning of the year is not only a problem to be collected, but an opportunity to educate, organize and reintegrate.
The tools exist. The digital infrastructure is mature. From Alprestamo, with solutions such as Get up to date —developed in alliance with Equifax and available in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay— we have been demonstrating that it is possible to offer self-management, transparency and concrete regularization options without aggressive intermediaries. What is missing is a generalized change in logic: understanding that accompanying is not pushing decisions, but rather providing context, information and the power to choose. That is the only sustainable path to real financial inclusion.
Because at the end of the day, a user who resolves his debt with clarity and dignity is not only settling a liability: he is rebuilding his relationship with the financial system. And this reconstruction is what truly allows choosing well to stop being a privilege and become a right.
* Julián Sanclemente is CEO and co-founder of Alprestamo
by Julián Sanclemente
