Farmacias Similares signed an alliance with Stori, a multiple-purpose financial institution (Sofipo) founded by Marlene Garayzar, to issue a joint credit card and move towards an operating model with less dependence on cash. The alliance has already produced 5,000 active cards, and the goal is to place 100,000 cards among the chain's customers before the end of 2026.
The card will have credit limits of between 5,000 and 20,000 pesos, with an application process designed to be considerably simpler than that of traditional banking products. Víctor González Herrera, executive president of Farmacias Similares, was direct about the motivation: "There are many people who do not have access to credit cards due to the large amount of information that banks ask for, and this is a very simple alternative."
The decision to reduce cash in branches responds to two specific operational pressures. The first is cost: managing, counting, transferring, and safeguarding cash in more than 8,000 points of sale distributed throughout the country has a significant logistical cost. The second is security: several branches of the chain operate in areas with high crime rates, where cash in the till represents a direct risk to employees. Currently, between 20% and 25% of payments at Farmacias Simi are made by card. The alliance with Stori seeks to progressively increase that percentage.
The chain is also analyzing incorporating the reception of remittances within the Stori digital ecosystem, a market that moves close to 60,000 million dollars annually in Mexico. However, González Herrera ruled out the cash withdrawal model at branches: "We don't like cash withdrawal because it forces us to have a lot of cash in the pharmacies and it changes the entire system in our model." The idea is for remittances to arrive at the Stori digital ecosystem and for the user to withdraw them at an ATM.
González Herrera explained the choice of Stori as a partner for two reasons. The first is strategic: he prefers to ally with specialists rather than build his own financial infrastructure. "We are lovers of alliances and we prefer to do it with specialists; thinking about opening a bank would be a titanic task." The second is identity: Stori is a Mexican company led by a woman with the "Made in Mexico" seal from the Ministry of Economy, a positioning that González Herrera considers positive for the chain's external image.
Garayzar, for her part, ruled out applying for a banking license for now, although she left open the possibility if in the future the Sofipo could not offer any product necessary for the ecosystem.
For the next+ team, Farmacias Simi's move illustrates a trend that is transforming the role of large retail chains in Mexico: the physical point of sale as a gateway to financial services for populations with limited access to the formal banking system. With more than 8,000 branches distributed in urban, semi-urban, and rural areas, Farmacias Simi has a territorial reach that no digital bank can replicate with its own infrastructure. This makes the alliance with Stori not only a tool to reduce cash in the till, but also a channel for financial inclusion on a scale that reaches precisely the segments where traditional banking has no presence. For the fintech ecosystem in Mexico, this type of alliance with high-density territorial retailers represents one of the most efficient ways to scale without the need to build its own physical infrastructure from scratch.