Why Compago? Because Shared Expenses Aren’t a Trend, They’re Already a Tradition

We used to live in a world where one income could support a family. That’s what defined financial independence for decades, the idea that a single provider could carry the weight of a household. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. Not in Mexico, not in most of the world. Today, whether you’re a young professional, a couple with children, a retiree with a fixed pension, or even upper middle class, odds are you’re sharing expenses with someone. It might be rent with a roommate, school fees with your ex-partner, groceries with your spouse, or the weekend getaway with friends, but the dynamic is the same: the cost of living has outpaced the individual’s capacity to sustain it alone.

That’s not just an anecdote, it’s the dominant financial behavior of our time. People aren’t sharing because it’s trendy, they’re sharing because it’s necessary. We live in an economy of rising aspirations and shrinking margins. We’ve all been exposed to more options, more services, more experiences, and through social media and the internet, we now know what’s available, what’s desirable, what’s possible. But our salaries haven’t kept up, and our access hasn’t scaled with our expectations. And so the natural adjustment we’ve made, quietly and almost universally, is to share the burden.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

In Mexico, this reality is everywhere. The average quarterly household income as of 2022 was around 63,000 pesos, and yet inflation continues to eat away at purchasing power. While some households bring in more, the gap between what people make and what things cost is increasingly difficult to close alone. The top 10% of households make nearly 184,000 pesos per quarter, while the bottom 10% survive on just over 11,000. And most people fall somewhere in between, not poor enough to qualify for support, not rich enough to absorb the rising costs. So they share, quietly, regularly, and unsystematically.

At the same time, we’ve seen an explosion in exposure. Over 90 million people in Mexico are active social media users, roughly 70% of the population. That means 70% of people are watching others eat better, travel more, live more comfortably, use better services, drive better cars, and upgrade their lives, and most just watch out of desire. They want what they see because it looks like a life they could have too. And the only way they can get closer to it is by splitting the cost.

The Infrastructure Never Caught Up

But here’s the problem: while the desire to consume has modernized, the infrastructure for sharing hasn’t. Shared financial behavior is everywhere, and yet the tools we use to manage it are still incredibly primitive. We rely on IOUs, WhatsApp reminders, spreadsheets, mental math, and social pressure. In a country where 90% of people still use cash regularly, and only 17% use debit cards habitually, we’ve built no native solution to support the one behavior almost everyone engages in: sharing money.

Why We Built Compago

This is what Compago is built for. We didn’t build it because it sounded innovative, we built it because we saw that the market was already there, the behavior was already there, and the tension was already there. What was missing was the infrastructure. A clean, real-time way for people to split expenses using the cards and accounts they already have. No IOUs, no waiting, no awkward follow-ups. Just a transaction that reflects what already happened: a shared moment, a shared cost, a shared life.

The size of the market isn’t theoretical. In Mexico, more than 60 million people live with a partner, family member, or roommate, and together they share over $18 billion USD in annual expenses. And that doesn’t even include all the ways people share money outside the household. The true size of the shared expenses economy is far larger than what we can measure in household bills alone. This isn’t a niche. This is the majority of people, in every economic segment, managing their financial lives in coordination with others, and doing it without tools that make it feel safe, fair, or fluid.

Everyone talks about building for the unbanked. About digitizing the next billion. But the next billion users aren’t waiting to become financially active, they already are. What they’re missing isn’t awareness or intent, what they’re missing is infrastructure that reflects how they already live: together, collaboratively, and often offline. They’re already paying, coordinating, covering, helping, but doing it in person, in cash, without formal rails. That’s the user Compago was built for. And we believe that once they experience shared payments the way they should be, real-time, with dignity, using what they already have, they won’t go back.

We don’t believe shared expenses are a trend. We believe they’re a financial tradition, one that’s only growing. And we believe that whoever builds the rails for that tradition becomes not just relevant, but indispensable.