Retail Daily: MELI pharmacy in Chile; Food retail sales during the world cup; Midway focusing on payroll loans; Household consumption intention

Research evidence excerpt

Retail Daily: MELI pharmacy in Chile; Food retail sales during the world cup; Midway focusing on payroll loans; Household consumption intention

Global Research

24 July 2026ab

Retail Daily Equities

AmericasMELI pharmacy in Chile; Food retail sales

during the world cup; Midway focusing on Retail

payroll loans; Household consumption Vinicius Strano,AnalystCFA

intention vinicius.strano@ubs.com+55-11-2767 6688

Isabella Lamas

Analyst

MercadoLibre targets to launch online pharmacy in Chile isabella.lamas@ubs.com

+55-11-2767 6836

According to Panorama Farmacêutico, MercadoLibre has submitted a proposal to

operate as a pharmacy in Chile, expanding its presence in the country, where it Lucca Biasi

already operates as a marketplace for third-party medication sales. Per the news, Analyst

lucca.biasi@ubs.com

the company aims to implement a fully online, proprietary pharmacy model, a plan

+55-11-2767 6173

that depends on changes to Chilean regulation, as current legislation does not

permit exclusively digital pharmacy operations. After evaluating the proposal,

Chile's Ministry of Health recommended that the company seek technical evaluation

from the Institute of Public Health (ISP), which noted that MELI does not yet hold

authorization to operate as a pharmaceutical retailer in the country.

Why Care? In our Deep-Dive into Brazil’s Pharma Retail, we view these

initiatives as early-stage “test-and-learn” efforts as MELI explores how to

operate in a regulated and logistics-intensive category. Importantly, although

testing 1P, management remains focused on 3P. Brazil CEO Fernando Yunes has

reiterated that MELI does not intend to scale as a 1P pharma operator, but

rather to develop a 3P marketplace model, with pharmacy chains acting as

sellers on its platform.