Cyber is eating itself.

When you buy a TV in 12 installments during Cyber, it's entirely possible the retailer makes zero pesos on that TV.

And even so, for them, that sale can be one of the best deals of the year.

Because it didn't sell you a TV. It originated a loan at a rate around 38% a year. The TV was the bait. The loan is the product.

Every June at Yáneken we have the same discussion: do we go in or not?

Cyber is eating itself

Let's start with the numbers, because there are two and you're almost always shown one. CyberDay 2026 closed at US$531 million. A record, everyone said. The one that made no headline: transactions fell 4% versus last year. Fewer people bought. Sales rise on ticket and inflation, not because more people show up.

And customer behavior explains it. According to BCG, which surveyed 10,000 people across 10 countries, 77% of consumers admit they delay purchases during the year to wait for events like Black Friday. We trained them to wait. You can see it here: the most intense hour of CyberDay was the last one, right before it closed. People hold out until the final minute because they know the discount is coming.

On top of that, trust is cracking: only half of Chileans believe the discounts are real, and at last year's Cyber an independent monitor flagged more than 142,000 products with inflated prices before the event.

They aren't stores. They're banks with a storefront

The four that dominate Chilean Cyber share something that never shows up in an ad: retail isn't where they make their money.

In 2024, nearly 60% of Ripley group profit came from the bank, not the stores, which ran a 3.8% margin. Around 60% of Falabella store sales are paid with its own card. Cencosud realized before anyone that the bank was the prize and sold half of it to Scotiabank. Mercado Libre already has more than 40% of revenue in fintech, with a credit portfolio over US$7.8 billion.

This model isn't new, and it isn't Chilean. In the US, Sears once made 60% of its profit from its credit card. How did that end? It sold the card to Citibank in 2003, and went bankrupt in 2018. There the model got regulated, retailers sold their cards to banks, and today it's a small, retreating business. Here it's exactly the opposite: credit is still the core, and global banks are buying in to get a piece — Scotiabank bought half of Cencosud's card, not the other way around.

Let me be clear: it's a brilliant model, and perfectly legitimate. If I had a bank behind my stores, I'd play the same way. I tell it so you understand the game you're actually in.

The discount is loan origination

Put the two pieces together. For these players, Cyber isn't a product-selling event. It's loan origination dressed up as a clearance. Selling at zero margin in 12 installments isn't a loss: it's capturing a customer and opening a line that yields 38% a year. The discount is what it cost them to acquire that loan. That's why they can sell below cost without breaking a sweat: they aren't selling merchandise, they're originating debt.

I operate 158 stores and 15 brands. I live on selling a product well, not on financing it — and that difference changes everything. The specialist that enters Cyber to match those prices lowers its only real margin, with no installment to recover it later. It matches the bait without owning the hook. It's one more compression — and the only one we inflict on ourselves.

The price your customer will no longer pay

Every Cyber teaches the customer what price they should pay. Between 30% and 50% of promotional sales aren't incremental, they're future sales pulled forward. For the big player with a bank it doesn't matter: it recovers through credit. For whoever lives on margin, every discount retrains the customer to wait for the next one. I include myself: I've done it, and I'm still fighting this one internally.

So how do we specialists compete?

Not by matching the price. That fight is played on a line of the balance sheet that isn't ours, and we already lost it there.

You compete with an honest price all year, until the customer stops waiting for Cyber to come see you. It's what I admire about Costco: charging less margin than you could, always, until your price stops being a question. We saw it this very week: in the middle of Cyber, Bamers' most iconic product grew 44% selling at regular price.

Then there's everything a 38% installment can't buy: the advice, the right size, the after-sale that actually resolves, the feeling of walking into a place that knows what it's doing. I said it once and I'll say it again: the margin no bank can copy is in the service.

And in the end, you win by being the best at something. A real specialist, who knows their category with a depth that the one who sells a little of everything will never have. This Cyber proved it for us: Hoka, our most specialist brand, grew 136% with margin intact and conversion that nearly doubled — without playing the discount game. There you stop competing against a bank and compete against another store. And another store, you beat.

Next year's Cyber will break records again. And while everyone runs to match the price, the question that actually matters is a different one: what are you so good at that your customer doesn't need a discount to choose you?