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Latin-American microfinance markets have been evolving in different ways for the last forty years. Some of them have been established in the most strategic regions of the world in terms of microfinance environment and regulation, while in other countries, the regulation of the industry is not even considered as a priority. These observations, among many others, bring up a number of questions: how has microfinance been regulated in Latin America? What differentiates the legal frameworks of each country? Have some standard regulatory frameworks been defined in the region? To answer those questions, the authors will analyse how 17 Latin-American countries have regulated their microfinance markets, and they will identify four contrasted frameworks that define the legal frameworks of the surveyed countries.