REPORT
According to a survey carried out by the news portal Poder360, Brazil’s largest digital banks total 82 million accounts.
According to the report, around 3.8 million Brazilians were included in the financial system for the first time through Nubank's services.
So far, USD 11 Billion has been invested in the Brazilian startup ecosystem. Fintech leads the ranking. In November alone, more than USD 311 mi were invested in Brazilian fintechs.
👉 Read the full article with facts and figures from the Brazilian FinTech space by Walter Pereira here.
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Jorge Vargas Neto decided to launch Bhub, a Brazilian startup similar to Pilot, and today the company is announcing a $20 million Series A, just two months after closing a $4.4 million round of funding. This round was led by Monashees and Valor Capital Group, followed by QED Investors, Picus Capital, and ClocktowerVC.
The company has 51 employees, and plans to use the money to add 100 more, invest in marketing, as well as expand to Mexico in 2022.
👉 Read the full Bloomberg Línea article by Marcella McCarthy here.
💬 INTERVIEW
Credijusto, a leading Mexican small business fintech, bought Banco Finterra in June. It might be the start of a trend.
“Uber Eats came to us and said, Oh, my God, we’ve got about 200,000 restaurants in Latin America, they all need a working capital solution,” Poritz said.
“When you’re dealing with the partners, whether it’s Oracle or Microsoft, or Monsanto, having the cost of capital as a bank, having the credibility of the bank, and the technology of the fintech is a major differentiator that we’ve seen pay tremendous dividends very early on in our process.”Credijusto Co-CEO David Poritz.
👉Read more here.
📰 ARTICLE
Cristina Junqueira knew she needed to make a change.
She’d left management consultancy to get an MBA from Northwestern University and had ended up in banking, overseeing a portfolio of credit cards at Brazil’s Itau Unibanco Holding SA. She rose through the ranks for four years until 2013, when she quit -- tired of selling people products she said they didn’t actually want.
Shortly after, she met David Velez, a Colombia-born private equity executive who was trying to start a digital bank to compete with Brazil’s behemoth lenders. But he was in need of someone with inside knowledge.
“I knew the industry, and saw the perfect opportunity to prove them wrong, to build something people actually wanted,” Junqueira said in a 2019 interview.
Fast forward eight years and the 39-year-old Brazilian is on the cusp of joining an extremely small group of self-made female billionaire bankers.
👉 Read more about this inspiring story from Bloomberg here.
💳 THE MVO CARD COLLECTION
C6 Bank launched the 1st biodegradable card in Brazil, made from corn.
The launch follows the bank's series of sustainable initiatives, which include planting 25,000 trees, selling carbon credits at the C6 Store, and offsetting CO2 emissions
👉 Read more here.
👨💻 BLOG
The blog recommendation of the week belongs to Brendan McDermid of TGSL and her backstory on David Vélez, CEO and Co-Founder of Nubank.
The idea arose as a result of the multiple experiences he had had with the financial system. High and exaggerated interest rates led him to create a comfortable and safe space for clients who, like him, had been victims of unpleasant moments.
👉 Read more here.
💡INSIGHTS
Latin America goes from 2 to 34 unicorns in four years. According to João Ventura, CEO of Sling Hub, this rising number of unicorns is mainly linked to the increase in foreign capital pouring into Latin America.
Unicorns list & volume raised. Image: Sling Hub LATAM Report
While the whole Latin America innovation ecosystem has accelerated since then – total venture capital injected in the region has gone from $2.2 billion in 2017 to $13.1 billion in 2021.
👉Read more here.
🎤 PODCAST
When he was 12, David Vélez made his first investment: a cow. Bought with birthday money and savings from summer jobs, that one cow eventually became six, which were then sold and turned into his college tuition at Stanford.
David is a father of three, a marathon runner, and him and his wife Mariel recently signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.
In this episode, he shares:
How he manages his time as cofounder and CEO
The most culture-defining moments at Nubank
How to balance speed, growth and quality in the long term
And some of the curve balls that could've changed this entire story.
👉Listen to podcast #54 of Latitud’s Podcast here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
☕️ REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Mastercard commits $100M investment to accelerate digital financial services that support economic opportunity in Central America. Link here
⭐️ VentureFriends has completed the first closing of its new fund at €90 million, with an aim for a hard cap at €100 million ($112M). The VC said it intends to invest beyond Europe, in Latin America, and the Middle East. Link here.
⭐️Roughly 2,000 Mexican investors have acquired whole or fractional shares of Brazilian fintech Nubank, payment platform Flink reported in a press release. Link here.
⭐️ Feeling nostalgic? Read Nubank’s seed deck here. Also, check out “How to Build a Neobank: the Nubank Story” here. Or read on their latest IPO here.
⭐️ Viva fintech in Latin America – why the region’s neobanks are booming. here.
⭐️ fonYou announced that it has secured €7 Million in growth funding from Banco Santander’s Smart Fund. Link here.
BRAZIL
Visa is one of the investors that participated in Belvo’s $43 million Series A funding round.
Both companies recently announced a strategic partnership to develop joint solutions to drive open finance forward in Latin America.
Visa, the global leader in digital payments, has announced its investment in Belvo, the leading open finance API platform in Latin America.
“As we’ve built our product and team and grown as a company, we’re now entering a new phase where market expansion and collaboration with several strategic partners is key to providing reliable and secure capabilities at scale to our clients. That’s why we’re excited to continue working with a strategic partner and investor such as Visa, with whom we share a common long-term vision to enable not only fintech companies but also larger enterprises and financial institutions to embrace open finance models and leverage financial data in Latin America,“ said Pablo Viguera, Belvo’s co-founder and co-CEO.
👉 Read more here.
MEXICO
Dock, a leading provider of modern financial technology infrastructure in Latin America, announced the completion of its acquisition of Cacao, a card processing solutions provider in Mexico, from now on branded also as Dock.
The deal expands Dock’s regional footprint and advances its goal of becoming a primary fintech services provider across all of Latin America.
“The two companies share significant values and a core mission to enable their clients to democratize, through technology, access to the financial system for the millions of unbanked and underbanked people in Latin America,” said Antonio Soares, Chief Executive Officer of Dock.
👉Read more here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.