👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Brazil's central bank announced tougher rules for fintechs, saying that payment institutions will be subject to regulations based on their size and complexity and raising standards for required capital.
The move is expected to affect companies such as credit card issuer Nubank (NU.N), payment company PagBank PagSeguro (PAGS.N), financial technology solutions firm StoneCo (STNE.O) and digital wallet PicPay.
The calculation of regulatory capital will disregard assets that have little or no value for payment institutions' functioning, said the central bank, noting that this will ensure companies have a greater capacity to absorb unexpected losses.
👉 Read the full article here
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📰 ARTICLE
Not surprisingly, companies from the region’s two largest economies—Brazil and Mexico—are well represented on this year’s list of Latin America’s most innovative companies. But they’re bumping up against businesses based in emerging startup hubs like Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Lima.
In 2021, Latin American startups raised $14.8 billion across nearly 800 deals, according to PitchBook Data, making this the fastest-growing region in the world for venture funding.
👉 Check out the full article/list here
💬 INTERVIEW
The Fintech Times and Richie Santosdiaz speaks with Ángel Sierra from FinteChile and Fintech Iberoamerica.
Ángel Sierra is a Fintech entrepreneur and the cofounder and president of both FintechChile -Chilean Fintech Association as well as the cofounder and president of Fintech Iberoamerica – Iberoamerican Fintech Alliance. He is also the cofounder of Colombia Fintech – Colombian Fintech Association. Ángel studied industrial engineer at Javeriana University in Colombia. He also has an MBA at Georg Simon Ohm, Germany + Master Corporate Finance, CESA, Colombia.
👉 Full interview here
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
☕️ REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Cuentas Inc. has integrated Western Union's domestic and international money transfer capabilities into the Cuentas mobile banking app. Link here
⭐️ PayRetailers is an official sponsor of CONMEBOL South America and the Superliga Sudamericana de Rugby 2022. Link here
⭐️Brazilian Fintech Kamino has raised US$ 6.1M in a pre-seed round to help Latin American startups. Link here.
⭐️ Aplazo, the first omnichannel buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform in Mexico, announced that it has partnered with Mastercard to launch Latin America's first-of-its-kind virtual card solution. Link here.
BRAZIL
Brazil's central bank (Banco Central do Brasil) has picked project proposals from nine firms - including Banco Santander, Visa and Bitcoin Market - for a challenge investigating the development of a CBDC.
The bank has now whittled down 47 proposals from eight countries to nine submissions from DeFi outfit Aave, Banco Santander Brasil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks, Giesecke + Devrient, Itaú Unibanco, Bitcoin Market, Tecban, Vert, and Visa do Brasil. The proposals cover areas such as delivery versus payment, payment versus payment, IoT, DeFi applications, and payment solutions when both payer and receiver are without internet access.Link here
A new female-led bill-splitting app, Noh, is launching in Brazil in mid-March, with backing from top fintech investors, including ex-Monzo Chief Executive Officer Tom Blomfield. Link here
Paysend announced the expansion of its money-transfer services to Brazil with Pix, the instant payment platform created and managed by the Central Bank of Brazil. Link here
Fintech a55, which offers credit to startups and companies in the so-called new economy, announced its first operation using decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol. Link here
COLOMBIA
Yuno, a two-month-old Colombian payments startup which has raised $10 million in a seed round of funding. Link here
Colombian fintech FinZi is set to launch with a mission to teach financial literacy to the country’s youth. Link here
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.