👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Latin American neobank Nubank has announced the launch of its proprietary online payments solution.
With NuPay, the digital banking giant allows customers to complete their e-commerce purchases with a few clicks within the firm’s app.
The firm’s new solution allows for payment with account balances or interest-free installments through the Nubank app.
According to Nubank’s product vice president Livia Chanes, NuPay aims to simplify the online shopping experience in Brazil.
“NuPay is a disruptive solution that gives millions of people access to a much safer and more practical shopping experience and expands purchasing power through the possibility of additional limits,” Chanes said in a press statement.
👉 Read the full article here.
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📰 ARTICLE
DriveWealth and SproutFi (YC S21), a social-first investment platform that8 offers securities through its affiliate Northbound Securities LLC, announced a partnership to expand affordable access to investing in the U.S. markets to everyone in Latin America.
Leveraging DriveWealth’s real-time fractional trading technology, users can invest in the U.S. markets with as little as $1, while making investing inclusive and educational through Sproutfi’s community-based mobile experience.
“In order to democratize investing throughout Latin America, we needed to partner with an experienced broker that our users could trust to hold their assets. DriveWealth does exactly that. The company’s history of performance, transparency, and dedicated support is unlike our experience with other platforms – our users can now access the U.S. markets with confidence,” said Ruben G., Co-Founder, and CEO of Sproutfi.
👉 Read the full article here.
💡INSIGHTS
Latitud, the company — which is in the business of helping other startups get off the ground and funded in Latin American — is announcing its own funding round.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and NFX co-led Latitud’s $11.5 million seed funding round, which also included participation from Endeavor, Canary, FJ Labs, Ganas Ventures and unicorn founders such as Nubank’s David Vélez, Rappi’s Sebastian Mejia, Creditas COO Ann Williams, dLocal co-founder Sergio Fogel, Creditas founder Sergio Furio, Bitso founder Daniel Vogel, Auth0 co-founder Matias Woloski and Cornershop co-founder Daniel Undurraga, among others.
Bootstrapped until now, Latitud has been focused on execution and building community — which in LatAm, a region where people often value relationships as much as checks, goes a long way. It also wanted to make its thesis even more compelling when it did go to raise, noted Gotthilf.
“There’s been a massive growth of ambitious people growing businesses in the region but the infrastructure is a bit outdated,” said Brian Requarth, who is Latitud’s CEO.
👉 Read the full TechCrunch article written by Mary Ann Azevedo here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
☕️ REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Payments giant Adyen is moving into providing banking services. Link here.
⭐️ a16z, NFX back Latitud’s effort to become ‘the operating system for every venture-backed company in LatAm’. Link here.
⭐️ Revolut has hired Glauber Mota as its new Brazil CEO for its ongoing push into Latin America. Link here.
⭐️ Nequi has announced its plans for expansion after having parted ways with Bancolombia, the bank that gave it its origin. Link here.
BRAZIL
Revolut has hired Glauber Mota as its new Brazil CEO for its ongoing push into Latin America, part of its ambitions to a leading global financial ‘super app’.
Mota joins Revolut from BTG Pactual, a listed Brazillian financial services conglomerate, where he was partner and COO of its digital retail unit.
In the Brazilian market, one of the hottest fintech growth markets at present, users will be able to open accounts and get access to foreign exchange and low-cost money transfers and payments initially.
In the time it will add investment, crypto, and insurance products. Revolut is currently offering a waitlist in Brazil ahead of a full launch.
“Brazilians are one of the most active digital populations worldwide, and the number of unique users of mobile devices in Brazil is already over 112 million people, with a rising number of people using digital banks as their primary account," said Mota.
👉Read the full Altfi article here.
MEXICO
Fintech Stori, whose credit cards target the overwhelming majority of Mexicans who lack any kind of formal credit, said on Tuesday it plans to invest $175 million to grow in 2022 as it grows its customer portfolio and hires more people.
The startup issues its cards to "underbanked" Mexicans like 33-year-old Nadir Redon Texta, who makes a living reselling clothes and stainless steel accessories in the town of Zihuatanejo and could not get a credit line in any bank.
"I earn from 4,000 to 8,000 pesos every month, since my business is informal and seasonal," he said in a phone interview. "I started with a 1,500 Mexican pesos ($75.18) monthly credit with Stori and I've always been able to pay it."
👉 Read the full Reuters article here.
COLOMBIA
Nequi, a fintech neobank which allowed Colombian citizens to test all-digital financial services, has announced its plans for expansion after having parted ways with Bancolombia, the bank that gave it its origin. These plans include an entry into the cryptocurrency world while complying with the limits set by current regulators.
More and more neobanks are considering including cryptocurrencies in their service offerings. This is the case with Nequi, a fintech platform that is reportedly considering making an entrance into the crypto sector in Colombia.
The platform, which has more than ten million customers, is now in talks to become an independent company and platform, separating itself from Bancolombia.
The announcement was made by Nequi’s CEO, Cipriano Lopez, in a webinar with Credicorp Capital, a holding company that also lends financial services to its customers. Lopez explained that Nequi wants to make a direct entry into the market, with compliance being one of its first concerns.
👉 Read the full News Bitcoin article here.
URUGUAY
Cross-border payments platform dLocal is one of the most notable Latin American startups in recent history — the company became Uruguay’s first unicorn in 2020 and went public on the Nasdaq in 2021. DLocal’s founders had first launched AstroPay, another digital payments platform that now has over five million users.
Now, dLocal and AstroPay co-founder Sergio Fogel has teamed up with AstroPay’s former head of product, Gonzalo Strauss, to launch another fintech out of Montevideo, Uruguay, called Datanomik.
Datanomik’s goal is to connect financial institutions across LatAm through its B2B open finance API, which gathers a company’s banking information on one platform, Strauss told TechCrunch.
Strauss dreamed up the idea for Datanomik as a solution to some of the pain points he had faced working at AstroPay processing payments in emerging markets.
Cash is still the primary payment method of choice in emerging markets, which posed challenges to fintech companies like AstroPay in reconciling their payments to understand their bank account balances and cash flow, according to Strauss.
👉 Read the full TechCrunch article written by Anita Ramaswamy here
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