THIS WEEK’S FUNDING NEWS OVERVIEW
👀 Are you interested in funding news from the FinTech space?
💡 Read all about it in my weekly overview article and get the latest funding news from the global FinTech space in your inbox every week.
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Bit2Me, the largest Spanish crypto exchange, acquired a majority stake in the Peruvian peer Fluyez.
The purchase of the 85% stake was for more than 1 million euros (US$1.022 million), Bit2Me Chief Operating Officer Andrei Manuel told CoinDesk.
👉Read the full Coindesk article here.
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📰 ARTICLE
The number of new 🦄 unicorn births slowed in Q2’22, although the pace was still greater than any quarter prior to 2021.
👉Read the full article, with more stats and figures here.
👨💻 BLOG
The opportunity for blockchain to disrupt LatAm fintech.
Why? Because it was never designed to service the vast majority. Blockchain has the power to bring financial freedom to the masses.
👉Find how Tricia Martinez, Managing Director of Techstars Payments and Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerators breaks it down in a very interesting article here.
💬 INTERVIEW
Marlene Garayzar, I Co-founded Stori: “Because I wanted to work on something with social impact.”
The first female founder of a "unicorn" in Mexico tells about how she got into the fintech world, the importance she gives to profitability, what sets them apart from the competition, and more.
👉Read the full interview article here.
🧐 ANALYSIS
Chile's startup ecosystem is varied with a diverse group of startups from different industries.
👉 Check out the entire list in Latam FinTech Hub's article written by Nicolás Rueda here.
💡INSIGHTS
BNPL's ultimate goal remains to be consumer-focused and beneficial no matter where it is adapted.
👉Read the full WhiteSight article by Sanjeev Kumar and Kshitija Kaur here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
☕️ REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️LATAM and EMEA are the regions where most cryptocurrency payments were transacted 50% of participants expect crypto to cause a significant impact on the future financial system 74% would be happy to transact with businesses that accept bitcoin. Link here.
⭐️ Mexico’s Credijusto (Now Covalto), Argentina’s Ualá and Brazilian Creditas acquired banking licenses as a way to raise funds. Link here.
⭐️Clave launches its application offering personal loans, a prepaid Mastercard, payments, transfers, and an enhanced blockchain portal with a token-based loyalty rewards program. Link here.
⭐️ US crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, has expressed an interest in opening markets in Latin America while advocating for more regulation for cryptocurrencies, considering that such a move could provide “more institutional confidence in the sector” despite the recent price slump. Link here.
⭐️Mono aims to be ‘first-bankingless bank’ for Latin America’s small businesses. Link here.
BRAZIL
BEE4 plans to launch the first local marketplace of tokenized stocks in the next few weeks, BEE4 CEO Patricia Stille told CoinDesk. The company plans to replicate the structure of a stock exchange and will allow Brazilian companies with annual revenue between $1.8 million and $55 million to make public offerings of up to $19 million. Link here.
Nubank has just announced Pix no Crédito, a feature that will give its customers greater freedom. According to fintech, when using the new Pix modality, the user will consume the limit of their credit card and the money will only be withdrawn from the account after the invoice is due. Link here.
ARGENTINA
Blockchain.com is deactivating Argentina’s platform SeSocio -- eight months after acquiring it -- and laying people off. “As a consequence of the acquisition of certain assets of the SeSocio Group by Blockchain.com, the SeSocio.com platform is being deactivated,” SeSocio posted on its website. Link here.
COLOMBIA
The Financial Superintendence of Colombia presented a project that seeks to bring clarity to how links between banks and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) will be handled in the future. The document defines certain key concepts and determines a set of prerequisites that banks need to verify before accepting virtual asset service providers as customers. Link here.
MEXICO
Arrenda is offering digital financial services to the real estate market of Latin America and closed on $26.5 million in a pre-seed round of equity and debt. The funding round was a mix of $1.5 million in equity and $25 million in debt financing. Link here.
Bitso's $2 billion rise shows the power of crypto innovation in Latin America. After Bitso secured seven funding rounds totaling $314 million by mid-2021, its valuation topped $2 billion, cementing the company as Latin America's first crypto unicorn, startup-speak for passing the $1 billion valuation mark. Link here.
Bitso has partnered with Utel, the leading online university in Latin America with more than 115,000 students and graduates across more than 60 countries. Link here.
Mercado Bitcoin will start operating in Mexico in the second half of the year via acquisition. With its arrival in Mexico, Mercado Bitcoin plans to compete in the main market of its largest Latin American peer, Bitso, which started operations in Brazil last year. Link here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.