Descubre el futuro de las finanzas en América Latina y el Caribe

The future of finance in LatAm & the Caribbean

O futuro das finanças na América Latina e no Caribe

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Fintech Snapshot: April 2019

9 May, 2019

Katie Llanos-Small

LatAm Fintech News Snapshot

 

Latin America’s fintech startups kept up the pace of investment in April, attracting seven deals with a total disclosed amount of US$ 44.6 million in investments. That was less than the investment amount disclosed in March, but on par in terms of number of deals.

Although new investments keep flowing in, we have only seen one fintech exit so far this year – Rappi’s acquisition of Payit. Last year, we saw two celebrated fintech IPOs (PagSeguro and Stone), so it would be great to start to see a few fintech exits in the months to come – and perhaps even beat the good results from 2018.

As for the investments, Brazilian fintechs captured 95% of the investments of the month, in a total of US$ 42.8 million. Argentinian neobank Ualá received an investment from the Chinese titan Tencent, but the amount invested wasn’t disclosed.

Unsurprisingly, lending fintechs are a hot segment in the region. They keep raising more money to change how people and SMEs access credit. Factoring has been a specific interest for investors this month, with the Brazilian factoring Weel receiving the largest round of the month, US$ 30 million, and the Chilean Facturedo receiving a US$ 500,000 investment.

Last, but not least, the Mexican payment company, Conekta, received the end of last month a US$13 million follow-on investment, which I missed reporting but it’s done now.

Well, let’s jump into the relevant fintech deals and news of April, and stay tuned to the next Fintech Snapshot next month!

Special thanks to Eduardo Morelos from Startupbootcamp Fintech in Mexico and Bruno Diniz from the Fintech Committee at ABstartup in Brazil.

Main Investments

M&A

There were no fintech exits in April, let’s hope that changes in the following months!

Regulations

Partnerships:

Relevant Moves

Thiago Paiva is a partner at Liquia Digital Assets, an investment bank for the digital assets economy. He is passionate about the intersection of finance and technology.

He has 8+ years working with startups and innovation, investing in more than 60 startups through global accelerators Wayra (Telefonica’s global accelerator) and Startupbootcamp Fintech. He worked closely with more than 20 fintechs from 8 different countries for the past five years.