Latam fintech associations made a significant stride last week by publishing a document proposing joint regulations for open finance.
Brazilian Nubank reached 79.1 million customers in Latin America by early April. That is up almost 20 million compared to a year ago.
Creditas aims to reach breakeven in 2023. It has reduced losses for five straight quarters and is repricing the portfolio with higher rates.
WhatsApp launches payments in Brazil and is unceremoniously shut down by the central bank a week later, MasterCard buys Finicity to protect itself against Visa’s recent acquisition of Plaid, Checkout.com continues its largely silent meteoric rise in payments, Softbank-backed and DAX 30 index component Wirecard “loses" $2 billion from its balance sheet and files for insolvency, Upgrade raises $40 million at a $1 billion valuation to extend its personal credit offering.
This is the first acquisition in the history of the Open Finance platform, which was created in 2019 by Pablo Viguera and Oriol Tintoré.
For Raízen, the acquisition of Payly represents the first step in developing this payments unit — and a new source of revenue.
PicPay stated that, before reaching the market, the solution went through tests for eight months with 10,000 company and partner employees.
Creditas, a provider of online secured loans in Brazil, has closed a $19 million funding round which included investment from World Bank member, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Naspers Fintech, Redpoint Eventures, Kaszek Ventures, Quona Capital and QED Investors; the financing marks the first investment in fintech from IFC, a global leader in emerging market private sector investments; the firm plans to utilize the new capital for new distribution channels, technology innovation, platform growth and market positioning; additionally the firm also plans to reduce its minimum interest rate from 2.15% to 1.99% per month, which is compared to the average consumer lending rate in Brazil of 7.20%. Source
Fintech innovation agenda in Brazil could prevail in the upcoming years, even as recent elections herald change at the country's top office.
As of April, the Brazilian economy reached the ninth spot as the country with the highest number of unicorn firms.