Geopagos, a funds infrastructure startup primarily based in Buenos Aires, has raised $35 million in a spherical led by Riverwood Capital.
The financing marks the corporate’s first ever institutional funding. Based in 2013, the Argentinian startup serves as a white label infrastructure software program supplier, with the intention of giving companies the flexibility to launch monetary companies.
At present, Geopagos has a presence in 15 Latin American international locations and says it facilitates greater than 150 million transactions with a processed quantity of $5 billion per yr.
It guarantees to assist corporations that wish to create and/or scale a fee acceptance enterprise “an unmatched time to market” and the potential of, below the white label modality, integrating all capabilities — from the acceptance of all fee strategies to the visualization of all transactions, whatever the methodology of fee that has been used to gather.
In a nutshell, Geopagos feels it’s within the splendid place of with the ability to function the software program enabler that may retrofit incumbents like giant banks and launch the enablers like fintechs.
Certainly, clients embrace giant monetary establishments, fintechs, retailers and software program corporations, amongst others. A few of these clients are Santander, BBVA , Itaú Fiserv, BAC Credomatic, Niubiz and Chile’s Banco Estado.
Put merely, as a fintech infrastructure supplier, Geopagos helps its clients purchase and facilitate card funds to their very own 1000’s of shoppers. It prices a software-as-a-service price primarily based on utilization, which the corporate says “permits for full alignment.”
“In the event that they win, we win,” mentioned Sebastián Núñez Castro, CEO and co-founder of Geopagos.
Along with its white label providing, Geopagos additionally presents its personal set of Open APIs in order that shoppers can create and handle their very own consumer expertise if they like. The corporate additionally has a number of software program choices, together with Faucet to Cellphone, which Núñez Castro mentioned “is seeing large curiosity regionally.”
There is no such thing as a query that Latin America is a big, underpenetrated card market — estimated to be at 28% versus 63% within the U.S. This spells ample alternative for funds infrastructure suppliers resembling Geopagos.
The pandemic accelerated using digital fee options globally, however particularly in Latin America, famous Núñez Castro. Additionally, basically, the idea of getting a market with a couple of acquirer opened the likelihood for brand spanking new actors to emerge within the monetary ecosystem, producing higher competitors and in the end higher, extra progressive options, he added.
“On this surroundings, retailers can now considerably improve their means to just accept funds, since system prices are lowered and so they have entry to new and higher merchandise, all of which generates higher monetary inclusion,” he advised Fintech. “In Latin America, all markets are transferring towards a extra open buying mannequin, however every particular person nation is at various ranges of adoption. We proceed to see progress on this space with people who embrace the open buying mannequin creating a greater, extra accessible surroundings for retailers and purchasers alike.”
The idea of Geopagos was really born in 2012 on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, when certainly one of its founders went into the Apple Retailer and discovered that he might pay for the acquisition together with his card by a small machine.
He returned to Argentina and defined the concept to a couple of his colleagues, who additionally have been fascinated and have become his co-founders. The next yr, Geopagos was born with the aim of constructing funds acceptance simpler and extra accessible by Latin America, in line with Núñez Castro.
Bootstrapped till as we speak, he says Geopagos is a worthwhile enterprise that has grown revenues at a couple of 75% CAGR, or compounded annual progress price, during the last three years.
Previous to serving to co-found Geopagos, Núñez Castro spent over 14 years as VP and basic supervisor of Amex´s GNS, LatAm division, the place he managed the cardboard enterprise operation in Latin America, together with penetration into new markets.
Endeavor Catalyst additionally participated within the financing. The corporate plans to make use of its new funding to proceed to construct out its expertise infrastructure and broaden to, and in, different international locations within the area, resembling Brazil, the place it lately launched. It’s on a mission to triple the variety of service provider transactions it helps facilitate by 2024.
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Geopagos has about 350 workers, principally in IT/technical roles, in line with Núñez Castro, and employed over 100 folks within the final yr alone.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, co-founder and managing accomplice of Riverwood Capital, famous that his agency has for years been targeted on growing relationships with, and investing, within the fintech infrastructure corporations which might be behind the continued expertise adoption developments it sees in fintech globally.
“Specifically, Latin America traditionally has been considerably under-penetrated on fee card adoption. That is an endemic subject that’s partially solved by the emergence of the neobanks on the cardboard issuing/banking aspect of the equation – with document quantities of funding during the last couple of years – however it additionally requires substantial innovation on the cardboard acceptance aspect,” he wrote by way of e-mail.
Geopagos, in Riverwood’s view, powers such innovation — in flip, serving to its shoppers “drive digital inclusion in funds all throughout the area.”
“As international progress traders and lively tech traders in Latin America for the previous 14+ years, we have interaction and consider dozens of alternatives on this area,” Alvarez-Demalde added. “This funding theme round ‘Buying as a Service’ or ‘Embedded Buying’ is a quickly growing space of disruption, and the Geopagos staff, platform, enterprise mannequin, and regional scale have been distinctive relative to smaller opponents.”