Argentinian fintech infrastructure startup Geopagos leaves the boot straps behind with $35M funding spherical – TechCrunch

Geopagos, a payments infrastructure startup based mostly 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 goal of giving companies the flexibility to launch monetary providers.

At this time, 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 12 months.

It guarantees to assist firms that wish to create and/or scale a fee acceptance enterprise “an unmatched time to market” and the potential for, beneath the white label modality, integrating all features — 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 excellent place of having the ability to function the software program enabler that may retrofit incumbents like massive banks and launch the enablers like fintechs. 

Certainly, customers embody massive monetary establishments, fintechs, retailers and software program firms, amongst others. A few of these prospects are Santander, BBVA , Itaú  Fiserv, BAC Credomatic, Niubiz and Chile’s Banco Estado.

Put merely, as a fintech infrastructure supplier, Geopagos helps its prospects purchase and facilitate card funds to their very own hundreds of purchasers. It expenses a software-as-a-service charge based mostly 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 provides its personal set of Open APIs in order that purchasers 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 Telephone, which Núñez Castro mentioned “is seeing large curiosity regionally.”

There isn’t 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 corresponding to Geopagos.

The pandemic accelerated the usage of digital fee options globally, however particularly in Latin America, famous Núñez Castro. Additionally, typically, the idea of getting a market with multiple acquirer opened the likelihood for brand spanking new actors to emerge within the monetary ecosystem, producing better competitors and finally higher, extra modern options, he added.

“On this surroundings, retailers can now considerably enhance their capacity to just accept funds, since system prices are lowered they usually have entry to new and higher merchandise, all of which generates better monetary inclusion,” he informed TechCrunch. “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 those 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 came upon that he might pay for the acquisition along with his card by means of a small gadget. 

He returned to Argentina and defined the thought to a couple of of his colleagues, who additionally have been fascinated and have become his co-founders. The next 12 months, Geopagos was born with the aim of creating funds acceptance simpler and extra accessible by means of Latin America, in accordance with Núñez Castro.

Bootstrapped till right now, he says Geopagos is a worthwhile enterprise that has grown revenues at a couple of 75% CAGR, or compounded annual development charge, over the past three years.  

Previous to serving to co-found Geopagos, Núñez Castro spent over 14 years as VP and common 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 technology infrastructure and increase to, and in, different international locations within the area, corresponding to Brazil, the place it not too long ago launched. It’s on a mission to triple the variety of service provider transactions it helps facilitate by 2024.

My weekly fintech e-newsletter, The Interchange, launched on Could 1! Join here to get it in your inbox.

Geopagos has about 350 staff, principally in IT/technical roles, in accordance with Núñez Castro, and employed over 100 individuals within the final 12 months alone.

Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, co-founder and managing associate of Riverwood Capital, famous that his agency has for years been centered on creating relationships with, and investing, within the fintech infrastructure firms which are behind the continued know-how adoption tendencies 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 over the past couple of years – nevertheless it additionally requires substantial innovation on the cardboard acceptance aspect,” he wrote through e mail.

Geopagos, in Riverwood’s view, powers such innovation — in flip, serving to its purchasers “drive digital inclusion in funds all throughout the area.”

“As international development traders and lively tech traders in Latin America for the previous 14+ years, we have interaction and consider dozens of alternatives on this house,” Alvarez-Demalde added. “This funding theme round ‘Buying as a Service’ or ‘Embedded Buying’ is a quickly creating space of disruption, and the Geopagos workforce, platform, enterprise mannequin, and regional scale have been distinctive relative to smaller opponents.”