Buenos Aires-based payments infrastructure startup Geopagos has raised $35 million in a round led by Riverwood Capital.
The financing marks the company’s first institutional funding. Founded in 2013, Argentina started as a A white label infrastructure software provider, it aims to empower businesses to start financial services.
Today, Geopagos is present in 15 Latin American countries and says it facilitates more than 150 million transactions with an annual turnover of $5 billion.
It promises to help companies looking to create and/or expand a payment acceptance business with “unparalleled time to market” and integrate all functions with a white label approach – from accepting all payment methods to visualization. All transactions regardless of the payment method used to collect.
In short, Geopagos feels it is well-positioned to serve as a software enabler that can restructure incumbents like big banks and enable startups like fintechs.
Indeed, Customers It includes large financial institutions, fintechs, retailers and software companies, among others. These are just a few of our customers. Santander, BBVA, Itaú Fiserv, BAC Credomatic, Niubiz and Chile’s Banco Estado.
Simply put, as a fintech infrastructure provider, Geopagos helps its customers acquire and pay card payments for thousands of customers. It charges software-as-a-service based on usage, which the company says “allows for complete customization.”
“If they win, we win,” he said. Sebastian Nunez Castro, CEO and founder of Geopagos
In addition to its white-label offerings, Geopagos offers its own set of open APIs so customers can create and manage their own user experiences if they choose. The company has several software offerings, including tapping with the phone Núñez CastroIt’s seeing great demand regionally.”
There’s no question that Latin America is a large, entrenched card market—estimated at 28% and 63% in the U.S. This creates a huge opportunity for payment infrastructure providers like Geopagos.
The pandemic has accelerated the use of digital payment solutions worldwide, but especially in Latin America; Núñez Castro. Also, the concept of having a market with more than one buyer in general has opened up the opportunity for new actors to emerge in the financial ecosystem, creating greater competition and ultimately leading to better and more innovative solutions.
“In this environment, merchants can now significantly increase their ability to accept payments, because system costs are reduced and they have access to new and better products, all of which creates greater financial inclusion,” TechCrunch said. “All markets in Latin America are moving to a more open model, but each country is at a different stage of adoption. We continue to see progress in this area with those adopting the open model.”
The concept of Geopagos was actually born in 2012 On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, when one of the founders walked into an Apple Store and discovered that he could pay for his purchases with his card with a small device.
He returned to Argentina and explained his thoughts to him A few of his colleagues, who were also mentors and co-founders. The following year, Geopagos was born with the goal of making payments easy and accessible across Latin America. Núñez Castro.
Installed to date, Geopagos says it is a profitable business. Consolidated revenue at 75% CAGR or compounded annual growth rate over the last three years.
Before co-founding Geopagos, Núñez Castro He spent over 14 years as General Manager of Amex GNS, LatAm division, including leading the card business into new markets in Latin America.
Endeavor Catalyst participated in the financing. The company plans to use the new funds to continue building its own tEcological infrastructure And it has expanded into other regions, such as Brazil, where it recently launched, and into other countries. In the year It is on a mission to triple the number of merchant transactions it facilitates by 2024.
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Geopagos has about 350 employees, mostly in IT/technical roles, he said Núñez Castro, and it hired more than 100 people last year alone.
Francisco Alvarez DeMalde, founder and managing partner of Riverwood Capital, noted that his firm has been focusing on fintech infrastructure companies for years behind the technology adoption trends it sees in fintech globally. .
Latin America, in particular, has made significant inroads in historical payment card adoption. This is partly solved by the emergence of neobanks in the card-issuing/banking sector – with significant funding over the past two years – but requires greater innovation on the card acceptance side. ” he wrote in an email.
Geopagos, in Riverwood’s view, encourages such innovation – in turn, helping its clients “drive digital inclusion in payments across the region.”
“For the past 14+ years in Latin America as global growth investors and active technology investors, we have participated in and evaluated dozens of opportunities in this space,” added Alvarez-DeMalde. “This investment theme of ‘access as a service’ or ’embedded access’ is a rapidly growing area of disruption, and Geopagos’ team, platform, business model and regional scale were unique compared to smaller competitors.
