SoftBank-backed Argentine fintech valued at almost $2.5bn

Aug 15, 2021 | News

Ualá has established its place in the ranks of the unicorns of Latin America, despite the troubled economy in the country, while groups, including SoftBank and Tencent, use a regional shift from cash to digital services.

The company secured $350m in private funding during its latest round of investment – the largest of its kind secured by an Argentine company – and helped it reach a $2.45bn valuation, he said Friday. . The group was worth $900m last year.

Ualá’s fundraiser was led by its existing supporters: SoftBank’s Innovation Fund, the arm of the Japanese conglomerate focusing on Latin America, and China’s Tencent.

Other existing investors, including funds managed by Soros and Goldman Sachs, also joined, as did smaller U.S. investment groups and WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann.

Ualá offers debit cards and a digital payment service to a global Mastercard, allowing customers to pay bills, invest and take out loans or insurance directly from the app.

It is currently not allowed to hold deposits, but has purchased a banking license in Argentina for which it is awaiting approval.

Its Series D fundraiser is the latest in a wave of foreign investment in Latin American fintechs, with interest in the sector growing even before the pandemic use of digital banking and cashless services to rise.

Private investment in the sector during the first half of 2021 was $7.6bn, far exceeding the $3bn raised for the whole of 2020, according to data compiled by the Latam Fintech Hub website.

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Recent acquisitions have led to JPMorgan’s acquisition of a 40% in Brazilian C6 Bank while 92 transactions were announced in the three months to June 30, more than twice as many in the same period a year earlier.

Launched in Mexico last year, Ualá aims to grow the rest of Spanish-speaking Latin America, with permission to work in Colombia.

It has issued 3.5 million cards in the four years since its launch, with more than 1 million users investing in its mutual fund.

“Ualá has already shown impressive traction in Argentina and Mexico, and we believe they have a significant opportunity to expand into the wider Latin America,” said David Silverman, an investor at D1 Capital Partners in New York, who his first investment in the company.

Ualá’s success follows in the footsteps of Uruguay’s dLocal, a cross-border payment platform recently valued at $5bn, and the Argentine e-commerce giant Free Market, which has its own MercadoPago payment service following the blueprint of Alibaba’s Alipay.

‘We admire how MercadoLibre started a very successful market and built fintech around it [but] our strategy is different, ”says Pierpaolo Barbieri, founder and CEO of Ualá. “We are focused on creating a deep fintech ecosystem because we believe in providing more innovative, transparent and inclusive financial products for all Mexicans and Argentines.”

Source: AFE Games

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