LatAm-based Plaid rival Belvo gets backing from Twitter and Wise execs in $43m Series A

The round comes from the likes of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s fund Future Positive, Kibo Ventures, FJL Labs and angel investors including Wise CTO Harsh Sinha and Sebastián Mejía — cofounder and president of Colombian delivery startup Rappi.

Existing investors Kaszek, MAYA Capital, VentureFriends and David Vélez — founder and chief executive, Nubank — also participated.

The round will fuel the firm’s expansion to new countries, double Belvo’s financial institution connectivity and help it launch interbank payment services in Mexico and Brazil. The startup will also double its workforce by the end of the year and will hire more than 50 engineers in Mexico and Brazil in the coming months. It expects to double its existing financial data providers connection coverage, thus reaching over 80 integrations, by the end of the year.

The company is trying to do what Plaid does in Europe and the US but in Latin America — to cater to the unbanked population and those without traditional bank accounts.

Belvo operates as the layer of technology that connects FinTechs, such as personal finance management apps, to financial institutions’ data. The difference in LatAm is that, rather than pulling data largely from traditional bank accounts, consumers’ finances are often split between a wide range of e-wallets, gig economy app accounts and other sources.

In just one year since its launch, the company has a customer base of over 60 companies in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, processing millions of API calls each month, it claimed. Furthermore, Belvo expanded its API coverage to over 40 financial institutions, which gives companies the ability to connect to more than 90% of personal and business bank accounts in LatAm, as well as to tax authorities and gig economy platforms.

Belvo’s client portfolio includes credit providers, neobanks, wallets, online accounting and personal finance management tools like Minu, Mobills, Nelo, Tributi, Celero, askRobin, Yave, Enconta, Aplazo and Divibank.

Commenting on the firm’s growth, Future Positive founding partner Fred Blackford said, “Belvo is solving a complex and important problem by building the foundational infrastructure necessary for a new generation of financial services in Latin America. In addition to serving a fast-growing market opportunity, Belvo has the potential to make a real and enduring impact in the economies where it operates by providing broader access to better financial products and enabling inclusive economic growth. We’re excited to be supporting Pablo and Oriol as they work to lead the Open Finance movement in Latin America.”

Belvo isn’t the only startup trying to own the open finance space in LatAm. Uruguay-based Prometeo is active in nine countries, while Y Combinator-backed Fintoc is the market leader in Chile.