Fintoc's API lets online businesses accept instant payments coming directly from the customer's bank account. This method, known as A2A, offers an alternative to credit card transactions. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

With Syscap, customers can register their private lines of credit and perform communication, monitoring and reporting functions all in one place.  ..read more

Nine months after announcing its seed round, mattilda, a Mexico City–based company providing collections management and payment processing for private schools, is back with a $19 million Series A investment. In the follow-on round, GSV Ventures is leading the new capital infusion this time and is joined by FinTech Collective, which led the seed, and Dila Capital. The company has now raised a total of $39 million. Founders José Agote, Jesus Lanza, Juan Pablo Bravo, Adrián Garza and Ileana Gómez started mattilda in 2022 after previously working together at Lottus Education. They designed the com ..read more

Tesla plans to build a new factory in Monterrey, Mexico, the country’s president said Tuesday, confirming speculation that the automaker would set up shop there. Notably, Tesla has agreed to use recycled water, addressing a major environmental concern in northern Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said. Tesla will share more information about the new factory during its investor day event scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, said López Obrador, who is also known as AMLO. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is expected to present the long-awaited and often teased Master Plan 3 during the company’s ..read more

Getting a credit card is something most Americans take for granted. In countries such as Mexico, it’s a much more difficult and less common endeavor. In fact, less than 20% of the population has access to a form of credit, with just an estimated 10% having credit cards. In recent years, a number of startups have emerged to offer underserved Mexicans more options in an effort to boost inclusion in the country. One such startup is Vexi. former Citi exec Rojo Blasquez started the company in 2018 and was later joined by Gabriela Estrada (who also spent more than 9 years at Citi), Cinthia Merlos, S ..read more

Growing up in Mexico City, Pamela Valdes says she was a bullied child who was inspired by stories her parents told of other bullied individuals, such as Bill Gates, who went on to be very successful. “Those stories my parents told me in a way created my reality,” she said. Valdes recognized that her upbringing was more privileged than some others in Mexico and throughout Latin America, people who — in her words — heard stories about the drug cartels in their towns. Those drug lords were often the most successful people they knew of, and to Valdes, that was not okay. So while in college, she ca ..read more

Minu, a Mexico-based employee wellness company, grabbed $30 million in new funding as it continues building out its gamified and rewards features, including saving or completing financial education courses, while improving retention for employers. Company co-founder and CEO Nima Pourshasb told TechCrunch that 80% of Mexicans live paycheck to paycheck with no savings, while one-third often need to take out loans to cover basic, recurring expenses. Minu’s financial and employee wellness apps Image Credits: Minu “The pandemic was a huge part of the more humanistic approach of taking care of emp ..read more

Anna Raptis, founder and CEO at Mexico-based venture capital firm Amplifica Capital, was always someone who’s been “interested in facilitating economic development.” Born in Australia, she followed that lead, holding positions with the United Nations and the World Bank, spending two decades working in the energy sector. That’s what ultimately brought her to Mexico: a focus on providing access to clean, safe and reliable energy as a way to help the country develop and improve people’s lives. Her background in investing in building and developing investment opportunities, along with a notion to ..read more

There are some 40 million Mexicans who are excluded from certain financial products due to banks not thinking it is a segment worth going after, but Filiberto Castro does. The former banking executive worked at banks including Citi and Scotiabank for nearly a decade before moving into the fintech space to be chief of growth at Konfio. That’s where Castro said he saw how well technology could help people access financial services that were previously out of reach. He met his co-founders David Hernandez and Amran Frey at Konfio, and, along with Israel Garcia, started Aviva, a Mexico-based fintec ..read more

Over a third of food ends up wasted across the globe, with 6% of that occurring in the Latin America and Caribbean regions. Among that waste, the majority of it, around 70%, occurs prior to the consumer stage. This is where Perfekto believes its subscription box of imperfect food can help. Launched in 2021, the Mexico-based company works with over 70 producers to “rescue” food and delivers it to consumers. Subscribers used to get a “surprise box,” but can now personalize their box and choose how much of each type of produce they want. On the backend, the company developed software that automat ..read more