Readers may not be aware of fintech unicorns outside of North America, Europe and Asia, but this release, which we found in Bloomberg, is about funding for a 2016 Uruguay-based payments fintech startup named DLocal, which has apparently reached a valuation of $5 billion after a new funding round.
The company is a 360 payments technology platform designed to handle mass online payments in emerging markets across LATAM, APAC, and EMEA, according to one posting. The cross-border craze continues. One could say that companies in the competing fintech space include firms like Adyen, Payoneer, Paysafe, etc.
‘The Montevideo, Uruguay-based company also raised fresh capital from investment firms Bond, D1 Capital Partners and Tiger Global. DLocal, which processes cross-border payments, separately appointed Sumita Pandit, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker, as chief operating officer, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. DLocal’s former COO, Jacobo Singer, has been named president…..“This new investment combined with our strengthened leadership team will allow us to further focus on our customers’ success,” Chief Executive Officer Sebastián Kanovich said in a statement. Pandit will help the firm serve global merchants that are seeking to access consumers in emerging markets, Kanovich added.’
The piece does not go into use cases but a quick review of the website provides a glimpse of C2B and B2C uses in e-commerce and payouts, which in some cases could be interpreted as B2B, although mostly to contractors, but could include small suppliers.
The mass payout space has been hot given the expanding gig economy across the globe (was expanding anyway) and of course since the pandemic there has been some relatively strong growth in e-commerce, where x-border payments in local currencies can be advantageous to merchants, hence the appearance of these new generation fintechs. We’ll continue to track as more will come.
‘“Emerging markets represent some of the fastest growth opportunities in digital payments, underpinned by a rising middle class and the rapid growth of e-commerce,” Deepak Ravichandran, general partner at Alkeon Capital, said in an emailed statement. “DLocal’s unique platform empowers merchants with a single integrated payment solution, to reach billions of customers, accept payments, send payouts, and settle funds globally,” he added.’
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
