Wallets lift financial inclusion to a record | TWIF Latin America

🇧🇷 Inter&Co, the Brazilian digital bank, agreed to buy the remaining 39.75% of Inter Seguros from Wiz for about $82 million, taking full ownership of its insurance arm. The deal still needs approval from the Banco Central do Brasil and Brazil’s antitrust regulator.

🇦🇷 Unico, the Brazilian digital identity and fraud-prevention company, acquired Valida, the Argentine biometric verification platform used by 50% of the country’s banking market. The deal marks Unico’s entry into Argentina and is its fourth international acquisition since 2024.

🇧🇷 Nubank launched Nu Smart Invest, a free AI tool that scores customers’ investment portfolios out of 1,000 points and suggests adjustments, without executing any trades automatically.

🇲🇽 Mastercard launched a contactless acceleration program in Mexico, giving acquirers and large merchants investment and technical support. More than 90% of Mexican users already carry a contactless card or wallet, yet only 4 in 10 eligible supermarket and pharmacy transactions use it.

🌎 Yuno, the AI-native payments orchestration platform, partnered with stablecoin platform Cyclops. Its merchants, banks and wallets now get access to more than 30 stablecoin infrastructure providers through a single integration.

🇦🇷 Clara, the Mexican corporate expense-management platform, launched commercial operations in Argentina. It serves more than 40,000 companies across the region.

🇧🇷 Asaas, the Brazilian SME payments fintech, launched Asaas Smart, its first physical card terminal, built with Adyen. The device is aimed at its roughly 300,000 small-business clients.

🇲🇽 tapi, the Mexican payments infrastructure company, launched Autopay, which lets users set up and manage recurring direct debits from inside their bank’s app. Its first partner is toll operator PASE, which handles about 80% of Mexico’s electronic toll transactions.

🌎 Mural, a New York-based payments and compliance infrastructure company for fintechs, raised a $15 million Series A led by Tether to expand in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. It has processed $2.1 billion in payments since launching its API in 2025.

🇧🇷 Cashbanx, a Brazilian cashback startup, received an undisclosed investment from loyalty platform Clube Ben, as Cashbanx aims to grow its transaction volume 18x this year.

🇧🇷 Brazil’s federal government issued new customer-service rules that, for the first time, explicitly cover banks and fintechs, including a requirement to offer human support, starting November 2. Firms get just 20 days to adapt.

🇨🇴 Kapital, the Mexican business-banking fintech valued at $2 billion, received initial approval from Colombian regulators to open a bank in the country. It still needs one final authorization before it can launch banking services there.

🌎 IDB Lab approved a $10 million investment in Cometa IV, the new fund from Mexican VC firm Cometa. The fund will back about 23 early-stage companies across Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on fintech infrastructure, SaaS and B2B.

🇧🇷 RecargaPay, the Brazilian financial platform with more than 15 million clients, appointed Xavier Ibañez as CFO, replacing Diego Escobar, who held the role for 11 years. Ibañez spent 18 years at J.P. Morgan, most recently leading fintech coverage for LatAm.

🌎 Nomada Fund, a new early-stage fund backed by ILB Media Group, launched a “Distribution for Equity” model, taking stakes in pre-seed and seed startups in exchange for promotion across more than 10 newsletters, podcasts, communities and events instead of cash.