Hola amig@s fintech,

Día de Muertos (Day of the Death) is one of Mexico’s most important celebrations. For the last decade, the parade has become a major attraction for tourists and for people living in Mexico City. Globalization has made Halloween also an important celebration across Latin America, signaling how we are connected to U.S. traditions, while keeping alive our own. 

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🩵 Until next weekend. Até a próxima!

• Lorena

🌐 TWIF Community

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📖  Read of the Week

The report “The Future of Fintech 2025”, by SVB, shows that fintech companies now require a US$4 million median revenue to raise a Series A (4× higher than four years ago), while median cash burn has fallen by 12% year-over-year as of Q2 2025, and 49% of fintech M&A deals involve VC-backed companies acquiring other fintechs. This signals stronger operational discipline and higher capital-raising thresholds. In LatAm, where fintech penetration remains low, digital payments and banking markets are under-saturated and mobile adoption is high, these global benchmarks imply that regional fintechs must scale faster, reach profitability and meet higher revenue thresholds to compete on a global stage, thereby accelerating the professionalization of the Latin American fintech ecosystem.

🎙️ Podcast of the Week

💸 Venture Financing

💸 Equity

🇧🇷 Velotax, the Brazilian company automating tax-filing, refund anticipation and payroll-deducted consumer loans via AI, raised $23 million in a Series A round led by QED Investors, with participation from Valor Capital and Picus Capital. 

🇲🇽 R2, the Mexico-based embedded lending infrastructure company serving SMEs via APIs across LatAm, received a strategic equity investment from Ant International to scale credit access to small and micro-businesses in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. The amount was not publicly disclosed.

💵 Debt 

🇧🇷 Tensec, the Brazilian cross-border financial services company, raised a $36.8 million credit line secured with the US-based Upper90 Capital Management, to expand its cross-border payments and financial infrastructure operations in LatAm. 

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

🇲🇽 Moonflow, the LatAm AI-driven accounts-receivable automation platform, acquired Kobro, the Mexican startup specialized in digital collections and reconciliation. Moonflow will leverage Kobro’s local presence to deepen its expansion in Mexico and enhance its solutions for corporate clients. No financial terms of the transaction were disclosed.

🚀 Product Launches & Partnerships

💻 Fintech

🇲🇽 Kueski, the Mexican Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform, announced a partnership with dLocal (NASDAQ: DLO), the cross-border payments platform that connects  global merchants with emerging markets. The initiative consolidates BNPL providers into a single integration managed by dLocal.

🇧🇷 Anbima, the Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association, launched a pilot to assess the use of blockchain technology in the issuance and trading of financial assets such as investment funds and bonds. 

🇨🇴 Grupo Aval introduced money transfers via WhatsApp, integrating Bre-B, the instant payment system of the Banco de la República, to enable real-time and secure transactions across its financial ecosystem.

🇲🇽 VelaFi (formerly Trubit), the stablecoin-powered financial infrastructure platform, entered the Japanese market as a co-organizer of the Stablecoin Settlement Association, an initiative led by Ikuyo Co., Ltd., aimed at advancing the use of digital settlements and promoting regulatory alignment for stablecoin adoption.

🇨🇱 Coval Servicios Financieros, the Chilean financial services company, entered the Colombian market through a strategic partnership with Klym, aiming to expand credit access for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and strengthen financial inclusion across the business ecosystem.

🇨🇴 Cobre and TerraPay partnered to provide businesses globally with seamless cross-border payments. The collaboration connects Cobre’s advanced enterprise payments platform with TerraPay’s expansive global network, enabling companies to send and receive funds across borders with faster settlement.

🇨🇴 Minka, the Colombian open banking cloud software company, announced the launch of Payments Hub, a new platform designed to enable banks and fintechs to connect seamlessly to multiple payment systems.

🇧🇷 Bemobi, the Brazizlian mobile solutions for digital payments startup, launched a Pix orchestrator as part of its Bemobi Pay platform, aiming to simplify payment method management for essential service companies. 

🇨🇴 Nequi, the digital financial services platform under Grupo Cibest, expanded its operations to El Salvador and Guatemala through partnerships with Bancoagrícola and Bam, respectively.

🏦 Financial Services & Banking 

🇲🇽 Banorte launched a new mobile application that enables its users in the United States to send remittances to Mexico for the payment of essential services, including water, electricity, and gas, expanding its cross-border financial ecosystem for migrant communities.

🇲🇽 Belvo and Banco Azteca, the Mexican bank, are collaborating to launch a digital-credit ecosystem leveraging Belvo’s open-banking APIs and Banco Azteca’s reach across 1,400 branches and 18 million customers. The partnership will enable real-time financial data aggregation, automated underwriting, and embedded lending. 

🇲🇽 Walmart de México, Invex Banco, and Mastercard, launched a new suite of co-branded prepaid and credit cards targeting underserved segments in Mexico with features like cashback, low documentation, and access to financial inclusion programs. 

📜 Policy

🇧🇷 Brazil’s Judiciary is requiring banks and fintechs to deploy advanced technologies capable of detecting suspicious activity and preventing fraud — even in cases where customers have voluntarily shared their credentials with criminals. 

🇲🇽 FEMSA has decided to postpone its banking license application for OXXO by one year, prioritizing the strengthening of its credit division and the optimization of financial data usage from its digital platform, Spin by OXXO.

🇨🇴 The Financial Superintendency of Colombia (SFC) authorized the registration of Davivienda Group S.A. as a foreign securities issuer in the National Registry of Securities and Issuers (RNVE). This move marks a key step toward its planned integration with Scotiabank Colpatria.

🇲🇽 The Trafalgar SOFIPO, backed by the CNBV, started operations as a microfinance institution aiming to provide financing to SMEs. The launch is a move under regulatory approval to broaden SME access to credit through non-bank channels. 

🇲🇽 CNBV and Banco of Mexicom, the Mexican regulatory institutions, launched a public consultation for proposed new rules governing card-networks and payment-rails in Mexico. The draft regulations cover licensing frameworks for payment networks, access for new entrants, data-sharing mandates, and pricing transparency for card transactions, signaling a regulatory shift that may reshape fintech competition, reduce barriers to entry, and expand payment-rail innovation.

🇲🇽 Klar, the Mexican neobank announced that it intends to acquire Bineo, the digital bank of Banorte, and is under analysis by the CNBV. This potential transaction would strengthen Klar’s full-banking license capabilities in Mexico and expand its digital banking services.

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📰 Other News 

🇵🇪 inDrive announced that it will evolve into a “super-app” in Peru. It is choosing Peru as a laboratory to build an integrated ecosystem combining ride-hailing, delivery, inter-city transport, cargo, and its fintech arm inDrive Money.

🇨🇱 SumUp, the European payment acquiring network, opened the possibility of applying for a banking licence in Chile, which would let it better serve clients with credit and value-added services beyond payment acceptance. It currently serves Chilean SMEs and entrepreneurs, and will launch a self-service payment kiosk ("totem") for restaurants/cafés. 

📚 Deeper Reads

AI researchers ’embodied’ an LLM into a robot

Consolidating debt with one click: the dark side of financial apps (ES)

What If We Ran Nubank’s Crypto Team

📣 LatAm fintech enthusiasts looking for a new role, check out https://jobs.thisweekinfintech.com

Made in LatAm with 🩵by 

Elena, Digital Innovation Manager at Banco Azteca

Carlos, Research Associate at El Colegio de México

Lorena, Head of Policy for Spanish-speaking LatAm at Tools for Humanity

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