Japan’s Softbank Group Corp is leading a $100 million investment round in Mexico’s financial services platform Konfio. KOnfio further said that this is the company’s fourth financing round.
Along with SoftBank, other investors in this funding round include QED Investors, Kaszek Ventures and Vostok Emerging Finance. The company was reportedly in talks with SoftBank since August this year.
This marks the latest deal, which stems from the proceeds of Softbank’s dedicated $5 billion Latin America fund that was launched in March this year. A couple of months ago, in September this year, the company had secured a credit of $100 million from Goldman Sachs Group for the said fund.
Konfio, founded in 2013 by David Arana and Francisco Padilla, provides unsecured working capital to small and midsize companies. It has earlier revealed its plan to expand into using guarantees or collateral to do bigger loans than its average of $20,000. It uses credit ratings to calculate risk and disburse loans within 24 hours, and at half the rate of a traditional bank loan.
The company is now one of the largest fintech startups in the region. It has served over 1 million clients in what is currently a $100 billion market in Mexico. Mexico’s access to credit is still significantly lower than the rest of Latin America, hence making it a highly lucrative market for companies of the likes of Konfio.
