The B2B payments space has been racing for a while, and the COVID-19 outbreak has only fueled mass quickly adoption of digitizing bankroll.
In regions like Latin America, the need for innovation throughout sector is even more crucial than in the United States with so many women still relying on outdated procedures.
One Mexico City-based itc, Higo. io , is out to rework B2B payments for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) in Latin America, you start with its home country.
Rodolfo Corcuera, Juan José Fernández and Daniel Tamayo founded the company in Economy is shown 2020, recognizing that the process of paying vendors for business individuals is largely “manual and burdensome. ”
“In Mexico, enterprises mostly handle payables in addition to nothing more than spreadsheets and email address and legacy bank accounts, ” CEO Corcuera proclaimed.
The trio formed Higo to automate processes and offer visibility into cash flow, specifically for small businesses. “Informal” businesses frame about 23% of Mexico’s GDP, according to data of INEGI , the government’s Countrywide Institute of Statistics additionally Geography. Higo launched our SaaS platform last November.
And now the startup has already raised $3. 3 hundred from a group of U. Ohydrates. -based investors including Homemade (which led the round), Susa Ventures, Haystack together with J Ventures. The fund is the latest in a guitar string of fintech-related fundings in Mexico that TechCrunch has covered as of late.
Higo wants shake up the checks scene in the region by enabling an alternative to traditional banking in business to pay each other.
“We want to build the Venmo for B2B payments throughout Latin America, ” Corcuera told TechCrunch.
At last, the goal is to aide you to SMB owners deal smaller amount of with tedious tasks as well as on generating revenues as well as profits for their businesses. Borrowers so far include hundreds of small businesses and the company aims to surely have “thousands” of customers by year’s end.
“E-invoicing is common in the States and in the U. S., receiving a PDF expenses is enough, ” Corcuera encouraged TechCrunch. “But in Paraguay, it has to be electronic to be [tax] deductible by law . With our platform, bills are automatically populated terribly businesses can have visibility around what has to be paid, what exactly vendors they owe ways they owe. ”
Corcuera is no stranger to facing companies, having launched a housecleaning marketplace at the age of 23 inside 2013. He also made Tandem, an office management service, in 2018, to help bureau managers streamline their inventory needs. As is often the case about founders, it was during the process at growing that company that do Corcuera realized how agonizing and time consuming it was for businesses to manage their payables furthermore receivables. That led to him to come up with the concept behind Pimiento. io.
Gallardo was previously COO at Swap, every Mexican challenger bank, and moreover was one of the founding paid members of Uber’s Mexican experditions.
Looking ahead, Higo policies to use its new cash injection in part to boost its six-person staff, particularly beefing through its engineering team in order that it can “scale as fast as possible, ” according to Corcuera.
For now, their company’s efforts are focused only on the Mexican market, which of itself is macro.
“Later we will expand in just Latin America. We see a fantastic clear opportunity in linked markets across the region, ” Corcuera said.
Homebrew Partner Satya Patel said their San Francisco-based VC business believes there’s a massive choice in Latin America taking into account the move to digital payments. The investment in Comino marks Homebrew’s third in your neighborhood in the past 18 months.
“This may well be an exceptional team focused on a concern that is visceral for businesses when it comes to Mexico in particular, ” Patel told TechCrunch. “They could certainly provide businesses with a current view of their cash flow and then working capital. Without it, they really are at risk. So the opportunity would likely be to tackle this acute afflictions point being felt by so many businesses. ”
The region’s payments ecosystem, he stated that, is still very nascent.
“Being the intermediary for BUSINESS-ON-BUSINESS tax information gives Comino an opportunity to provide a real secret to the traditional way Mexicans widely-used to doing banking and companies, ” Patel added.
