Kredito announced the closing of a $6 million financing round led by Grupo Penta.
The Chilean fintech company provides lines of credit, equity loans, and prepaid cards for small and medium-sized businesses.
Other venture capital funds, such as Genesis Venture and Amarena, also participated in this round.
Kredito was founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Sebastián Robles and Lucas Burns, who sought to create a solution that would provide “fair interest rate” loans to startups and small-cap companies that could not access credit in traditional banking.
The technology of the fintech makes this possible through proprietary algorithms and alternative data, which assess the credit risk of startups more inclusively than traditional banks – and subsequently speed up the process of obtaining a loan.
Related:
In March of this year, Kredito launched a digital account and a prepaid credit card to increase the portfolio of products it offers to its users. This made it the first Chilean fintech to develop a digital wallet specifically designed for small and medium-sized companies.
According to the company, other accounts of this type that existed in the South American country’s market were born from larger banks. They were not developed by a fintech, such as MACH, from the Chilean financial institution BCI, or Tenpo, which is an account linked to Credicorp, a Peruvian financial services company with operations in Chile.
Kredito’s recent financial partnership
Kredito’s new product operates as a demand account, with the possibility of receiving and making payments being integrated into the local financial system. This enables it to quickly transfer to other banks with just a phone number.
And in the last few days, Kredito has announced that Grupo Penta has joined its board of main investors to develop new financial products for small businesses.
According to Kredito’s co-founder, Sebastián Robles, Grupo Penta had made them an offer in recent months to enter into a partnership. However, the agreement could only now be confirmed.
Control of Kredito remains in the hands of the founders, but Grupo Penta has acquired a seat on the fintech’s board of directors, which Guillermo Larrañaga occupies.
According to Robles, the fintech sees “infinite synergies” in its new commercial partnership. The CEO also commented that both companies are working together on a new financial product to be launched in the first quarter of 2023.
High demand for its services
Kredito has so far 105,000 companies registered on its platform, and the products that have seen the most growth in recent months are the digital account and prepaid card.
“There is a lot of demand [for this type of service because there is a huge gap in the country and very limited banking products, which has allowed us to grow at rates of 30% to 40% per month in this product,” Robles said in a recent statement.
In 2023 the fintech plans to boost its operations at a regional level, looking at Mexico and Colombia as markets of most significant interest. In turn, the company expects to reach 100 thousand active users on its platform.
