Last month, Geopagos left its bootstrap status and took $35 million in funding to grow aggressively into Brazil.
In a complex scenario for Latin American startups fintechs in Argentina push forward with plans for international expansion.
Argentine payments fintech Pomelo secured $40 million in a Series B round led by Kaszek Ventures, taking total funding to over $100 million.
Argentina's fintech unicorn Ualá will invest $150 million over the next 18 months to boost its digital banking endeavors in the region.
Argentinian startup Geopagos serves as a white label infrastructure software provider, aims to give businesses the ability to launch financial services.
Argyle has created a payroll connectivity platform that provides insight into income and employment data for gig workers.
UK based Arrowgrass will offer investors fintech exposure through a new vehicle listed on the AIM Market; the $97mn IPO named TruFin, is the first time investors will have access to one of the country’s p2p platforms in Zopa; “Listing on AIM will allow us to provide further capital to our subsidiaries and scale faster, and take advantage of any developments in the current financial services market,” said Henry Kenner, chief executive officer of TruFin plc, to AltFi. Source.
Babak Hodjat is managing a hedge fund in San Francisco run completely by artificial intelligence (AI); his firm Sentient Technologies Inc. has been building an AI system for analyzing markets and automating trading for over a decade; performance for the firm is not publicly disclosed; numerous firm's in the wealth management industry are using some form of unbiased automated trading however Sentient is one of few firms that completely uses AI technology for comprehensively managing assets. Source
Fraud protection is a leading factor for consumers and MasterCard has recognized this demand; it has recently introduced a Decision Intelligence security platform that utilizes artificial intelligence technology; the technology uses a scoring system that seeks to reduce fraudulent charges and falsely declined transactions; the Decision Intelligence platform is one of many services the firm is using to help increase card usage and retain large client relationships. Source
Machine learning and predictive analytics have started to make a real difference in the VC world when it comes to finding investments; VC’s typically traveled a lot and met with thousands of companies to find a few investments; by using machine learning to break down troves of data, like job postings or performance in the App Store, investors can find potential gems without the same laborious effort; VC firms are investing in tools to help them refine searches and comb through thousands of companies quickly; increased computing power and cheaper ways to rent server capacity has really helped VC’s, even the small firms, use these techniques every day. Source.