Consumer payments in Latin America have changed as a result of fintech businesses and other organizations, notably during the worldwide pandemic, leading consumers to be more comfortable with digital payments. Xepelin, founded in Chile, intends to achieve the same with business-to-business payments with a SaaS payments infrastructure that combines real-time financial data, embedded financial services, and data models, all in the hopes of serving as a company’s “digital CFO.”
Last year, the company raised $230 million in an equity and debt Series A round led by Kaszek, and has since expanded into Mexico, more than doubling its client base to 15,000, increasing Mexico revenue by 60 times, and launching its new Xepelin Payments product 90 days ago, which allows users to organize and automate payments to suppliers, with and without financing. Xepelin has grown to over 400 employees since its co-founding in 2019 by Nicolás de Camino and Sebastian Kreis.
“This is a tremendous industry,” de Camino told TechCrunch, “but no one is really focusing on pure business-to-business.” “Middle-class firms have access to bank financing, while 95% of small and medium-sized enterprises are unattended.” We think there is $5 trillion in hidden cash that has to be released, and we’ve set up a platform to do it.” Now, the firm is doubling down in both Chile and Mexico, as well as looking to expand into other nations, where it will hire more people and develop new goods. Entirely of this is backed by a new $111 million Series B round of capital led by Avenir and Kaszek, which is all equity this time.
The round is being billed as “the largest Series B investment round in Chile’s history and one of the largest in Latin America,” according to Xepelin. While Kazsek is doubling down in this round, Avenir is a newcomer to the cap table. Avenir was searching for “the next B2B payments platform succeeding in LatAm,” Kreis told TechCrunch, and will assist Xepelin move to the next level. Avenir has other investments in developing marketings. PayPal Ventures, Wellington, DST Global Partners, Battery Ventures, MSA Novo, Endeavor Catalyst, FJ Labs, Picus, Amarena, Gunderson, Carlos Garcia, Cathay-Seaya Latam, and Gilgamesh were also investors in the round.
