LatAm List – Cora, a Brazilian fintech aimed at facilitating online payments and transactions for SMEs, recently raised $10M in a round led by Kasek Ventures and Ribbit Capital.
Cora is the latest venture from Igor Senra and Leo Mendes, co-founders of the successful online payments company MOIP which was sold to WireCard in 2015. Using their fintech experience, the founders created Cora to combat the broken financial services available to SMEs in Brazil.
“We created Cora to pursue our life purpose, which is to solve the financial problems faced by small and medium businesses,” Senra explained.
Cora is aimed specifically at small businesses, which produce 67% of Brazil’s GDP but are mostly overlooked by traditional banks and financial service providers. Through the Cora app, SMEs will be able to manage their finances easily from their phones, completing online transactions, paying bills, and analyzing their cash flow.
“So far, large financial institutions have mainly built products that focus either on individuals or on large corporate clients, and have totally ignored small and medium-sized enterprises, who are the most relevant creators of value in our economies,” commented Mendes.
Kasek Ventures is a Brazilian VC fund that focuses on investing in high-impact fintech startups in Brazil. The investment will help Cora as it plans to launch its first product into the Brazilian market, a free SME-only mobile account, at the start of 2020.
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