Belo, an Argentine crypto startup that offers a digital wallet, raised $3 million in a seed round to expand operations in Argentina and launch to Mexico and Brazil. The seed round featured participation from firms such as CRV, The Venture City, Newtopia, Latitud, Liquid 2, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Magma Partners and Sur VC.
Belo, which began operating in Argentina in September 2021, allows buying and selling Bitcoin, Ether, DAI and Tether (USDT) with Argentine pesos, in addition to offering cashbacks with those cryptocurrencies.
“The objective of Belo is to provide better financial services to the masses, basically, for the Latin market to solve part of the systemic problems around inflation and capital controls”, said CEO Manuel Beaudroit to LatamList.
The company was the first to issue a crypto Mastercard in Latin America, which delivers cashback ranging from 2% to 21%.
“We have worked with MasterCard to issue this prepaid card which you can use to spend whatever assets you have in your balance. You define which assets you want to spend, in which order and that’s it”, added Beaudroit.
Currently, Belo has 170,000 users on its platform and plans to reach one million by 2022 in Argentina alone. In the second quarter of 2022 Belo plans to launch a service oriented to legal entities, with the purpose of attracting companies and businesses into the crypto world.
The startup is also studying launching new features, such as expense quoting with its debit card. The company does not rule out raising a Series A in 2022 due to an increased interest among global venture capital firms in the Latin crypto ecosystem.
