LatamList – Facio, a Brazilian fintech, raised a $5M Seed round led by Monashees and ONEVC. Other investors in the round included angel investors Igor Marchesini of SumUp, Gabriel Braga of QuintoAndar, and Michael Seibel, CEO of YCombinator.
Facio is a digital finance platform that facilitates payroll loans for low-income employees. The site acts as a Banking correspondent for employers, thus enabling early access to salaries through connecting a means of payment directly to a company’s payroll.
“We started Facio because we saw the problem firsthand […] The low-salaried population is very large in Brazil, and we saw the difference the resources in the US had made and wanted to provide a similar scheme of early salary access,” said Saulo Tristāo, co-founder of Facio.
Despite the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facio grew exponentially in August and has doubled each month since. The seed funding will be used directly as working capital in loans as well as scaling the company model.
Facio also aims to procure a license to become a registered financial institution in Brazil. This will enable the company to increase the number of products it offers, open bank accounts, take deposits, and issue the payroll loans themselves.
“By creating value for both companies and employees, Facio is building a B2B2C platform that allows scaling and developing engagement with customers without depending on the competitive and expensive paid channels of consumption,” continued Tristāo.
The startup also recently announced a new financial education platform that offers free lectures and courses in finance.
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