Mexico City-based Kueski, the “buy now, pay later” online consumer lender, announced it has secured $202 million in equity and debt funding.
The $102 million equity round was led by StepStone Group (which recently acquired Greenspring Capital) and Victory Park Capital led the $100 million debt financing. StepStone was joined by several other new investors including One Prime Capital and Glisco. With this latest financing, Kueski has now raised over $300 million in equity and debt capital.
CEO and founder, Adalberto Flores, told TechCrunch: “Mexico has the fifth highest rate of unbanked citizens globally. Almost two-thirds of people are employed in the informal economy, meaning they are paid in cash, which is never deposited into a bank account. These circumstances lead to a challenging environment where financial institutions have little to no information to determine someone’s credit repayment ability.”
As a result, 80% of the consumers in Mexico lack access to a credit card and because of this, 78% of merchants don’t have a POS terminal.
Kueski wants to expand access to basic financial services to Mexico’s population. Instead of relying on credit bureau information, the company uses contextual data such as device information, real-time behavioral data and sociodemographic data, and many other types of data sources that are then analyzed by its artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to predict an applicant’s repayment ability.
Kueski is currently focused on the Mexican market, but it is planning to expand to other countries in Latin America in the future.
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