LatamList – Oyster Financial is a global fintech startup that offers small to medium-sized businesses in Mexico a platform to quickly attain a banking account and debit card within days. Based in Mexico City and San Francisco, the neobank recently raised $14M in seed funding– the largest venture capital seed round in Latin America to date, according to LAVCA.
The round was led by monashees and SV Latam, along with participation from FJ Labs, Fintech Collective, Kevin Efrusy, Redpoint eventures, S7 Ventures, and Ulu Ventures.
“The Oyster team has a strong vision, deep tech expertise and quite a head start, as the only neobank for SMBs with its own robust BaaS platform, to deliver an outstanding experience for their customers within Mexico,” said Marcelo Lima, Partner at monashees.
The new funding will be used to accelerate Oyster’s growth in Mexico, where a vast majority of Mexican sole proprietors and small and medium-sized businesses are still unbanked or underbanked. Oyster aims to make access to financial services fast and seamless for these groups, unleashing the potential for entrepreneurship and job creation in the country.
“We can open business banking accounts for all corporation types and do that for customers in 24-72 hours instead of waiting the typical 4-6 months, or even longer, to do so. And, with the current pandemic, who wants to spend hours in line at a physical bank instead of signing up with us online so quickly,” commented Vilash Poovala, co-founder and CEO of Oyster Financial.
Poovala is also the co-founder of Clip (formerly PayClip), a late-stage B2B electronic payments startup that is on a fast track to becoming Mexico’s first unicorn.
In addition to setting up business accounts within three days, Oyster Financial provides debit cards for its customers, which in Mexico can take more than a year to attain as a small business.
“Oyster is solving a key pain point and delivering something that’s entirely new to Mexico: a fast track for entrepreneurs and small business owners to generate revenues and new jobs that the country’s archaic banking system simply does not address today,” said Consuelo Valverde, founder and managing partner at SV Latam Capital.
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