LatamList – José Vélez has started his next venture since leaving PayU in 2018, a leading fintech for online payments in Colombia which he co-founded and led as CEO. Along with co-founders Ana María Sandoval, Sergio Vergara, Jorge Ulloa, and Enrique Ramírez, José Vélez launched Bold. The fintech, which officially launched in May 2019, provides financial services to SMEs in Colombia.
Since founding, the company has doubled its team of 20 people and has raised $3.5M in its first round of funding. Bold’s first product is a low-cost payment terminal that allows entrepreneurs from small and medium enterprises to receive payments using a credit or debit card from Mastercard, Visa, or American Express.
This year was projected to be a year of scalability for Bold, but COVID-19 came in the way of their plans. However in July, three months after officially launching into the market, Bold reached the first milestone of 1,000 businesses that are using its payment terminal.
“It is serving a lot of people, even restaurants that are using them for homes,” said Vélez, now CEO of Bold. “The best example of what we want to be is banks, in the sense that we want to launch multiple services, make it easier to handle accounting or request a loan, all with a modern and agile design”.
Bold plans to consolidate itself in Colombia before expanding its solutions to other countries.
Read more on Latamfintech HUB.