The Colombian fintech Mono announced it raised a $6M seed round led by Tiger Global. Other participants in the round were Soma Capital, Y Combinator, and angel investors Tom Blomfield (founder of Monzo) and Jamie Devlin from Revolut.
Mono provides corporate or business accounts for startups, and already counts with 300 clients and $1M in total payment volume. The startup’s founders, Zarruk, Ortiz, Poveda and Lobo, have either banking experience or previously worked in tech operations.
They present Mono as the first “bankingless bank” for small businesses and startups in Latin America. With this, they mean that they offer companies the opportunity to open fully digital bank accounts in only 15 minutes. Opening a bank account for small companies and startups normally takes two weeks. Zarruk explained:
“Speed is our motivation because we want to help small businesses compete with incumbents.”
The Colombian fintech Mono is also an “autopilot” bank because it automates accounting services that are otherwise manual processes. The company offers physical and virtual debit cards, and allows clients to receive and send wire transfers and make payments.
This funding round will allow Mono to expand to other countries in Latin America, such as Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Chile. Zarruk also pointed out some of the startup’s plans:
“We estimate that we have around 24 months of runway, and the most important thing right now is product development (…) We are building a strong tech stack to integrate with third parties so that we can begin to offer several accounting features, like taxes, accounts receivable and payable processes that are currently difficult to do.”