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Argentine fintech Ualá has raised $300mn in one of many largest fundraising rounds for a start-up in Latin America in recent times, in what libertarian President Javier Milei described as “proof” of an impending wave of tech sector progress within the notoriously tumultuous economic system.
The most recent fundraising takes Ualá, which launched in 2017 and now has 8mn clients and banking licences in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia, to a valuation of $2.75bn.
The spherical is among the largest within the area in recent times, in keeping with information from Dealogic, following a $500mn fundraising for cold-chain storage agency Emergent Chilly LatAm in 2023. Brazilian fintech Neon Pagamentos additionally raised $300mn in 2022.
The spherical was led by Allianz X, the expansion funding arm of insurer and asset supervisor Allianz, and in addition included hedge fund supervisor Alan Howard. Ualá is backed by the SoftBank Latin America Fund and China’s Tencent.
The transfer follows three years of comparatively scant enterprise capital funding in Latin America amid larger US rates of interest.
Milei, who’s 11 months right into a drastic austerity and deregulation drive that has slashed Argentina’s sky-high inflation fee, stated on Monday that Ualá’s fundraising was “proof that . . . Argentina has every part it must turn into a technological energy”.
“We’re a stress cooker able to boil over with potential,” he added.
Argentina has one of many largest tech industries within the area and is the birthplace of ecommerce large MercadoLibre and software program improvement agency Globant. The sector stands to be an enormous beneficiary of Milei’s plans to stabilise the macroeconomy, scrap regulation and ultimately elevate foreign money and capital controls which have been in place for 9 of the previous 13 years, which have deterred funding.
“This fundraising spherical will permit Ualá to by no means elevate capital once more and to achieve full profitability in all our markets, after already reaching that in Argentina this 12 months,” Ualá founder and chief govt Pierpaolo Barbieri instructed the Monetary Occasions.
“Our objective with this spherical is to turn into the biggest financial institution in Argentina, interval,” he added.
Ualá has grown quickly in Argentina by capitalising on the nation’s bureaucratic banking sector and enormous unbanked inhabitants. Nearly a fifth of Argentine adults now maintain a Ualá account, in keeping with the corporate, which presents debit and bank cards, fee companies, loans and funding merchandise.
The agency had quintupled its credit score ebook in 2024, Barbieri stated, as Milei’s reform drive begins to develop Argentina’s long-stunted non-public credit score market, which has shrivelled additional in recent times amid a extreme financial disaster.
Argentina’s non-public credit score market presently measures simply 5 per cent of GDP in contrast with greater than 50 per cent in Brazil and 90 per cent in Chile, Barbieri stated.
“It ought to on the very least, quadruple to match the place it was in 2017, 2018. However then it ought to develop by 10 or 20 occasions [over] a few many years,” he added. “The course of journey may be very clear — if the macro stabilisation is profitable.”
