Brazil’s FinTech scene is booming and challenger bank Neon is leading the charge with its latest funding round.
The country’s seventh biggest bank Banco Votorantim and growth equity firm General Atlantic led the digital bank’s new $94m funding round, according to Estadao.
Neon raised $5m in September 2019 to boost product expansion, following a $22m Series A round in May 2018.
Founded in 2016, the company will use the money for a recruitment drive to push the numbers to 600 employees by the end of 2019, tripling its staff numbers from the beginning of the year. It will also explore ways to expand its product portfolio.
Since its inception, Neon has made waves across Brazil’s FinTech scene. In September, FinTech Global noted that Neon and rival challenger bank Nubank had picked up 40.2% of all investment injected into the Latin American nation’s FinTech industry between 2014 and the first half of 2019.
Brazil’s FinTech startups are, much like a lot of Latin America, starting to come into their own, evident by the amounts of capital they are seeing from investors.
Over the past six years, that figure has grown from $43.9m in 2014 to $486m in 2018. Between January and July 2019, Brazil’s FinTech sector saw $174.4m flowing their way.
It has also provided opportunities for several different types of companies, from LGBT-friendly digital bank Pride Bank to RegTech company idwall.
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