Latina-founded Banking-as-a-Service Provider NovoPayment Raises $19M Series A

Building on LatAm market success, Miami-based fintech pioneer to boost expansion in the US

MIAMI, April 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- NovoPayment announced it has secured $19 million in Series A financing, led by Fuel Venture Capital and IDC Ventures, to further scale NovoPayment's Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform in existing markets and the US. NovoPayment offers a full-stack, multi-country, and multi-currency API cloud-based platform that powers digital banking, payment and card solutions. The fintech pioneer is strengthening its footprint across the Americas to serve even more financial institutions, fintechs, neobanks, digital merchants, and acquirers.

Over the past eight years, NovoPayment has expanded to reach 14 markets. In 2021, NovoPayment saw a 40% increase in client growth, including partnerships with major financial players, such as Visa, Mastercard, and IADB.

In addition to the $19 million in new funding, this recent momentum positions NovoPayment for an even brighter future. The company plans to continue increasing capabilities, introduce new features and functionalities, heighten security, and capitalize on US market opportunities. Here's a peek at what's ahead:

• Application network expansion: NovoPayment is expanding its impressive network of 60+ partners, resulting in integrations designed to streamline the enablement of products and services via open APIs.
• Talent Acquisition and Scaling Operations: With current offices in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and headquarters in Miami, NovoPayment is hiring over 100+ top-notch engineers, business development, and product experts to lead its growth strategy and opening hubs in Austin and San Francisco.
• Accelerating growth in existing markets, with a focus on the US and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): Enabling new data and money flows is a top priority for helping NovoPayment's regional clients and unicorns in the US and LAC capture new value and enter into new market segments. This includes the gig economy, real-time payments, and cash/spend management opportunities.

"Expanding access to financial services, offering new digital experiences, increasing speed to market, and reducing IT costs all comes down to infrastructure," said NovoPayment's co-founder and CEO Anabel Perez. "We're grateful to have investors who recognize our platform's role in closing the gap between banks' legacy systems and their customers' evolving needs and enabling any business to manage and embed innovative financial services into their end-user experience."

As a Venezuelan-born entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience in the banking and payments industry, Perez knows firsthand the promise and challenges of expanding access to financial and payment services. In 2014, she and her team set out to transform how financial services and payments were built and delivered in the Americas. By establishing NovoPayment's headquarters in Miami, known as the "Capital of LatAm" and "the new entryway to the USA," she gained an early foothold in the LAC region, which is now a $7 billion fintech market.

"Novopayment is in a very unique and advantageous position to thrive in the current fintech revolution since it is an extremely time-consuming and challenging endeavor to building a powerful end-to-end infrastructure and a proprietary API-based platform with high level of connectivity like Novopayment,"  said Maggie Vo, Fuel Venture Capital's Chief Investment Officer and Managing General Partner, who is also joining as a board member. "As a female general partner, I am excited to support a female founded company in securing one of the largest female rounds in the history of Miami."

Today, while Silicon Valley players shift to set up shop in South Florida, NovoPayment stands out as a native in the region. The company is part of the Miami community and helped make the city a legitimate startup hub in the eyes of investors.

"NovoPayment provides an unparalleled breadth of services and depth of technology under a single, vertically integrated tech stack. In addition, the founding team's extensive operating experience in banking and financial services provides advantages in both design and execution of complex solutions. Also, NovoPayment is one of the few companies that has built a comprehensive infrastructure and enablement platform successfully operating in the Americas. NovoPayment stood out as a great investment opportunity for these reasons, and we are confident it will soon emerge as a leader in the space, " said Rodrigo Rodas, managing partner at IDC Ventures.

NovoPayment's success comes amid a challenging climate for women entrepreneurs. In 2021, only 2% of VC funding went to all-female founding teams. Likewise, only 2% of VC funding that year was awarded to companies with Latin American founders. However, with its successful Series A funding round, NovoPayment is beating the odds and has more milestones on the horizon. To stay informed on new product and partnership updates from NovoPayment, visit novopayment.com/newsroom.

About NovoPayment
NovoPayment, a category leader in Banking as a Service (BaaS) platforms, enables digital financial and transactional services to support various use cases. The company's bank-grade solutions use APIs and other flexible delivery models to help banks, financial institutions, merchants, networks, marketplaces, neo banks, and other financial service providers to leverage their existing systems to generate new deposits, transaction streams, and customer experiences.

For more information, visit novopayment.com and developer.novopayment.com.

About Fuel Venture Capital
Fuel Venture Capital is committed to propelling groundbreaking ideas into world-changing companies and democratizing access to the creative economy to shape the future of society. The firm's "founder focused, investor driven" approach is led by a core team with more than 60 years of combined experience in investment banking, wealth management, executive leadership and entrepreneurship. The fund boasts a portfolio of 33 companies based around the globe across numerous sectors, bringing positive impact to virtually all corners of our modern economy. To learn more about Fuel VC, visit fuelventurecapital.com. Follow Fuel VC on social media via Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

About IDC Ventures
IDC Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in talented entrepreneurs with bold ambitions who drive innovation and digital disruption. IDC Ventures focuses on companies in the fintech industry, marketplace, and digital platforms throughout Europe, the US, and Latin America. IDCV is a fast-growing platform that has supported extraordinary ventures such as Curve, Bipi,

RecargaPay, Lunar, Securitize, and many more. For more info, visit www.idcventures.com.

SOURCE NovoPayment