IGNIA Partners, LW Investment Management, and several angel investors are backing a Mexican challenger bank, called Fondeadora, via a recent $2.5 million investment.
This is Fondeadora’s second investment round in 2019. Earlier this year, the banking challenger secured $1.5 million and has now raised a total of $4 million this year.
Established in 2011, Fondeadora is among Mexico’s first and leading crowdfunding platforms. The company has been credited with introducing crowdfunding as a funding tool for creatives. In 2016, Fondeadora merged its rewards business with Kickstarter Mexico.
Fondeadora aims to create a bank that resides on users’ smartphones and has been built for the way people live their lives today. The company’s products include a reloadable Mastercard debit card and a full-service bank account that’s accessible from their mobile phones.
Fondeadora aims to help users “spend and save mindfully.” The company says that by solving their customers’ problems, and treating them fairly while also being fully transparent, it can improve the banking experience.
Fondeadora claims it’s providing services to more than 32 million Mexicans with smartphones that might not have a bank account. The company also offers a digital banking platform to 25 million users who are underserved.
Fondeadora says it will use the capital raised to support the launch of its products in 2020, which include an advanced payroll management feature.
Fondeadora provides free bank accounts to its clients and debit cards via its app.
As a Fintech company, Fondeadora has been operating for about four months and has opened around 30,000 bank accounts and handled transactions worth a total of $5.1 million. The challenger plans to expand its operations ten-fold next year while reaching around 300,000 customers. Fondeadora also intends to process $51.6 million in transactions.
Most new users download Fondeadora’s app in order to perform simple transactions such as paying for Spotify accounts.
Brazil has been attracting neobanks and challenger banks, and now they’re also beginning to enter Mexico. Fondeadora is among many other challengers that are planning to transform the existing financial industry.
Albo, a mobile and branchless bank that helps users manage their finances, has established operations in Mexico City. Weex, a Fintech firm that serves as a mobile virtual operator and provides mobile telephony and data service, is also based in Mexico.