The archive · Money & Fintech · Strategic decision · 2019–2026
Belvo bets LatAm open-finance rules turn it into the region's Plaid; they did
Belvo built LatAm's open-finance API, betting Brazil's Open Finance and Pix Automático would open bank data and rails; 50M+ users connected by April 2025
Belvo
What the business is
Open-finance API platform ('Plaid of Latin America'): connects apps to users' bank, payroll, tax and employment data for underwriting and onboarding, and powers account-to-account payments (Pix Automático, direct debit) as a Central Bank-regulated PISP in Brazil.
Starting capital：US$10M seed (Founders Fund, Kaszek, May 2020), US$43M Series A (Future Positive, Kibo, FJ Labs, June 2021 — the largest LatAm fintech Series A at the time per Crunchbase), US$15M round (Quona Capital, April 2025).
How it started
Founded in May 2019 in Mexico by Pablo Viguera (ex-COO of payments app Verse, former Revolut general manager) and Oriol Tintoré (former NASA aerospace engineer and Capella Space founder), Belvo was part of Y Combinator's Winter 2020 batch. The founders saw that Latin America's underbanked majority was still financially active, and bet that open-banking regulation would turn bank data and payment rails into a new infrastructure layer — the Plaid model, at a moment when Visa had just agreed to buy Plaid for US$5.3 billion.
What happened
Belvo raised a US$10M seed from Founders Fund and Kaszek in May 2020, then a US$43M Series A in June 2021 — which it says, citing Crunchbase, was the largest Series A ever raised by a Latin American fintech. The regulatory opening arrived on schedule: Brazil's Central Bank began Open Finance in February 2021 and had the first four phases live by April 2024 (61.9 million active consents and 102 billion API calls in 2024), and on June 16, 2025 it launched Pix Automático, one-time-consent recurring bank-to-bank payments, with Belvo in the official pilot as a regulated Payment Initiation Service Provider. By April 2025 Belvo served 150+ customers including BBVA, Banamex, Bradesco, Santander, Mercado Libre and Creditas, with 50M+ users connected and about 2 million monthly account-to-account payment transactions (over US$500M annualized TPV).
How it ended up
Live and scaling: Belvo remains independent, moving from data APIs into Pix Automático, biometric Pix and Mexico direct debit as the regulations it bet on came into force; the wager has become standard infrastructure rather than a regulatory gamble.
Background
Belvo is a Latin American open-finance API platform founded in May 2019 in Mexico City by Pablo Viguera and Oriol Tintoré (Y Combinator W20). Its bet was that regulators would force banks to open their data and payment rails, and that a neutral developer-first API — the 'Plaid of Latin America' — would become the infrastructure every fintech builds on, in a region where most people were financially active but underbanked.
The regulatory side of the bet landed. Brazil's Central Bank began Open Finance in February 2021 and had the first four phases live by April 2024 (61.9 million active consents and 102 billion API calls in 2024), then launched Pix Automático on June 16, 2025 for recurring payments with one-time consent. Belvo joined the official pilot as a Central Bank-regulated Payment Initiation Service Provider, turning it from a data aggregator into a payment initiator.
Funding and customers tracked the regulation: a US$10M seed (Founders Fund, Kaszek, 2020), a US$43M Series A (2021, the largest LatAm fintech Series A at the time), and US$15M from Quona and existing investors (April 2025). By then Belvo served 150+ customers including BBVA, Santander, Bradesco, Mercado Libre and Creditas, with 50M+ users connected, about 2 million monthly account-to-account transactions and over US$500M annualized TPV; Mercado Libre used its employment data to lift credit lines by 20% in Mexico.
What has to be true
- LatAm's underbanked majority was still financially active, so the constraint was infrastructure, not demand: bank data and payment rails had to be opened.
- The 'Plaid of Latin America' framing made the model legible to investors, with Visa's US$5.3B Plaid deal as the reference point.
- Betting on mandated Open Finance phases meant every regulatory deadline converted into product scope: data, then payments, then Pix Automático.
- Being in the official Pix Automático pilot as a regulated PISP turned compliance from a cost into a competitive moat.
What can be applied
Bet on the regulation you can see coming: an API layer beneath mandated data-sharing and payment rails wins regardless of which bank or fintech ends up on top.
Aftermath
As of Sept 2026 Belvo remains independent and scaling: it monetizes both data (banking, fiscal, employment) and payments (Pix Automático, biometric Pix, Mexico direct debit) across Brazil and Mexico, with 150+ customers including BBVA, Bradesco, Santander and Mercado Libre and, as of April 2025, 50M+ connected users and ~2 million monthly account-to-account transactions. Mexico's open-banking framework is still under construction and Colombia has only drafted mandatory rules, so Belvo's next phase depends on regulators outside Brazil going live — the same bet, repeated market by market.
Sources
- Belvo, LatAm's answer to Plaid, raises $43M to scale its API for financial services
- Belvo scores $10M from Founders Fund and Kaszek to scale its API for financial services
- Fintech Belvo Reports $15M In New Funding To Enable Open Finance Growth In Latin America
- Belvo officially introduces Pix Automático
- Banco Central anuncia o Pix automático
- The Status of Open Finance in Latin America in 2025
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