The archive · Commerce & Marketplaces · Strategic decision · 2016–2024
Leal bets cash shoppers can be tracked: COVID wiped 85% of merchants, then 6M users
Colombian rewards platform turns paper receipts into cashback data; after COVID wiped 85% of merchants it rebuilt to 6M users and 1,000+ brands
Leal
What the business is
A Bogotá-based retail-tech platform that gives LatAm merchants cashback and loyalty programs with 160 POS integrations, letting them track even cash-paying customers and run targeted campaigns.
Starting capital：$20.5M total: $3M in 2019, a $10M Series A in 2022, and a $5M pre-Series B co-led by LEAP Global Partners and Rakuten Capital (Jan 2024)
How it started
Camilo Martinez founded Leal in Bogotá in 2016 with COO Florence Frech, betting that merchants wanted to understand customers who pay cash. The company grew fast, then COVID lockdowns hit: 'We lost 85% of our merchants,' Martinez said. 'We were heavily reliant on brick-and-mortar retailers... We almost had to rebuild our business from 2021 onwards because we had no clients.'
What happened
After rebuilding, Leal launched receipt-scanning rewards in 2021 that let grocery shoppers earn Leal Coins redeemable for goods like gasoline or food delivery, expanded across Mexico, Colombia and Central America, and raised a $10M Series A (2022) and a $5M pre-Series B co-led by LEAP Global Partners and Rakuten Capital (Jan 2024) to invest in AI personalization and conversational commerce on WhatsApp and Messenger.
How it ended up
Scaling: 6M+ users, 1,000+ brands across 15 industries in 8 countries, targeting $10M in annual recurring revenue, with AI-driven personalization as the next growth lever.
Background
Leal is a Bogotá-based retail-tech company founded in 2016 by Camilo Martinez (CEO) and Florence Frech (COO). Its bet: Latin America's retailers were blind to the majority of their customers — people who pay cash — so a platform that made those purchases trackable would become the region's loyalty layer.
The company integrated with 160 point-of-sale systems and launched rewards and cashback programs for brands, e-commerce sites and financial institutions. Then COVID hit: 'We lost 85% of our merchants... We almost had to rebuild our business from 2021 onwards because we had no clients,' Martinez told TechCrunch.
Leal rebuilt around receipt scanning: shoppers photograph paper receipts to earn 'Leal Coins' redeemable for gasoline, food delivery and other goods, giving merchants a data trail for the cash economy. By January 2024 it had more than 6 million users (up from 1.5 million in 2020), 3.5 million active users added in the prior 12 months, and 1,000+ brands across 15 industries in 8 countries, including Subway, Chevron and Verifone.
With a $5M pre-Series B co-led by LEAP Global Partners and Rakuten Capital (plus Morro Ventures and Salkantay Ventures), bringing total funding to $20.5M, Leal aimed for $10M ARR and doubled down on AI: personalized rewards, generative-AI chatbots and WhatsApp/Messenger commerce as its next growth lever.
What has to be true
- Cash is still a dominant payment method in LatAm, so a rewards platform that made cash purchases trackable addressed a real, unsolved data gap.
- Receipt scanning created the loyalty loop cheaply: no hardware, no card network, just a photo and a reward.
- The pandemic exposed the single-channel risk, and the rebuild from 85% merchant loss shows how hard-won the recovery was.
- AI personalization was the natural next step once Leal had collected years of purchase behavior from cash customers.
What can be applied
Single-channel distribution is fragile: Leal leaned on physical retail, so lockdowns erased 85% of its merchants; survival came from turning untrackable cash purchases into receipt-scanned data.
Aftermath
As of January 2024 Leal was scaling: more than 6 million users, 1,000+ brands across 15 industries in eight countries, $20.5M raised, and plans to reach $10M in annual recurring revenue by investing in AI personalization, smarter data collection and WhatsApp/Messenger-based customer engagement.
Sources
- Now with $5M, Leal invests in AI-driven customer engagement for LatAm merchants
- Colombian startup Leal raises $5M pre-Series B
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