• The company’s debut comes amid a flurry of payment companies that went public this year;
• Demand for online payments has soared as in-store shopping and traditional payment methods are shifting towards e-commerce.

Shares of dLocal jumped nearly 48% in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday, giving the Uruguayan cross-border payments firm a market capitalization of about $9 billion.

The company’s stock opened at $31, compared with the initial public offering price (IPO) of $21. dLocal sold 29.4 million shares in its IPO, raising about $617.7 million.

READ ALSO: Payments startup dLocal is Uruguay’s first unicorn

Of the shares sold, roughly 4.4 million shares were offered by the company, while the rest were sold by its existing investors.

Activity in the U.S. IPO market has picked up in recent weeks after a brief period of volatility that impacted several market debuts and forced some companies, including hear.com and Enact Holdings Inc, to put their listing plans on hold.

Benefiting from the improved sentiment and strong investor appetite for payment-focused companies, a clutch of startups such as Paymentus and Flywire has gone public recently. Another payments startup, Marqeta, is set to make its stock market debut next week.

READ ALSO: Mexican payments network Prosa seeks buyer at $1 billion-plus valuation: sources

DLocal plans to use the IPO proceeds to add products to its platform and expand geographically, Chief Executive Officer Sebastián Kanovich said in an interview with Reuters.

Founded in 2016, the company has more than 330 merchants on its platform, including Amazon and Microsoft, and is present in over 29 countries. It generated revenue of $104 million last year.

In September, dLocal raised about $200 million in a funding round led by private equity firm General Atlantic that valued it at $1.2 billion, making it the first startup in Uruguay to achieve the unicorn status.

J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley were the lead underwriters for the offering.