• Movile is one of Latin America’s leading investors and growth accelerators for tech companies and it was already an investor of Zoop;
• This is the startup’s third investment round.

Movile, the owner of iFood, today announced it led a new investment of BRL 60 million (around $11.4 million) in Zoop, that provides financial services for the B2B market, enabling companies of all sizes to become fintechs and offer payments and financial services to their customers through its white label platform. Movile is one of Latin America’s leading investors and growth accelerators for tech companies and it was already an investor of Zoop. This is the startup’s third investment round.

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“We provide the technology and compliance to a highly regulated industry, while our partners can focus on the offerings and relationship with their customers,” Fabiano Cruz, CEO and co-founder of Zoop, told LABS. “Certainly, with the accelerated digitization of all kinds of businesses in Latin America, there’s been a high demand for all kinds of new financial services including payments, banking, and credit. In fact, we have signed on more than 40 new customers for Zoop during the pandemic since March.” 

Zoop will use the new round of funding to accelerate its growth by speeding up the rollout of new digital payments, banking and credit services for its customers within Zoop’s framework.

Founded in 2013, Zoop has more than 500 partners on its platform. The company grew four times the total volume of 2018 last year, and it forecasts that it will process 20 billion transactions on the Zoop platform by the end of 2020 – the company does not disclose its revenue numbers.

Cruz stated that the company grew 140% in TPV (total payment volume) compared to the previous year, in addition to attracting more than 40 new partners during the pandemic.

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Zoop’s technology platform is the behind-the-scenes infrastructure for a growing number of new fintech offerings across Latin America today. Patrick Hruby, CEO of Movile, said that fintech is the main focus of the group’s expansion today.

To LABS, Hruby said the new round will boost Movile’s group companies, such as iFood, in the financial sector, as Zoop is the one that handles the digital account infrastructure of Movile’s new prepaid card.

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“We believe that any company, in any sector, will be able to add new revenue lines by offering digital accounts, prepaid cards, withdrawals, transfers, bill payments, instant payments (PIX) and a series of other products and services available on the white-label technology platform from Zoop”, said Cruz.

Hruby told LABS that the open banking movement, led by Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, including the landmark FinTech Law of 2016, has led to a boom in fintech investments across the region. “The leading Latin American countries have committed to enabling more technological innovation, while offering consumer protection and prudent financial requirements without creating unnecessary barriers via administrative and regulatory burdens to fintechs,” he said. “Certainly, government efforts to modernize banking such as the Central Bank’s launch of the Pix instant payments system that enables immediate transactions such as money transfers and payments, including bills, within seconds has added more fluidity and speed to financial services in Latin America,” he added.