Contxto – The Brazilian Fintech Quanto just raised US $15 million with Itaú Unibanco and Bradesco: The two largest banks in Brazil. Not satisfied with bagging these major financial institutions when it comes to banking, Kaszek Ventures and Coatue—both VCs—also pitched some funds for this investment round.
While Itaú Unibanco’s contribution happened as a direct investment (remember this because we will go into this subject in a couple of paragraphs), Brandesco’s participation happened via the Inovabra Ventures fund.
It is known that the Founder and CEO of Quanto, Ricardo Taveira, still owns a majority of Quanto, while Kaszek Ventures, Coatue, and the largest banks in Brazil remained in the minority.
Deepening into Quanto’s history, the Brazilian fintech was founded in 2017. They manage open banking solutions focused on the SMEs and startups market.
With user-consented data sharing, fintechs and other financial institutions can distribute their respective solutions and products through third party platforms.
Think, for example, of e-commerce. Quanto allows fintechs and banking institutions to integrate financial solutions from other platforms for their own products. Therefore, sharing information about your customers can happen between these platforms and it can happen as long as the user agrees (This is the second thing you must remember)
Itaú ties loose ends
So far, you should remember that Itaú Unibanco is one of the leaders in this investment round and a few of the details behind open banking solutions that Quanto develops.
If you’re not an avid reader of Contxto, I must remind you that Itaú Unibanco recently announced the upcoming launch of Ank.
Furthermore, if you are an enthusiastic reader of Contxto, you should already know that Ank intends to universalise the financial management of the Brazilian market with a solution that allows their customers to connect all bank accounts a user might have on one platform.
With the upcoming fintech product Itaú has in store and the open banking solutions that Quanto offers in mind, it kind of makes sense how Itaú is probably more interested in the collaborations and access to Quanto’s technology just a little bit more than in ROI (Return of investment).
Obviously the profit is important. But as we’ve mentioned before, Itaú is the major financial institution in Brazil. The amount they might have invested may well be less than what they spend in one month on their electric bill.
Where I’m going with this is the importance of participating in the ecosystem in order to accelerate the innovation for traditional financial institutions in order to stay relevant.
We actually had a great discussion about this—that is Contxto’s Lead Editor, Alex González Ormerod, and me, César Miramontes, Head of Multimedia—on our podcast En Contxto, back when Itaú Announced the launch of Ank.
If you haven’t heard it, you’re breaking my heart. But don’t worry, I can take it. The one who worries me is you, because you are not up to date with what is happening in the Latam ecosystem. Here’s another chance to stay “En Contxto”:
