Addi, a company that provides the opportunity to “buy now pay later” (BNPL) in monthly installments, has raised a round from GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
The investment amount was US$80 million in a series C, which is complemented by US$125 million in debt. With this, Addi is now valued at US$700 million. Its focus will be to grow in Mexico where other BNPL companies, such as Kueski and nelo, are also growing rapidly in the sector.
In this round it also included Softbank through its Latin American Fund. Previous investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, GGV, Greycroft, monashees Capital and the Opportunity Fund of Union Square Ventures also participated.
Addi, founded by Elmer Ortega, Daniel Vallejo and Santiago Suárez, began operations in 2018. With this latest round, the total funds they have raised amount to more than US$340 million.
An important fact to highlight is that GIC, who led this series C, has been the main promoter of Affirm. Affirm is the US BNPL fintech that is currently listed on Nasdaq with a valuation of US$27 billion.
Before and After The Pandemic
Although we are now discussing its new round of investment, Addi had a rough time in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to 2020, their business model relied heavily on physical interactions; in just the first 20 days of lockdown, they lost 99% of their income from that business.
Afterward, Addi decided to venture into e-commerce. The company developed a payment button able to integrate any business that has an online store on platforms like VTEX or Tiendanube. Addi has also launched a “one-click shopping” pilot that will arrive in the coming months.
They have had a 20x growth in gross transacted volume; increasing their number of transactions more than 1,000 times, and have also served more than 500,000 customers in the last year.
Some of the e-commerce sites that currently have the Addi payment button are Puma, Nike, Apple, and Claro. This product approves credit through WhatsApp with an identification document. They also do not charge interest on the first three installments in purchases up to US$150.
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