Ecuadorian fintech Jelou raises $10 million in Series A funding to scale its WhatsApp payment platform

In a recent Series A fundraising round led by Wellington Access Ventures, Krealo, and Collide Capital, Ecuadorian company Jelou raised US$10 million that will be used to further strengthen its business model.

The startup will use the capital raised to expand Brain OS, its technology platform that allows companies to create and manage Artificial Intelligence agents for WhatsApp, through which secure transactions can be executed, identities verified, and payments activated within conversational channels.

According to company figures, it has already processed US$100 million in financial transactions directly within messaging channels and in 2025 grew 265.6% in new customers, with a 1775% increase in interactions with AI agents.

“Jelou was founded in Ecuador in 2017 based on a clear observation: messaging became the main channel of interaction for people and businesses, but the financial transactions that matter (payments, identity, credit, signatures) continued to take place outside of chat, in fragmented systems or insecure shared links,” explained Luis Loaiza, CEO and co-founder of Jelou, in an interview with Contxto.

According to a report, more than 70% of digital purchases in Latin America are now made from smartphones, so the ability to make payments securely and efficiently through some messaging apps could set a precedent in the industry.

The company has around 500 clients in its portfolio, taking conversational artificial intelligence beyond simple dialogue and using it as a new modality that facilitates financial transactions for thousands of users.

Founded by Luis Loaiza and Alberto Vera, Jelou was created to turn chat into a channel where financial transactions are actually carried out, creating secure and useful chatbots for people. With that goal in mind, the platform grew by helping financial institutions provide digital banking solutions through Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

It also has partnerships with tech giants such as Google and Huawei, and thanks to these relationships, it is strengthening its go-to-market strategy, positioning itself to reach hundreds of companies throughout Latin America. It also announced that it will open offices in Mexico and Colombia, strengthen its presence in Peru, and begin its entry into Brazil and the United States.

“Currently, Jelou has a team of around 170 people in eight countries. It is a team with a strong focus on engineering, product, and regulatory compliance, distributed mainly in Latin America and in the process of expanding into new markets,” adds Loaiza.

Over the next five years, the company hopes to consolidate its position as the leading platform for building AI applications that process more than US$1 billion in financial transactions and become one of the leading technology companies to emerge from Latin America.