Pismo raises a $108M Series B from Softbank, Amazon, and Accel

Pismo, the Brazilian platform that offers cloud-based financial services, has raised a $108 million Series B financing round. It will use this capital to expand globally and scale its tech development to offer banking services, payments, and infrastructure to finance-related companies.

This financing round was led by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank; in addition to other agents such as Amazon and Accel, B3, Falabella Ventures, PruVen, and previous investors Headline and Redpoint Ventures.

Pismo was founded in 2016 and currently operates in Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom. This investment will allow the company to hire more than 200 engineers and new employees for the product, commercial, and management areas to continue its international expansion.

What is a “techfin”?

Pismo prefers to be identified as a “techfin”: a purely tech company that provides services –platform as a service, or PaaS– focused on the financial sector.

The term “techfin” was proposed by the founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, in 2016. It refers to tech-based companies that have begun to develop financial products to complement their offering of products and services.

Some examples of companies that are increasingly becoming techfin are Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon in the United States, and MercadoLibre in Latin America. Its e-wallet is called MercadoPago and has added products related to savings and credit.

Prismo will seek to expand its cloud-based offerings: banking services, payments, fintech infrastructure, and marketplaces.