Midway through 2024, Mike Packer, a partner at fintech-focused QED Investors, predicted we’d already hit the bottom for funding to Latin American fintech startups, and that a bounce back was coming. While momentum hasn’t been a straight shot up and to the right ever since, it’s looking like he was right.
The volume of venture capital dollars invested into fintech companies based in LatAm has already surpassed 2023 with another month left in the year. So far in 2024, $2.6 billion has been invested across 174 deals, according to PitchBook data. This compares to the $1.5 billion invested across 241 deals in 2023. While these aren’t huge totals, 2024 has already seen a 73% increase in funding volume compared to 2023.
This year’s total so far still pales in comparison to 2021 when $7.5 billion was invested and 2022 when $4.3 billion was invested. But these numbers show that the market is starting to turn around.
“At a conference in May, I was speaking to some of our seed founders and said, ‘I’m going to call this as the bottom of LatAm equity funding,’” Packer told TechCrunch. “I knew a bunch of deals in the pipeline, it seems like we are off the bottom.”
The momentum swing can be seen anecdotally as well as interesting fintech deals have been closing in LatAm all year.
São Paulo-based Conta Simples raised a $41.5 million Series B led by Base10 in January for its expense management and corporate card software. In May, Félix Pago raised $15.5 million to help Latino workers send money to family in LatAm. Brazilian AI fintech Magie raised $4 million in a round led by Lux Capital. It was Lux’s first investment into Brazil.
Packer said that we’re likely seeing a resurgence in deals for two reasons. One being that LatAm fintech …