It is moving the local industry of financial technological ventures, better known as fintech.
This time, the protagonist is Krealo, the corporate arm of venture capital or venture capital of the main Peruvian financial group, Credicorp, which bought in approximately US $ 19 million the digital business area of the Chilean Multicaja.
How does the distribution work?
Sonda is the main shareholder of the local company with 41.58% ownership, followed by the founder of the company, Javier Etcheberry who holds 20% and, finally, both the private equity fund Austral Capital, and the entrepreneur José Luis del Río, have 19.21% each.
Connoisseurs of the process reveal that the negotiations have been carried out in recent months and that the purchase agreement was sealed a couple of weeks ago.
The parties agreed to carry out a transition process after purchasing the digital area of the company, where approximately 32 people work, so Javier Etcheberry will continue as executive director for one year.
Multicaja will continue with the business of acquiring and transacting credit and debit cards via POS machines in physical stores.
The potential of the digital unit
Through digital businesses, more than 700 thousand users have relied on Multicaja to perform: telephone top-ups on the web, purchases abroad through PayPal without the need of having a credit card or withdrawal of PayPal dollars in Chilean pesos to a bank account Another strong vein of the company is the area of payments of service accounts and the recharging of telephony, broadband and television plans.
Among the main projects that the company has ahead, is the issuance of prepaid cards and also implement a new platform for the purchase of bus tickets.
The last movements of Krealo
Last December, Krealo bought -at an amount not yet disclosed- the main Peruvian fintech, Culqi, which is an application platform that allows online payments, subscriptions and scheduled payments with a control system that guarantees full payment. traceability of operations.
Culqi has more than 3,500 corporate clients and an average processed amount of US $ 79.2 million per year
The company registered a year-on-year growth of 500%. With this move, Krealo indicated that it will give the financial back to the payment gateway to incorporate close to 16,000 clients next year and accelerate its entry into new markets, with priority to Mexico, Colombia and Chile. The acquisition aims to increase the banking and digital transformation of SMEs in the region.
“We are actively in the ecosystem of the region looking for collaboration opportunity with more fintech. We have some conversations with different degrees of maturity, “Marco Roca, general manager of Krealo, told SemanaEconómica a few weeks ago. “We are looking for fintech that already have a product in the market and that is already showing traction with its target customer segment” he added.