Peru’s National Payment Rail Is Almost Here | TWIF Latam

🇧🇷 Itaú Unibanco, Brazil’s largest bank by assets, agreed to buy NeoSpace, a Brazilian AI startup that builds large foundational data models to identify patterns and relationships across complex datasets, for about $589 million, part at closing and the rest over five years. Itaú already owned 15% of NeoSpace, which has spent nearly two years building models on the bank’s own data for credit, CRM and fraud prevention.

🇲🇽 Clip, the Mexican fintech unicorn specializing in digital payments and financial services for businesses, acquired Pulpos, a Mexican cloud-based business management platform, to expand beyond payment acceptance and give merchants a more complete operating system. Pulpos keeps its brand and team.

🇵🇪 Culqi, the payments subsidiary of Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP), is building Culqi Connect, a multi-rail processing infrastructure that lets banks, fintechs, digital wallets and payment aggregators connect to TAPP (Transferencias Automáticas de Pagos Peruanos) and other payment systems without developing their own integrations. Yape will connect first, and TAPP’s pilot is set for December. 

🇲🇽 Revolut began rolling out payroll portability in Mexico, so workers can have their salary paid straight into their Revolut account. Its more than one million Mexican customers get access in the coming weeks.

🇲🇽 Klar added utility bill payments and mobile top-ups to its app for 7 million users, running on infrastructure from tapi.

🇨🇴 Lulo Bank started selling insurance in its app, with three policies issued by SBS Seguros and SOAT (Seguro Obligatorio de Accidentes de Tránsito) mandatory motor insurance from Seguros Mundial, starting at about $3.20 a month. 

🇨🇴 Bancolombia added a card management hub to the Mi Bancolombia app for more than 15 million debit and credit cards. Customers can track unbilled purchases, change their number of installments, pay balances and manage digital wallets.

🇦🇷 Credicuotas, the Argentine company specializing in digital consumer lending, raised more than $30 million in a new corporate bond issue, taking its capital markets funding past $100 million in 2026.

🇨🇴 FinMaq, the Colombian company that finances machinery and equipment for SMEs through digital credit scoring, raised $6.5 million in a Series A led by Accion, with new investor Mundi Ventures and returning backers ALIVE Ventures and 30N Ventures.

🇧🇷 Bloquo, the Brazilian company building stablecoin-based infrastructure for cross-border payments, raised about $4 million in a seed round co-led by Crescera Capital and Triaxis Capital, with participation from Lattice Capital.

🇧🇷 Klubi, the Brazilian company that offers digital credit and online consortium plans for buying smartphones, motorcycles, cars and real estate, raised more than $4 million from Patria Investimentos in a second extension of its Series A.

🇧🇷 Banco Central do Brasil is weighing a supervised exit for about 240 institutions that fall short of the minimum capital and net equity thresholds in Joint Resolution No. 14. Payment institutions and direct credit companies are the largest groups, and together the shortfall comes to about $117 million.

🇧🇷 38 companies, including Itaú and Banco Inter, asked Banco Central do Brasil for licenses to operate as virtual asset service providers, known as SPSAV (Sociedade Prestadora de Serviços de Ativos Virtuais), before the October 30 deadline.

🇵🇪 Banco Central de Reserva del Perú will launch its TAPP  (Transferencias Automáticas de Pagos Peruanos) pilot on December 23 with eight entities. Verified merchants will be able to receive up to about $1,450 per payment, five times Yape’s limit. 

🌎 Some venture funds are spending their money twice as fast as they used to. LGT Capital Partners and TrueBridge, two of the firms that invest in VC funds, told TechCrunch that some funds now deploy their capital in 12 to 18 months instead of 24 to 36.

🌎 Swift gave banks more time to adopt structured addresses under CBPR+ (Cross-Border Payments and Reporting Plus), its ISO 20022 standard, but an expert view in The Paypers argues they shouldn’t slow down. Separate fields for street, city and country cut sanctions screening false positives and payment delays.

Álvaro Vértiz, Socio, DGA Group