In August 2021, the Argentine fintech Ualà. raised 350 million USD in a Series D funding round.
Investors included Tencent, Softbank, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Soros Fund Management, Ribbit Capital, Greyhound Capital, Monashees, D1 Capital Partners and 166 2nd.
With its 2.45 billion USD valuation, Ualà is one of the unicorns of global fintech. Let’s see what Ualà is.
What is Ualà?
The neobank Ualà was founded in Argentina in 2017. It offers a personal wealth management and a prepaid Mastercard: online and offline payments, cash withdrawal at ATMs, international payments.
Ualà also sends users instant notification, allowing them to manage their spendings. Transactions are automatically categorized and the user can visualize them in charts.
In June 2021, Ualà announced it has issued more than 3 million prepaid debit cards.
Ualà also provides accounts for businesses and merchant services. Its offer is aimed at SMEs with mobile POS terminals and pay-by-link services to receive payments from remote customers.
Ualà and financial inclusion
Financial inclusion is a mission for many fintechs. And Ualà is no exception: in a blog post dated October 3 2017, the fintech wrote that 92% of Argentinians have a mobile phone, but consumer credit barely equals 6.5% of the GDP.
A mobile-based neobank like Ualà can provide new ways to manage money and expenses: an account can be opened in a few minutes with a digital onboarding process.
In 2020, Ualà chose Mexico for a similar reason: according to the World Bank, 63% of Mexicans do not have a bank account and only use cash.
