Uala, a fast-growing personal finance app in Argentina, just closed a $150 million fundraising led by Tencent and SoftBank's Latin America innovation fund
- Tencent and SoftBank led the latest funding round for Ualá, the Argentina-based personal finance start-up that counts George Soros, Goldman Sachs, and Steve Cohen's Point72 as past investors.
- The series C raised $150 million - more than triple what the company had raised in its four previous funding rounds combined.
- The company found a receptive audience in Argentina for its product, which many use as an alternative to a traditional bank account. The company has issued more than 1.3 million prepaid cards, its first product, and now offers an investment account and a loan product.
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Argentina's hottest startup just got some serious backing from two of Asia's biggest investors.
Tencent and SoftBank are leading Ualá's latest funding round, a $150 million series C that's more than three times what the company has raised in its two previous funding rounds combined.
Tencent, the owner of WeChat, China's largest social platform; and SoftBank, which invested out of its Latin America innovation fund, will take seats on Uala's board. George Soros, Goldman Sachs and Mickey Malka's Ribbit Capital were among the investors who participated in this round.
SoftBank's Latin America fund had until recently been run by Marcelo Claure, the SoftBank Group COO who took on the role of executive chairman at WeWork in late October following the coworking company's failed IPO and subsequent SoftBank bailout.
Ualá offers a personal financial management app that acts like a bank account. Users can access their cash with a debit card, send and receive money with friends, pay bills or manage their expenses. The startup has issued more than 1.3 million cards. It also now offers a high-yield money market account and a loan product.
"We want to build the leading marketplace for financial services in Latin America," founder Pierpaolo Barbieri said in an interview. "The objective with this is to triple or quadruple in size over the next year."
Barbieri declined to disclose the startup's valuation.
He said the money will be used to deepen its offering in Argentina, and that it's too early to think about expanding into other countries. Ualá currently employs about 200 people, up from 60 last year.
"Ualá's growth has been truly remarkable," said Shu Nyatta, a managing partner at the SoftBank Innovation Fund. "What the team is building has revolutionized financial services in Argentina. We believe the strategy and exceptional execution demonstrate great potential."
Ualá was founded in 2016 by Barbieri, a native Argentine who left for school at Harvard University. After an internship at Goldman Sachs, three months at Soros Fund Management, and a short stint at Bridgewater Associates, Barbieri returned to Harvard and the Kennedy School of Government.
From there, he founded a macroeconomic consulting firm with professor and author Niall Ferguson. He also served as chief strategist at the Brevan Howard Argentina Fund.
While less than half of Argentina has a banking account, more than nine out of ten Argentine has a cell phone, and many people in the country use Ualá as their de facto bank even though the start-up hasn't registered as such.
"Ever since our time together in the classroom at Harvard, Pierpaolo and I have been obsessed with the idea that financial exclusion is a key driver of poverty," Ferguson, who sits on Uala's board, said in a statement. "Eleven years ago, when I wrote about this in The Ascent of Money, there wasn't a good solution. Now, thanks to advances in technology and the spread of the smartphone, there is."
Tencent is also a large investor in another Latin America banking app, Brazilian unicorn Nubank, which is valued at $4 billion. Earlier this year, Nubank opened an office in Mexico as it expands its Latin America presence.
Goldman Sachs led Ualá's series B fundraising round, contributing more than half of the $34 million raised. The company had raised a total of $44 million before this round.
See more: A fintech revenue surge helped Tencent smash quarterly expectations