Fintech Stori to use fresh funding to expand offerings

The round is the biggest announced by a Mexican startup in the past year, as per data compiled by Crunchbase

Mexican fintech Stori, which aims its products at the large number of people in the country without bank accounts, will use a new $212 million in funding to roll out new products and expand current offerings, the fintech said on Tuesday.

The funding round for the unicorn – a term for a startup with a valuation of more than $1 billion – comes in the form of $105 million in capital and $107 million in debt, the fintech said in a release.

The round is the biggest announced by a Mexican startup in the past year, as per data compiled by Crunchbase.

Stori offers credit cards with credit limits starting at just 500 pesos ($25.89) and last year rolled out savings accounts with the unusually high yield of 15 per cent.

The fintech company has also indicated that it hoped to soon offer investment services.

Just more than half of the Mexican population uses some sort of financial product such as a bank account, as per the nation’s financial watchdog, Condusef.

Startups such as Stori are increasingly vying to capture the untapped market. It faces competition from Brazil’s Nubank and Argentina’s Uala.

Stori serves more than 3 million clients, the fintech said on Tuesday, while in Mexico Nubank and Uala have recently reported 7 million customers and 1.5 million customers, respectively.

The fintech said it will use the fresh funding “to support the introduction and scale-up of new and existing products, which will allow it to strengthen its leading position in Mexico.”