Santander's Mouro Capital has participated in a $15 million funding round for Mexican challenger bank Klar.
The round was led by Prosus Ventures (formerly Naspers Ventures) with participation from new investor International Finance Corporation and former investors Quona capital, who led Klar´s Seed round, and aCrew. The round brings the total debt and equity funds raised to approximately $72 million since the company was founded in 2019.
The funds will be put to use to grow Klar’s engineering capabilities in both its Berlin and Mexico hubs in order to expand the company’s product suite in a country where just 10% of adults hold a credit card.
“Klar is making credit accessible to all Mexicans, including those with no credit history,” explains Daniel Autrique, Klar’s co-founder and CFO. “We help people build credit by looking at how and where they spend their money, instead of being stuck with traditional credit scores that are backward looking and obsolete.”
Klar’s business has experienced rapid growth having issued over 25,000 credit lines amongst its 200,000 customers in less than 12 months since inception. The firm says growth has tripled during the pandemic.
Leila Search, of IFC’s FinTech Investments Group, sees a prosperous future for Klar. "Since more than half of Mexicans don’t have a basic bank account, financial access is going to be the main battle for Mexico over the coming years," she says. "We know Klar will be an inspiring contributor to it.”