附近上门

Morning Report: YellowPepper聽raises $12.5 million from Visa and others to grow its Latin American payment volume.

This morning announced a $12.5 million Series D round of capital led by Visa, with participation from its prior investors. The firm previously raised $39 million in known capital, including a $19 million in 2015, $15 million in 2013, and $5 million in 2010.

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The company’s new capital brings its total to over $50 million, .

Based in Miami, YellowPepper has created a “payment platform” that supports MasterCard and Visa, helping “businesses and banks to interact, manage and accept cashless payments” in Latin America, . It has reached material scale, claiming to power 480 million transactions annually.

Regarding the 480 million figure, , bitcoin has only just crested the 300 million transaction total in its life. That means YellowPepper is handling more transactions per year at the moment by a healthy margin than bitcoin has ever managed.

Looking at the market, we’ve seen with the rise of payments companies like Square (only a partial comp, but you can feel the directional similarities) that handling transactions can be a massively lucrative affair if the unit economics pencil out. YellowPepper also powers loyalty programs, “peer-to-peer transfers,” and banking tools.

So what should we make of YellowPepper’s new capital? It’s always odd to see a company raise a smaller round after a larger round, which appears to be the case with this Series D compared to its preceding Series C. And $12.5 million is a small figure for a modern Series D. But, with a new, strategic investor on board, and traction in hand, perhaps YellowPepper was more interested in getting Visa onto its cap table than worried about the optics of a slightly smaller-than-expected round.