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Fintech startup Jefa has raised a $2 million seed spherical to construct a fintech startup providing digital accounts with a product particularly designed for ladies dwelling in Latin America and the Caribbean. The corporate has managed to draw 115,000 girls on its waitlist and participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield final yr.
Traders in Jefa embrace The Enterprise Collective, DST International, Basis Capital, Amador Holdings, The Fund, FINCA Ventures, Rarebreed VC, Siesta Ventures, Springbank Collective, Bridge Companions, Hustle Fund, Basis Capital, Latitud, J20 and Magma Companions. A number of enterprise angels additionally participated, resembling Daniel Bilbao, JP Duque, Ricardo Schaefer, Jean-Paul Orillac and Allan Arguello.
Along with this founding spherical, the startup has additionally signed a cope with Visa. It’s a multi-year strategic partnership settlement. Jefa will be capable of benefit from Visa’s sources and merchandise to create its cost merchandise and extra.
“Visa believes in empowering girls,” senior director of fintech partnerships for Visa Latin America and the Caribbean Sonia Michaca stated in a press release. “Monetary and digital inclusion remodel economies. Ladies, who management the lion-share of on a regular basis family spending, must be on the core of this transformation, but girls are vastly underserved by conventional banks. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Jefa, a women-led platform in Latin America and the Caribbean, and one which explicitly serves girls’s monetary wants within the area.”
The workforce behind Jefa believes that banks have uncared for girls for too lengthy. Even challenger banks have principally been designed for male clients within the first place. It doesn’t essentially imply that girls can’t open an account with a challenger financial institution. However some product choices are unfriendly to girls.
Again when Jefa founder and CEO Emma Smith pitched at TechCrunch Disrupt, she listed a few of the explanation why most individuals in Latin America who don’t at the moment have a checking account are girls. As an illustration, minimal steadiness necessities are hostile to girls who statistically earn lower than males.
When Jefa launches, the corporate will allow you to open a digital account totally free from a cell app. You don’t have to go to a financial institution department. A number of days later, you’ll obtain a Visa debit card. There might be a built-in financial savings function and a reward program.
The startup plans to roll out its product in Mexico first, then Colombia and Central America. Jefa isn’t the primary fintech startup attempting to department out from the unified banking providing. There are a number of startups attempting to create vertical banks, resembling banks for youths (Greenlight or Step) or banks for local weather change-focused clients (Aspiration). And there’s now Jefa providing digital accounts for ladies.
Picture Credit: Jefa
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