Streamlining B2B Payments in Latin America: Our Series A in Higo

Financial services are foundational for how commerce is conducted between individuals and businesses, so it’s no surprise that we are seeing technological innovation throughout this sector on a global scale. Nowhere is this more apparent than in LatAm, where the more than 20 million SMBs have had to work with legacy players and outdated technology to run their day-to-day critical path operations, such as managing payment cards, paying out vendors, managing cash flows, and securing financing.

Business invoicing is one of the areas most ripe for innovation, and perhaps one of the most important for LatAm in particular, given that the vast majority of inter-company commerce in the region is still conducted via this channel. The process of paying your vendors is disorganized and fraught with inaccuracies because invoices currently are a fragmented hodgepodge of WhatsApp messages, emails, and paper bills. There is an opportunity to consolidate and digitize this entire process, simplifying operations, mitigating fraud vectors, and unlocking cash flow financing for businesses struggling to make ends meet, even more crucial as we continue to navigate the lasting impact of Covid-19.

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Enter Higo, an end-to-end platform designed to streamline the financial back office by providing a unified, consolidated digital view of all business invoices, alongside the ability to pay and instantly finance them. Though it’s still early, the early response to the product offering from the market has been remarkable. Higo now has more than 150 businesses paying out nearly $10m USD in monthly payments to thousands of vendors. And, of course, each one of those vendors is a potential customer for Higo, so the model naturally has the latent potential for product-led growth and virality that you can imagine gets us very excited.

Leading the charge at Higo is CEO Rodolfo Corcuera, who experienced these pain points firsthand at his previous company. Joining him are fellow co-founders Juan José Fernandez, formerly a key executive leading operations for Uber LatAm, and Daniel Tamayo, an exceptional product and design leader. Together, the three of them are building one of the best early teams I’ve seen globally, not just in the region. A multi-time entrepreneur, Rodolfo impressed me from our very first meeting with his clear sense of focus, detailed resolution on the problem space, and infectious passion.

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Accel is leading Higo’s Series A financing where I’ll be joining the board of directors. Investing alongside us are our friends at Tiger Global and existing investors Haystack, Homebrew, Audacious, Susa Ventures, and J Ventures. We are also co-investing alongside a number of respected angel investors with valuable, relevant domain expertise such as Claire Hughes-Johnson, COO of Stripe, and Cristina Cordova, former head of partnerships at Stripe. Higo represents the latest in a series of investments by Accel in LatAm, and a continuation of our work with leading companies in the region such as Flink, Atrato, Nuvemshop, Cornershop, and others. And in Higo, we see the same potential to transform the underlying financial infrastructure of a region firmly on the rise.