Matera Gets $100 Million to Expand Banking Software Footprint

Banking software provider Matera has landed a $100 million investment from growth investor Warburg Pincus.

The new funding, announced in a news release Wednesday (July 17), will help finance Matera’s continued expansion into North America and fuel product development.

Matera has its roots in Brazil, a country that — per the release — “is a global standard when it comes to payments infrastructure, led by a long-standing innovative central bank agenda.”

Payments through the Brazilian central bank’s Pix system account for more than 40% of all electronic transactions in the country. Matera’s solution, meanwhile, processes more than 5 billion transactions a year, almost half of which are initiated by scanning a QR Code.

“Pix set the standard for the digital finance revolution,” Carlos Netto, co-founder and CEO of Matera, said in the release.

“At Matera, we know first-hand the pressure for banks to modernize their infrastructure to keep up with innovative new payment methods such as instant payments and pay-by-bank.

We’re honored to leverage our PIX expertise with proven solutions to help financial institutions across North America keep pace with their customers’ digital demands.”

Matera announced plans to expand into North America in late 2022 and last year introduced its flagship offering for the region, known as Digital Twin.

As PYMNTS reported at the time, this is a cloud-native software designed to sit on top of a financial institution’s core banking platform, allowing for real-time transaction authorizations and balance updates 24/7 for various financial accounts.

Digital Twin is designed to allow banks and credit unions to speed their digital transformation while reducing operational costs, the company said.

Meanwhile, research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report “How The World Does Digital” backs up Matera’s statement about Brazil’s attitude toward payments, with that study showing that the country had the highest level of digital engagement of the 11 nations studied.

And Pix’s launch was a force that “lit up” Brazil, Ruben Salazar Genovez, president of cross-border payment enabler TerraPay, said during a recent PYMNTS panel discussion.

“In many ways, Pix is the enabler for this impressive digital adoption in Brazil,” he said. “The gig economy, content creators, gaming, streaming services like Netflix or marketplaces like Mercado Libre, all of them need efficient payment infrastructure. So Pix is the backbone of this digital adoption in Brazil today.”

Pix, said Genovez, also helped businesses and consumers to engage across digital marketplaces, while setting the stage for FinTechs and other digital-only innovators — to the point that the country has been the source of 45% of FinTech revenues in the region as neobanks such as Nubank have gained ground.