SMB Lender Cora Raises $26.7M In Series A Funding

Cora, the Brazilian technology-enabled lender to small and medium-sized businesses, has raised $26.7 million in a Series A funding round, TechCrunch reported on Monday (April 5).

Ribbit Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, led the round, along with Kaszek Ventures, QED Investors and Greenoaks Capital, bringing the total funding for Cora to $36.7 million since the company was founded in 2019.

Cora, which bills itself as “everything that an SMB will need in a bank,” offers solutions for businesses ranging from digital checking accounts — to send and receive money and pay bills digitally — along with a Visa debit card and management tools like a cash flow dashboard and invoice manager.

Based in Sao Paulo, Cora was founded by Igor Senra and Leo Mendes, whose earlier venture — an online payments company called MOIP — was sold to Germany’s Wirecard in 2016.

Brazil’s central bank approved Cora’s license last year, making it a 403 bank. From there, the company launched its product, and has since added 110 employees serving roughly 60,000 clients, TechCrunch said. Ribbit Capital’s Nikolay Kostov said that Cora has undertaken an “ambitious mission” to get SMBs in Brazil rethinking banking.

As PYMNTS reported last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has rocked the lending industry, fueling an ongoing shift to digital while sparking a resurgence of more established banks at prime SMB lenders — but that may not be the case in Brazil. “While the consumer banking experience has undergone a massive transformation thanks to new digital experiences over the last decade, this is, sadly, still not the case on the small business side,” Kostov said.

Even as the number of small businesses in Brazil grows, Kostov said the process of opening a bank account can take weeks, “reels of paper, and often comes with low limits, poor service and antiquated digital interfaces.” All of this makes Brazil an enticing market for Cora, he noted.