SoftBank pours $100M into Mexico’s Konfio

Three months after Goldman Sachs lent $100 million to Mexican fintech Konfio, SoftBank has invested another $100 million into the financial services company. The investment confirms Reuters’ August report that SoftBank was in advanced talks with the startup — now one of the most heavily funded fintechs in Mexico. 

SoftBank is continuing to expand its Mexican portfolio, which now includes used car buying platform Kavak and payments startup Clip. Aside from Mexico, SoftBank has primarily focused its $5 billion Latin America fund on Brazil — and recently marked its entry into Argentina with an injection into financial services company Uala in a $150 million investment co-led by Tencent. 

As traditional banks shy away from small to medium-sized business loans in Mexico, Konfio’s credit underwriting service provides a faster alternative. Konfio uses a data-first approach to enable fast credit assessment for SMBs looking to grow their businesses. The service can disburse credit in a one-day turnaround, as opposed to locking users into a traditional months-long approval process that can often require collateral. 

Meanwhile, if you’re a startup gathering massive amounts of data on Latin America’s growing middle class, SoftBank might be interested in your growth funding. The Japanese conglomerate seems to want to know everything it can about Latin America’s consumer spending habits, mobile usage and personal banking user behavior.

Watch Konfio founder and CEO David Arana’s panel at TechCrunch’s São Paulo event here.