Mexican BNPL Platform Aplazo Secures $27m in Series A Round

Aplazo, the first omnichannel buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform in Mexico, has secured $27 million in a Series A round, which was led by Oak HC/FT with participation from existing investors Kaszek and Picus Capital.

With this funding, Aplazo plans to add resources across product, engineering, sales and merchant success. The company also plans to expand to other Latin American countries in 2022.

"At Aplazo, we're combatting unequal access to credit by providing consumers with access to an alternative form of credit that helps them to extend their purchasing power in a financially responsible, low-risk way," said Angel Peña, Co-Founder and CEO of Aplazo. "Putting consumers' needs first has allowed us to create an inclusive solution that has seen tremendous adoption from underserved consumers. The vast majority of our initial users have used Aplazo more than once, and each is doing on average four transactions in less than a year."

Aplazo uses alternative data, such as open banking and telecom data, to gauge consumers' creditworthiness and level of affordability, optimizing approval rates and providing fair credit products to underserved consumers. With Aplazo, merchants benefit from increased conversion rates and higher average order values while providing a comprehensive consumer experience across both ecommerce channels and offline stores.

"We see our platform as the basis for democratizing credit in Latin America. We are enabling merchants to connect with consumers in a creative and purposeful way, which builds more loyalty and trust," said Alex Wieland, CoFounder and COO of Aplazo. "By providing our partner merchants with access to new customer segments that are credit-worthy, Aplazo is already an indispensable payment method, taking up to 60% of the share of their transactional volume and increasing conversion and repeat purchases."