From being in the trenches of the financial sector over a decade ago at the beginning of our careers to disrupting it through fintech for the last few years, it has become evident to us that a lot still remains to be done at the infrastructure level to create more inclusive, efficient and empowering financial services.
This is particularly true in emerging markets such as Latin America, where banks are particularly powerful, financial data is still siloed and a growing proportion of data comes from alternative fintech providers.
Fintech disruption is exposing all these inefficiencies and chipping away at the banks, ultimately resulting in better financial services, albeit slowly. The democratization of access to financial data (transactional, identity, products, etc.), though, remains an area where banks, unless forced by the regulator like in Europe with PSD2, are reluctant to open their doors. All of this is even more manifest in Latin America, with its booming fintech sector and a population of over 600 million but an absolute lack of infrastructure that can lead to true Open Banking.
What is Belvo?
So, enter Belvo. A young startup, fueled by a group of passionate disruptors based in Barcelona and Mexico City, that we hope will soon become the cornerstone that powers the next generation of financial services in Latin America through access to financial (bank and non-bank) data, in a fast, efficient, stable and developer-friendly way.
Our world-class team is putting together a unique set of APIs that any developer building financial (and non-financial) apps in Latin America will be able to easily and reliably connect to in minutes to extract its clients’ financial data. Things like historic transactions, what products he/she has with the bank/entity, identity cross-referencing, and much more. All of this with one simple integration (not hundreds), that can be deployed in minutes (not weeks or months) with a few lines of code (not thousands). And, most importantly, with a model that scales as your app does. No upfront integration fees or hefty monthly license payments.
We are hiring!
With this blog, we intend to share our journey with you. We will periodically be sharing updates, primarily on the product. Things to look out for include: what we’re working on; what we’ve shipped; relevant milestones we hit; availability of new data sources, etc.
Oh, by the way… while we’re a small team of less than 10 at the moment, we’re hiring for a number of roles in our development and tech team. Based in sunny Barcelona or remotely. Learn more about our current openings here. If you feel like you’d like to contribute but we don’t have an opening that matches your skills or interests, feel free to ping me or Oriol Tintore anyways — we’re always open to bringing top talent on board.
Stay tuned!
