Dive Brief:

• PayPal’s venture arm and other investors are injecting $15 million in Ume, a Brazilian payment services provider that caters to small and mid-sized merchants, according to a Friday press release. NFX, Globo Ventures and Clocktower Ventures were also part of the investment group.
• San Paulo-based Ume also landed $20 million in debt financing from Verde, Itaú and other creditors, per the press release.
• Ume plans to use the funding to bolster its sales, marketing and technology infrastructure, and to support its expansion into new markets. In addition, it will fund improvement of its Pix capabilities, the Brazilian real-time payments system.

Dive Insight:

Prior to its recent Ume investment, PayPal Ventures has poured money into international e-commerce and AI companies in recent years.

Earlier this year, PayPal Ventures and other investors invested $30 million in Rasa, an international generative AI company that serves banks, insurance, travel and hospitality companies. In 2021, PayPal Ventures bought a 6.73% stake in the Miami-based special-purpose acquisition company MELI Kaszek Pioneer, which aimed to buy fintech and e-commerce companies in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Argentina.

Ume, which provides its services via Pix, aims to capitalize on the rise of buy now, pay later services in the country.  Ume currently offers its consumer financing services through 6,000 businesses in Brazil that reach some 220,000 consumers, the company said in the release. Now that Ume offers its BNPL service as part of its seller partnerships, the company reported that 85% of purchases through the services were from repeat customers, according to its press release.

The startup has tapped the Brazilian national Pix system to jump-start its growth. The Pix system has become popular in that country since the Brazilian government started it as a domestic payments service in 2020. Since integrating Pix into its business in early 2023, Ume has increased its merchant user base and boosted its repeat customer count.

“Ume has capitalized on the ubiquity of Pix in Brazil and has gained impressive traction,” Ian Cox, a PayPal Ventures partner, said in the statement, saying Ume is seeking to “build the future of payments in Brazil.”

PayPal Ventures has put money in some 70 startups from three investment funds backed with $850 million since 2017, a spokesperson for the company said.

By tapping Pix for its services, Ume’s strategy is to provide flexibility of payment options to consumers while giving merchants another way to appeal to customers. The bulk of Ume’s transactions, 80%, take place offline, with just 20% online, the company said.

Both merchants and consumers can create Ume accounts, with merchants paying a fee for purchases using Ume credit and consumers generally paying interest on installment payments, a spokesperson for the startup said.

“By creating infrastructure on the Pix rails, we are able to provide SMBs with an array of financial products that they can quickly, easily and conveniently offer to their customers – fueling their growth and improving how Brazilians shop and pay,” Ume CEO Berthier Ribeiro said in the release.