From 2017, to 2023 | Kushki breaks another milestone by becoming the first regional non-bank acquirer.

New York, 2017. Our story begins with the idea of two entrepreneurs; Aron Schwarzkopf and Sebastian Castro. Together with their extensive experience in the payments industry and as entrepreneurs, they combined their motivation to position Latin America as a technological and innovative payments powerhouse. Just one year after launch, we began to expand throughout the region, starting with Ecuador; and by 2020, we had operations in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru.

To achieve this extraordinary breakthrough, we had the support of Dila Capital, Magma Partners, Kaszek Ventures, and Clocktower Ventures, and thus closed our $8 million Series A. Further down the line, in 2021 we consolidated and expanded as a regional payments platform, closing our $86 million Series B at a valuation of $600 million, backed by Japanese high-growth fund Softbank.

2022 marked one of the most significant milestones for Kushki as a company. With a $100 million extension in our second Series B investment round, we achieved the valuation of Unicorn Startup.

In the same year, we launched our division: Kushki Mundial, a service aimed at PSPs (payment service providers) operating outside the Latin American region and processing payment volumes in LATAM, in order to become a regional one stop shop. Thereby, at Kushki we enable these businesses to access the local and Latin-focused payment solutions they need, such as more traditional and alternative payment methods.

2022 was even more than that, as we acquired Billpocket, one of the first aggregators in Mexico and a leader in point-of-sale payment solutions in the country. This makes us a payment services provider with a broader portfolio of products and services involving the B2C sector.

Non-bank Regional Acquiring at Kushki

Our innovative path continues, and in 2023 we achieved another amazing feat and started operating under the non-bank acquirer model in Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Colombia. Fulfilling our mission to revolutionize the digital payments industry from being just a payment gateway to a company that operates under different models such as aggregator, processor, and regional non-bank acquirer. The latter model includes primary membership with entities such as Visa and Mastercard through a proprietary standardized processing platform, making us one of the largest acquirers in the region in terms of coverage.

This is great news for our merchants and payment processors in Latin America, as most of them currently have only one or two local acquirers, which until now has made it difficult to access the ecosystem more broadly. As a non-bank acquirer, we offer direct connections to the primary payment networks without relying on additional intermediaries or third party banking institutions.

Benefits for Merchants and Users:

• Faster transactions.
• Improved acceptance rates.
• Increase in fraud management mechanisms and systems.
• Increased stability and traceability of transaction processing.
• More personalized service.

“We started this project in 2017, and the amount of resources and commitment invested in this huge infrastructure regulatory project is something that had not been seen in Latin America. We invite companies to use it widely, either directly or by building a payments company on top of our technology,” said Aron Schwarzkopf, CEO and co-founder of Kushki. “As the first regional acquirer, we will be able to make payment innovation more accessible, giving businesses and payment service providers more control over their transactions”.

Learn more about the benefits of our non-bank acquiring model here:

Kushki’s journey to becoming LATAM’s first next-gen payment acquirer

Download our different e-books here Kushki e-books