Minka Raises $24M for Clearinghouse and Central Bank Modernization

Colombia-based FinTech Minka on Thursday (April 28) grabbed $24 million in capital through a funding round that it will use to continue the modernization of its clearinghouse and central banks infrastructure and grow its network with a full-service publishing and money-moving platform.

Tiger Global and Kaszek led Minka’s fundraising effort, according to a Financial IT report. The company enables banks, clearinghouses and organizations to publish and exchange payment balances, the report noted.

The Minka network connects legacy systems through blockchain concepts and modern application programming interfaces (APIs) to streamline money movement, allowing for an almost-unlimited number of use cases and helping money to move securely, instantly and without the need for reconciliation.

Minka’s Transfiya project, a partnership with ACH Colombia, is one of the fastest-growing real-time payments projects in Latin America. It includes a direct read and write API access to 80% of the accounts in the country, making it the largest open banking project in the region, the report said.

“We aim to connect the world’s balances through the web using shared, connected ledgers,” Minka CEO Domagoj Rozic said in the report. “The project in Colombia has proven this is possible and has become one of the fastest-growing real-time payments networks in the region, enabling previously slow money to move instantly and with minimal cost.”

Almost 2 million people use the Transfiya project to send money using a phone number, and it will soon support one-click purchases, payouts and collections.

Earlier this month, Nubank, Latin America’s most valuable listed bank, announced it is investing in a $650 million credit line to expand into Colombia and Mexico.

Related: Nubank Invests $650M to Expand to Colombia, Mexico

The new funds are a three-year line of credit in Colombian and Mexican pesos financed by Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and HSBC, all of which underwrote the Brazil-based Nubank’s initial public offering (IPO) in December 2021.

At the time of the IPO, the company said the $2.6 billion it had raised would help it expand into Colombia and Mexico. Nubank, which is also backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said the funding will go toward technology and product development, hiring and expanding its customer base.