Mexico-Based Aplazo Raises $70 Million for Omnichannel Payment Platform

Aplazo has raised $70 million in equity funding, including a $45 million Series B, to continue building its omnichannel payment platform.

The Mexico-based company will also use artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand the needs of consumers and merchants and to enhance risk decisions, Aplazo said in a Monday (May 13) press release.

“Aplazo set out to become the preferred payment method in Mexico through fair, simple and transparent financial solutions, rather than traditional credit products that lure users into a debt trap,” Angel Peña, CEO and co-founder of Aplazo, said in the release.

The company’s omnichannel payment platform includes commerce enablement tools and offers flexible payment solutions like buy now, pay later (BNPL), according to the release.

Aplazo said in the release that 40% of its users have no credit history, that it maintains a credit approval rate of over 80% and that it has delivered low-single-digit credit loss rates.

In addition to offering BNPL through a network of both online and offline merchants, Aplazo offers a single-use virtual card that allows users to buy in installments anywhere they want, per the release.

Aplazo is working to become “the preferred payment solution in Mexico,” Mike Packer, partner and head of LatAm at QED Investors, which led the equity financing, said in the release.

“The company has made great progress in recent years, including delivering sustainable unit economics with a laser focus on the customer experience,” Packer said.

Before BNPL came to Mexico, customers needed a credit card to make installment purchases — but only 11% of the population had access to credit and about 40% had no credit history.

Aplazo was formed to provide consumers with access to an alternative form of credit, using open banking and telecom data to determine what customers can afford and how much credit they can get.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that while shoppers in Mexico strongly prefer shopping in-store to shopping online, they still use digital shopping and payment features like buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) options, digital coupons and free shipping.

The average local shopper used 10 such features during their most recent purchases, according to the “2023 Global Digital Shopping Index: Mexico Edition,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Cybersource collaboration.