B2B Payments Platform Tribal Snags $60M in Funding

Business-to-business (B2B) payments and financing platform Tribal closed a $60 million Series B fundraising round, bringing its total investment to $140 million, according to a Thursday (Feb. 3) press release.

SoftBank Latin America Fund led the Series B funding effort, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, BECO Capital, QED Investors and Rising Tide. Tribal, which has customers in two dozen countries, also offered secondary shares to Circle Ventures, AGE Fund, Third Prime, Canas Capital and Acuity Ventures.

Tribal will use the fresh capital to add more employees in Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Peru and Chile, according to the release.

“Tribal is using crypto to fundamentally change the rules of the game for payments and lending. Very few companies can bridge TradFi and DeFi in such an innovative, yet seamless way,” Shu Nyatta, managing partner of SoftBank Latin America Fund, said in the announcement.

Tribal raised $40 million last month in a debt round from the Stellar Development Foundation, which brought stablecoin USDC into the Tribal ecosystem. The company is slated to launch cryptocurrency-related products later this year, but hasn’t offered any specifics.

Related: B2B Financing Platform Tribal Raises $40M

The remainder of Tribal’s debt funding last month came via a $20 million investment by venture debt funding firm Partners for Growth.

Chief Strategy Officer Mohamed Elkasstawi told CoinDesk the addition of USDC into the company’s ecosystem will give small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that are its clients “cheaper, easier and faster access to capital.”

In April 2020, Tribal wrapped up a $34.3 million Series A funding effort, which also included participation from Partners for Growth.

SMBs in emerging markets have a tougher time getting access to capital, and the money is often tagged with interest rates between 20 and 200% per year, said Elkasstawi. Cryptocurrency gives these businesses “much easier to capital,” he said, and rates between 10% and 50%.

In December, Tribal announced plans to expand into Chile, Columbia and Peru and the company also is looking into other Latin American countries this year.