Brazilian Startup Barte Raises $3 Million for B2B Payments Platform

Barte has raised 16 million Brazilian real (about $3 million) for its B2B payments platform.

This seed round brings to 22 million Brazilian real (about $4 million) the amount the Brazilian startup has raised in the past six months, Barte said in a Monday (March 6) blog post translated by Google.

The firm began operations in 2022 and its products offer small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) cash flow management and access to credit, according to the post.

“We have consolidated ourselves as a reference for those looking to make their payments a strategic front of the company — and it is being a privilege to rid teams of such a headache,” Barte Founder and CEO Caetano Lacerda said in the post. “The round is a vote of confidence from funds that takes us to another level of preparedness for Barte’s next steps.”

PYMNTS research has found that Brazil has become a leader in Latin America in terms of its adoption of both digital banking and digital payments.

The prevalence of digital payments in the country makes Brazil a prime example of the technology’s upward potential in the region, according to the “Digitizing Payments in Latin America Playbook,” a PYMNTS and Kushki collaboration.

One of Barte’s products simplifies B2B payments by automating transactions and processes before and after the payment. The other product uses payment information to enable access to credit through the platform, according to the blog post.

Since its pre-seed round six months ago, Barte has gained 2,000 companies as users, increased its team to 20 people and moved 20 million Brazilian real (about $4 million) through the platform, Barte Founder Raphael Dyxklay said in the blog.

The company’s recent seed round was led by NXTP and Force Over Mass.

“Barte is going after a huge market opportunity by digitizing financial flows and plugging the financing gap that [SMBs] face in Latin America,” NXTP Partner Alexander Busse said in the post. “Caetano and Raphael are uniquely suited to solve this problem, and their customer-centric approach to growth has generated phenomenal traction.”

This announcement comes three days after Brazil’s central bank authorized users in the country to use WhatsApp to pay businesses.

The Meta Platforms-owned messaging app began allowing users in Brazil to send money to friends, family and loved ones through the app in 2020, and will soon enable them to make payments to businesses as well.