Belvo Acquires Skilopay to Add Pix Payment Services in Brazil

Belvo has acquired Skilopay to expand its payment product offering in Brazil.

With the purchase, Skilopay’s payment services through Pix will be added to Belvo’s open finance data and payments platform, the companies said in a Tuesday (April 25) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

“Thanks to Skilopay’s expertise around Pix payments, we are now able to offer a more complete set of payment solutions to our customers in Brazil,” Albert Morales, Belvo’s general manager in Brazil, said in the release. “Our aim is to provide companies with easier ways of receiving, holding and sending money through account-to-account payment rails in Latin America and this acquisition brings us one step closer to achieving that goal.”

As PYMNTS reported in April 2022, Brazil has become a regional leader in both digital banking and digital payments adoption.

The Brazilian government and central banking system are harnessing this digital innovation with Pix, their own instant payments platform, which is now used by more than half the country’s consumers, according to the “Digitizing Payments in Latin America Playbook,” a PYMNTS and Kushki collaboration.

Belvo already helps Brazilian companies accept funds through open finance payment initiation. The firm works with 150 companies in the three markets in which it operates — Brazil, Mexico and Columbia — and aims to continue adding new payment capabilities, according to the press release.

With the acquisition of Skilopay, Belvo will incorporate new payment use cases into its platform over the coming months, including instant pay-in and pay-out capabilities through Pix and holding funds in Belvo accounts, the release said.

“We’re thrilled about this acquisition which demonstrates the tremendous work that Skilopay’s team has put into building our solution and which will be key to help Belvo achieve its mission of bringing more efficiency to the account-to-account payment ecosystem in the region,” Skilopay founder Victor Silva said in the release.

This acquisition — which is Belvo’s first — comes about 10 months after Belvo received an Institution of Electronic Payment Funds (IFPE) license from Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), which enables it to offer its clients in Mexico bank-to-bank payment processing and issuing capabilities.