Clara Launches Cross-Border Payments Service in Mexico

FinTech company Clara has reportedly launched a cross-border payments service in Mexico. 

The service facilitates international transactions by allowing clients to pay bills in foreign currencies, Reuters reported Monday (Aug. 21). While the users of the service in Mexico will be charged in pesos, the recipients of their payments will receive the currency of their choice. 

Following the launch of this offering in Mexico, Clara plans to expand the international transactions to Colombia and Brazil, according to the report. The company did not specify when it plans to do so. 

Clara did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment. 

The company expects to move up to $100 million in international transactions by the end of the year with this new service, according to the Reuters report. 

Among the initial customers of the service are U.S. multinationals that operate in Mexico and purchase products and services from other countries, the report said. 

This report comes three months after Clara raised $60 million in an equity financing round and said it would use the new capital to continue developing its spend management and payment platform and grow throughout Latin America. 

The company said at the time that about 10,000 companies in the region are using its product suite. Clara added that in the two years it has been operating in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, it has completed more than 5 million credit card transactions equal to $1 billion at an annualized rate. 

Because many B2B companies in Latin America take a regional approach, there is an opportunity for Clara to do the same, Clara CEO and Co-founder Gerry Giacomán Colyer told PYMNTS in an interview posted in December 2021. 

The shift to digital payments means businesses can use a solution like Clara’s to get real-time visibility over how they are spending, as well as perfect traceability of who spent what and when, Giacomán Colyer said at the time. 

“In the local context, we can also do some really cool things,” he said. “There’s central invoicing in Mexico and in many countries across [Latin America]; what that means for the experience that we’re able to build is we can connect our customer’s account with the tax authority and automatically match any invoice with the corresponding spend on the cloud platform.”