Colombian startup Yuno raises $10m seed round to solve online payments in Latin America

Yuno, a Colombia-based startup has raised a $10 million seed round to bring to Latin American companies an easy online checkout solution that solves the pain point of managing multiple payment methods, and fraud detection tools, which can be costly and painful to manage.

Companies of all sizes across Latin America continuously face challenges in managing multiple payment methods and fraud detection tools for accepting online payments. A fragmented and complex market makes that a single solution doesn't solve all their problems. Companies are forced to integrate many different payment providers because of low acceptance, high fraud, and low conversion rates. Furthermore, the region has seen an increase in new alternative payment methods that have worsened the problem.

Julián Núñez, Co-founder, Yuno: "Accepting and optimizing online payments shouldn't be a pain for companies. We want to build the ultimate solution to help them make online checkout fast, easy and safe so that companies can focus on their core business."

Yuno is already working with several large-sized e-Commerce companies in Latin America, helping them reallocate resources from payments and fraud into their core business while dramatically improving their checkout conversions. The company is led by world-class and experienced members coming from companies like Rappi, Ingenico, Worldpay, McKinsey & Co., and MasterCard.

Juan Pablo Ortega, Co-founder, Yuno: "We are focused on bringing the most talented people in the region to continue tackling this huge opportunity across Latam. We have already experienced the problem of optimizing payments at Rappi and have created a successful solution for the company. Now we are committed to bringing the solution to the market to make sure no other company suffers that same pain point in the future."

Ortega and Núñez met at Rappi while working together in the payments team, solving this issue while the company was expanding to 9 different countries. Ortega built and scaled Rappi's Payments and Fraud teams and capabilities while architecting the buildout of Rappi's financial services arm, RappiBank. Núñez created Rappi's one-click checkout, Paga con Rappi, and led Rappi's e-commerce business unit. Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm based in Silicon Valley, provided an initial investment for Yuno as part of the firm's program for fintech startup founders.

Kaszek, who co-led the round, has become the largest Latin American based early-stage venture capital fund, led by founding members of Mercado Libre and Mercado Pago. The firm that recently raised a $1 billion fund is an early investor in Nubank, Kavak, Quinto Andar, and Bitso.  Monashees, who co-led the investment, is one of Latin America's pioneer early-stage firm with almost two decades of successful experience investing in the region. The firm has invested in extraordinary companies such as Rappi, Loft, and Ualá.

Fabiola Quinzaños, principal, Monashees: "Latin America's payment ecosystem has been through a radical digitization process in the past couple of years. However, there are still huge pain points in how merchants get paid, how these payments are orchestrated and how to provide a seamless experience for customers. It's a multi-billion dollar problem in the region, and Yuno's approach will be the solution." 

Nazca, Latitud, OneVC, Opera Ventures, Saurabh Gupta, partner of DST Global, and angel investors including Simon Borrero, Co-founder and CEO of Rappi, Ricardo Weder of Justo, Sujay Tile of Merama, Gerry Giacomán Colyer of Clara,  Enrique Villamarin of Tul, Maria Echeverri of Muni and the Bilbao brothers also invested in Yuno.

www.y.uno