Latin American fintechs raised US $ 525M (US $ 249.3M in equity and US $ 275.7M in debt) in 74 deals in the first half of 2020, according to Latam Fintech Hub, showing that investment has continued despite the uncertainty. Nonetheless, uncertainty has been a regular point of conversation in investor meetings. Oyster, a Mexican startup that offers digital accounts for businesses and which raised a US $ 14 million round this year, met similar concerns in its fundraising process. However, its investors took into account that the turbulent period would eventually pass, its CEO Vilash Poovala told iupana. “The only thing that stayed constant was the interest, which never waned. We were able to show that we were adapting quickly, even as funding was being processed, in terms of knowing how we could be agile in the context of COVID-19, ″ he explained. “There was a peculiarity in the round,” says Sosa of Tiendanube. “One of the investors was already an investor in the company, which made things easier. “We had met Qualcomm Ventures in person last year, but then a large part of the process took place online.” The same happened with Oyster, which had already managed to capture market interest with a series of face-to-face meetings before the pandemic. “Videoconferencing is becoming more normal and I think investors will realize that it is too early to predict how they have invested and what those results are,” reflected Poovala. “I feel like that face-to-face interaction tells you a lot about the entrepreneur, which is very difficult to achieve with a video call at the moment,” added the Oyster executive.

https://iupana.com/2020/10/19/latam-fintech-investment-turns-virtual-mostly/?lang=en