Flink Raises US$57 million to Increase Investment Offering

Mexican neobroker Flink raised a US$57 million round of Series B funding. The financial platform that offers both digital banking and investment services plans to use these resources to hire staff and offer a wider range of investment products, which also encompass new financial education services.

This round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners fund and joined by investors such as Accel, Mexican fund ALLVP and Mantis Venture Capital, is Flink's second investment round of the year, after Accel invested US$12 million in a series A round in February. Back in 2019, Spanish fund Latinia invested US$1 million in Flink in a seed investment round. “We are very bullish on the potential of fintechs to make a true impact for millions of people in Latam”, wrote on Mexico Business Chloé Novène, Investment Associate at ALLVP, referring to the partnerships the venture capital fund has made with Flink, FINTUAL and MIBO.

Flink has changed the way Mexicans access investment vehicles, allowing its users to invest in fractions of shares on the stock exchange for as little as MX$30 (US$1.4). This product, which the fintech launched in June 2020, attracted more than 1 million users in one year and expects to end 2021 with a total of 3 million users

Flink, launched in 2017 by Sergio Jiménez and Ricardo Rafael as a neobank, has established itself as one of the fastest-growing financial services in the fintech ecosystem. The Mexican platform seeks to make the financial system and the ability to invest and trade in the stock market available to a wider range of people and “not just a privileged sector.” In the past weeks, Flink surpassed the 1-million-user mark. “We are proud to have built a platform that empowers and engages people, as 90 percent of our Flinkers are investing for the first time,” the platform added.

In Mexico, a person has to have at least MX$25,000 (US$1,230) to be able to buy shares, open an account and pay all the associated commissions, Jiménez told Crunchbase. This is very difficult for many, he noted, as the country’s average wage is 60 percent of that amount. “The structure we have for investment was built for the wealthy. Mexico’s population is 120 million right now but there are fewer than 500,000 investment accounts in the whole country. Less than 1 percent of the population has access to this. It is a systemic problem in Mexico,” he added.