Zippi raises a $16M Series A to expand its micro-entrepreneur credit solution

Zippi is an online lending startup revolutionizing financial services for gig workers. Zippi, the YC S19 graduate offers micro-entrepreneurs a credit solution through PIX, Brazil’s popular real-time payment system.

Founded in 2019 by André Bernardes, Ludmila Pontremolez and Bruno Lucas who saw an opportunity in the emerging instant payments industry for payments to businesses, not just individuals. As financial technology veterans, they impressed the YCombinator team and joined the YC S19 batch where Zillionize invested in their seed round.

André the Zippi CEO goes into more detail:

“What motivated us to create Zippi was the context of the micro-entrepreneur in Brazil: today 30% of the country’s workforce performs this way, that’s a contingent of 23 million Brazilians who have a very specific working day. The micro-entrepreneur is a person and a company at the same time.

We saw a great opportunity because the financial products available to this public are not compatible with the needs of the micro-entrepreneur, but rather with the needs of consumers”

In November 2020, the Brazilian Central Bank released PIX, an Instant Payment system that takes financial and digital inclusion to a new level and with widespread adoption.

By adding PIX integration to the Zippi solution the team has widened its market to more than half of the Brazilian population. More than 110 million people have made at least one PIX transaction. In March 2022, 1.6 billion PIX transactions were made.

With over 70% month-on-month growth in 2022, the team has a goal of reaching 10x growth by the end of the year. This series A raise will help them achieve this by growing the Zippi team and expanding their operation.

Zillionize is proud to have invested in Zippi and its disruptive lending product. Read more about the Zippi Series A here and here.

Zillionize is a seed round investor which has been investing in technology startups since March 2011. We look for early startups who we believe can see the future. We use a data-driven approach to identify startups we love and want to invest in for the long term. Zillionize has invested in a number of unicorns and we look forward to more of our portfolio joining this list in the years to come.