Belo, an Argentine cryptocurrency business that provides a digital wallet, has secured $3 million in a seed round to extend its activities in Argentina and expand into Mexico and Brazil. CRV, The Venture City, Newtopia, Latitud, Liquid 2, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Magma Partners, and Sur VC participated in the seed round.
Belo, which launched in Argentina in September 2021, enables users to buy and sell Bitcoin, Ether, DAI, and Tether (USDT) in Argentine pesos and get cashback in those digital currencies.
The goal of Belo is to give better financial services to the public, primarily for the Latin market, to address some of the systemic issues around inflation and capital regulations, as per CEO Manuel Beaudroit.
The firm was the first in Latin America to issue a cryptocurrency Mastercard, which offers 2% to 21% rewards.
“We have worked with MasterCard to issue this prepaid card which you can use to spend whatever assets you have in your balance. You define which assets you want to spend, in which order and that’s it,” Beaudroit said.
Belo now has 170,000 members on its network, aspirations to reach one million in Argentina by 2022. In addition, Belo wants to introduce a service geared for legal entities in the second quarter of 2022 to lure enterprises and businesses into the crypto realm.
The company is also considering introducing additional capabilities, such as expense quotation using its debit card. Due to rising interest in the Latin crypto ecosystem among global venture capital companies, the business does not preclude financing a Series A in 2022.
