Ume, a payment network and merchant services platform for small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) on Pix, today announced it has raised $ 15 million in Series A equity funding. The round was led by PayPal Ventures, with participation from NFX, Globo Ventures, Clocktower Ventures, Big Bets, FJ Labs, Endeavor and Norte Ventures. Ume has also raised a USD $20 million FIDC debt facility from Verde, Wersten Asset, Itaú, Credit Saison and Milenio. The equity funding and debt facility will be used primarily for sales, marketing, and technology to accelerate Ume’s expansion into new regions and enhance its Pix capacities.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) has become one of Brazil’s most popular financial services, with nearly 71% of Brazilian consumers regularly making installment purchases according to the Brazilian credit bureau Serasa Experian. Ume offers its consumer financing product through its robust, established network of 6,000 merchants in Brazil, reaching more than 220,000 consumers. By enabling consumers to use Ume’s BNPL product across all of its partner merchants, Ume has driven strong repeat usage behavior, with 85% of purchases coming from repeat customers.

Now, Ume is leveraging Pix to scale and grow its business by building a Pix-first payment network and merchant services platform that enables SMBs on Pix to offer greater flexibility in payment options for their customers. Pix has dramatically transformed the financial landscape in Brazil by allowing faster, more accessible mobile payment transactions, and has quickly become the main payment method in the country with more than 100 million monthly users. Since incorporating the Pix rail into its network in early 2023, Ume has grown its merchant base 5x faster, seen consumer repeat rates that are 3x higher and default rates diminish by 33%.

“Our vision is to build a next generation payment network and merchant services platform on Pix rails that provides Brazilians with more accessible and flexible payment methods and enables thousands of Brazilian SMBs to grow their businesses,” said Berthier Ribeiro, co-founder and CEO of Ume. “By creating infrastructure on the Pix rails, we are able to provide SMBs with an array of financial products that they can quickly, easily and conveniently offer to their customers – fueling their growth and improving how Brazilians shop and pay.

”By building its infrastructure on the public Pix rails, Ume is able to quickly scale up by instantly onboarding new merchants and consumers, as well as through expanded product offerings such as enabling certain consumers to purchase from merchants outside the Ume network, allowing them to buy both online and offline. Today, 80% of purchases using Ume happen offline, while 20% are online. “Ume has capitalized on the ubiquity of Pix in Brazil and has gained impressive traction,” said Ian Cox, Investment Partner at PayPal Ventures. “We are excited to be supporting the Ume team as they continue to build the future of payments in Brazil.”

For many of its consumers, Ume is their only or primary source of credit, yet the company has been able to maintain a healthy credit portfolio, while delivering 30% higher approval rates than other BNPL players. This can be attributed in large part to Ume’s proprietary deep neural network credit scoring model and engine that continuously assesses risk throughout the consumer journey and swiftly adapts credit conditions and policies.