Removing Financial Barriers for the Next Generation of Global Entrepreneurs

By Brent MacDonald – Principal @ Rising Tide  

Tribal Raises $60M in Oversubscribed Series B

Tribal Raises $40M in Crypto-TradFi Debt Round to Power Payments, Financing for LatAm SMBs

The startup economy is booming in emerging markets, but the banking infrastructure that should support it is broken. A huge gap exists between the financial services offered and what startups really need. Around 200 million small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in emerging economies lack access to formal savings and credit, which often restrict or slow startup growth and severely restricts their international business. Strict banking regulations often limit or make difficult the opening of business bank accounts, obtaining credit cards, and making cross-border payments.

Tribal Credit (Tribal) bridges this gap and offers long-needed financial tools to startup founders. Tribal Credit is a B2B payment fintech specially designed for startups in emerging markets. The Company uses a proprietary AI-driven underwriting approval process to evaluate businesses and approve them for credit lines. Those businesses can then use those credit lines to spend on Tribal products, Tribal Card, and Tribal Pay. Tribal Card is a business Visa card that allows users to create physical and virtual multi-currency cards. In short, Tribal Pay allows users to make payments to merchants and suppliers that do not accept credit cards. The Company says its value proposition lies not only in its ability to provide SMBs with virtual and physical corporate cards but also as a global digital platform that allows founders and CFOs to give access to and manage the spending of their distributed teams.

Visa’s ‘Fintech Fast Track’ Program

Tribal also joined Visa’s ‘Fintech Fast Track’ Program adding it to an elite group of fintech and accelerating its integration with Visa’s global payment network. Globally, there are approximately 1 billion potential new card credentials and more than 65 million merchants coming from fintech, neo banks, and wallets, according to Visa. Its Fintech Fast Track program is key to unlocking this opportunity.

Tribal announced it raised $60M in Series B funding to support its growing customer base in over 22 countries and its rapid expansion across Latin America. Tribal will use funds from this round to continue building its local teams in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile. Series B follows Tribal’s recent $40 million crypto and fiat hybrid debt. In Spring 2021, the Company also closed a combined Series A and debt round of $34.3 million bringing the Company’s total funding to over $140 million.

Why We Are Excited?

With expertise honed at leading tech companies and financial institutions, Tribal’s founding team of serial entrepreneurs, data scientists, and fintech executives has built and scaled startups in both emerging markets and the U.S. To spearhead company growth as it scales across markets, Tribal attracted a global management team of former leaders from HSBC, Visa, Experian, Mercado Libre, American Express, Nubank, Marqeta, and Didi Pay, among other leading startups and top financial institutions. This latest round of financing allows Tribal to accelerate its growth in Mexico and help the new generation of SMBs fueling the Mexican economy and break free from local financial barriers. Latin America is a $15 billion opportunity, which is led by Mexico, Tribal’s biggest market.

Tribal Credit is on a mission to power SMB growth in emerging markets and to bridge the business financial inclusion gap in payments and financing. We strongly support this mission. The must for a corporate card has hastened especially with an increasing demand for making B2B online payments. Companies in this new economy are digital and global first and the need for a corporate credit card has accelerated. Tribal Credit has answered the call.

Tribal’s $60 Million Series B funding press release is found here.

Tribal Raises $40 Million in Crypto-TradFi Debt press release is found here.

Rising Tide Fund Managers, LLC and its affiliates (“Rising Tide” or “We”) is a United States venture capital firm investing primarily in the information technology and healthcare/life sciences markets. Over the last 35 years, we have partnered with family funds, high-impact investors, and strategic partners to help launch and expand startups in a variety of industries across three continents. We are dedicated to cooperating with our entrepreneurs at all stages: from financing to leveraging our international networks to facilitating exits by design. For more information, visit www.rtf.vc.

The portfolio companies described herein do not represent all the portfolio companies purchased, sold, or recommended for portfolios advised by Rising Tide. The reader should not assume that an investment in the portfolio companies identified were or will be profitable. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investors should be aware that a loss of investment is possible.