Weekly 28 — LatAm VC Report: TOP 3 Capital Raises

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Special Edition — Institutional Analysis & Overview of Private Markets

Week 28 (July 3–10, 2026)

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Crypto goes institutional: Tether backs Brazil's largest digital asset platform as Mexico and Uruguay chase financial inclusion

Week 28 had a different center of gravity than the fintech-heavy weeks before it. The largest deal wasn't a consumer lending story or a WhatsApp-native banking play — it was the world's largest stablecoin issuer writing a check into a twelve-year-old Brazilian crypto exchange, a bet that on-chain infrastructure in Latin America is now mature enough for strategic, not just speculative, capital. Around it, two very different fintechs kept pushing on the region's oldest problem: getting money to people banks still don't reach.

In this edition, the WarZ Intelligence analysis team examines the three largest transactions of the week — deals that, together, totaled US$51.5 million, spanning crypto infrastructure in Brazil, kiosk-based lending in Mexico, and stablecoin payment rails in Uruguay.

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🔥 DEAL #1 — DIGITAL ASSET INFRASTRUCTURE

Brazil — 2TM raises US$20 million as Tether makes a strategic bet on Mercado Bitcoin's on-chain infrastructure.

Deal Snapshot

2TM, the holding company behind Mercado Bitcoin — Latin America's largest regulated digital asset platform — raised US$20 million in the first closing of a Series C round, with the entire check written by Tether, issuer of the world's largest stablecoin, USDT. Founded in 2013 by brothers Gustavo and Mauricio Chamati as Brazil's first crypto exchange, Mercado Bitcoin has since expanded into a full-stack financial platform spanning trading, tokenization, credit, and stablecoin-powered payments — serving 4.5 million users and holding more than ten regulatory licenses across Brazil and Europe, including a Payment Institution license from Brazil's Central Bank.

The capital will fund expansion of payments infrastructure, tokenized investment products, lending, and on-chain capital markets, while deepening 2TM's operational partnership with Tether across the region.

Strategic Context — WarZ Intelligence

1. A strategic investor, not a financial one. Tether doesn't run a traditional venture portfolio — when it writes a check, it's building distribution for USDT itself. This round buys Tether deeper rails into Brazil's regulated financial system, not just equity upside.
2. Twelve years of regulatory groundwork is the actual asset being bought. Mercado Bitcoin's decade-plus of licensing work — a Payment Institution license, broker-dealer capability, asset management authority — is the kind of moat that can't be replicated with capital alone, only time and compliance discipline.
3. This is 2TM's second act, not its first headline. The company was already a LatAm crypto unicorn after SoftBank's 2021 investment. A 2026 raise led by the largest stablecoin issuer on the planet signals the market has moved from "will crypto survive in Brazil" to "who controls the on-chain rails."

Opportunities & Impact

• Deepens Brazil's position as the regulatory proving ground for on-chain finance in Latin America, ahead of Mexico or Colombia.
• A Tether partnership gives Mercado Bitcoin's 4.5 million users more direct access to stablecoin-based products, potentially accelerating tokenized asset adoption regionally.
• Positions 2TM to compete directly with global exchanges for the "regulated on-ramp" position in Brazil's growing digital asset market.

Risks & Open Questions

• Deepening ties to a single stablecoin issuer concentrates strategic dependency on Tether's own regulatory standing, which faces scrutiny in some jurisdictions.
• Brazil's crypto regulatory framework, while advanced by regional standards, is still evolving and could shift the economics of tokenized products.
• As "first closing" of a Series C, the round's full size and additional participants remain undisclosed — the strategic picture may still be incomplete.

WarZ Tech Insight™

When the company that prints the world's most-used stablecoin picks Brazil for a strategic infrastructure bet, that's a stronger regional endorsement than any amount of venture capital hype — Tether is wagering its own rails on Mercado Bitcoin's regulatory groundwork.

➡️ Learn more: 2TM (Mercado Bitcoin) — regulated on-chain financial infrastructure for Brazil

🔥 DEAL #2 — FINANCIAL INCLUSION

Mexico — Aviva raises US$18 million Series A to scale kiosk-based lending for the country's informal economy.

Deal Snapshot

Aviva operates physical lending kiosks across Mexico, offering loans between $100 and $1,000 to individuals and small businesses largely excluded from traditional banking — a segment the company estimates at more than 50 million adults. Customers apply through an AI-powered video assistant at the kiosk, with approvals completed in minutes and no paperwork required.

The company raised a $18 million Series A led by Valor Capital Group, with participation from BID Lab, Caravela Capital, Endeavor, and existing investors Wollef, Ignia, Krealo, and Newtopia. The round brings Aviva's total equity raised to $34 million, on top of more than $80 million in credit facilities already secured. Founded in 2022 by former Konfío colleagues Filiberto Castro, David Hernández, Amran Frey, and Israel García, Aviva now operates in 23 of Mexico's 32 states.

Strategic Context — WarZ Intelligence

1. A founding team that already solved this problem once. All four co-founders came out of Konfío, one of Mexico's most established SME lending fintechs — this isn't a team learning underwriting from scratch, it's one applying lessons learned to an even harder-to-reach segment.
2. Physical kiosks are the actual innovation, not a limitation. In markets where trust in digital-only lenders is low and smartphone access is inconsistent, Aviva's "phygital" model — a human-scale physical location plus AI-driven onboarding — solves a trust problem pure digital fintechs can't.
3. Credit facilities outpacing equity by more than 2-to-1 shows real loan book scale. $80 million in credit facilities against $34 million in total equity suggests Aviva is already originating loans at meaningful volume, not just building toward it.

Opportunities & Impact

• Directly targets Mexico's informal economy — roughly 58% of the workforce — an enormous, underserved lending market most digital-only fintechs can't reach.
• The kiosk model is geographically expandable across similarly underbanked markets throughout Latin America.
• Backing from development-focused investors like BID Lab and Endeavor adds an impact-investing dimension that can open doors to concessional capital down the line.

Risks & Open Questions

• Physical kiosks carry real estate and staffing costs that pure digital lenders avoid — unit economics depend on loan volume per location clearing that overhead.
• Small-dollar lending to informal-economy borrowers carries structurally higher default risk than traditional SME credit.
• Scaling AI-driven video underwriting consistently across hundreds of physical locations is an operational challenge distinct from scaling a purely digital product.

WarZ Tech Insight™

Aviva's bet is that financial inclusion in Latin America isn't purely a technology problem — it's a trust problem, and sometimes the fix for that is a physical kiosk with a human-feeling AI assistant, not just another lending app nobody in the target market would download.

➡️ Learn more: Aviva — kiosk-based AI lending for Mexico's informal economy

🔥 DEAL #3 — STABLECOIN INFRASTRUCTURE

Uruguay — Infinia raises US$13.5 million Series A to connect stablecoin rails with local banking systems across emerging markets.

Deal Snapshot

Infinia builds financial infrastructure that bridges traditional payment systems with stablecoin networks, letting businesses move money between fiat and on-chain rails — including Brazil's Pix and Mexico's SPEI — while handling regulatory compliance and licensing across jurisdictions. The Montevideo-founded, Y Combinator-backed company already counts Stripe and OpenFX among its enterprise clients.

The $13.5 million Series A was led by Bain Capital and Variant Fund, with participation from Y Combinator and existing investors. Founded in 2023 by CEO Ianai Urwicz — a founding team member at dLocal, which he helped grow from $0 to $100 million in ARR — and CTO Alejandro Rettig, who brings 25 years of telecom and financial systems experience, Infinia will use the funding to secure additional regulatory licenses and expand across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Strategic Context — WarZ Intelligence

1. Compliance-first is the actual product, not a feature. Infinia built the unglamorous fiat side — local KYC/KYB, banking partnerships, central-bank instant payment integrations — before leaning into stablecoin rails. That sequencing is precisely what institutional clients like Stripe need to trust the platform with real volume.
2. Founder-market fit from a proven playbook. Ianai Urwicz helped build dLocal into a public, NASDAQ-listed payments company solving a similar emerging-markets infrastructure problem — Infinia is a bet that the same instincts apply to the stablecoin-to-fiat bridge specifically.
3. A16z-style thesis validation from Bain Capital and Variant. Having both a generalist growth fund (Bain) and a crypto-native fund (Variant) co-lead signals the round is being read as both a fintech infrastructure play and a crypto-native infrastructure play simultaneously.

Opportunities & Impact

• Cross-border payments in Latin America alone represent close to a trillion dollars in annual volume, most still running on slow correspondent banking rails Infinia is positioned to replace.
• A client roster that already includes Stripe and OpenFX gives Infinia credibility and integration depth larger fintech infrastructure players will find hard to dislodge.
• Planned expansion into Africa and Asia would extend a Latin America-proven model into other emerging markets facing the same structural stablecoin-adoption drivers: inflation, capital controls, and FX inefficiency.

Risks & Open Questions

• Regulatory licensing is jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction work that doesn't scale as fast as software — expansion into new markets could be gated by compliance timelines, not demand.
• Stablecoin regulatory clarity is still developing globally; shifts in frameworks like MiCA or the U.S. GENIUS Act could reshape the compliance requirements Infinia is built around.
• As the fiat-crypto bridge layer, Infinia depends on continued enterprise demand for stablecoin settlement — a slowdown in stablecoin adoption would directly affect its core use case.

WarZ Tech Insight™

Infinia's pitch is that the hard part of stablecoin adoption was never the blockchain — it's the unglamorous last mile of connecting on-chain rails to Pix, SPEI, and every other local payment system a business actually needs to get paid through.

➡️ Learn more: Infinia — bridging stablecoin rails with local payment systems

Closing Note — Institutional capital finds its on-ramp

Week 28 didn't produce a mega-round or a marquee valuation headline, but it may be more telling than a week that did. Tether backing Mercado Bitcoin, Bain Capital and Variant backing Infinia, and a Konfío alumni team scaling physical lending kiosks all point to the same underlying shift: the institutions writing checks into Latin American fintech and crypto infrastructure are no longer just regional VC funds testing a thesis. They're global players — a stablecoin issuer, a buyout giant, specialist crypto funds — treating the region's payment rails as infrastructure worth owning a piece of.

Across these three deals alone, Latin American founders pulled in a combined US$51.5 million this week — different categories, different countries, same underlying signal: the on-ramp between traditional finance and on-chain infrastructure is being built in Latin America first, not retrofitted here later.

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