Clara Strengthens Its Position in Latin America With a Mastercard License

Mexico City, October 21, 2021 - As part of its expansion strategy and constant improvement of the user experience, Clara, the Latin American startup that offers the most complete business spend management solution, announced that its corporate credit card offering will now be backed by Mastercard, reinforcing the growth trajectory the startup has experienced just 7 months after its launch in Mexico.

In this way, Clara offers its customers a more robust and solid platform thanks to obtaining its own license to issue its cards. This allows Clara to operate without depending on other providers and to deliver the best experience to its customers, guaranteeing the highest acceptance of its products locally and internationally (applicable to physical and digital purchases).

“Even before launching Clara, one of our main goals was to operate through our own license. Obtaining it through Mastercard has meant a year of constant work in which we have been able to develop a robust, solid and proprietary infrastructure. Achieving this milestone is a key step in our vision to boost the region's entrepreneurial and business ecosystem, always focused on the security, protection and experience of users,” said Gerry Giacomán Colyer, CEO and co-founder of Clara.

In this regard, Andreas Waldmann, Chief Marketing Officer of the startup, added: “this type of alliance allows us to increase our offering of benefits, not only at the brand level but also translated into an improvement in the user experience through the platform and our products. Now our customers will not only be able to pay at more than 24 million establishments internationally, but they will also be able to use our solution at any time without any type of restriction or cost, and they will have the backing of a customer experience team available 24/7 to meet their needs in a personalized way.”

This announcement adds to the list of milestones the company has accumulated this year, in which Clara has raised almost US$40 million, backed by some of the most important international investment funds and a dozen angel investors. In the middle of this year, the startup added a SPEI payments and transfers product with an automatic connection to the SAT to its offering. It also presented a new flexible financing model for companies, which allows them to finance operations with payment dates according to their needs. More recently, the startup was listed as one of the best companies to work for in Mexico in LinkedIn's Top 10 startups ranking.

Clara's portfolio currently includes customers such as Kavak, Jüsto, Casai and Sofía Salud, among thousands of other fast-growing companies, and reports transactions equivalent to more than MXN$2,000 million annually.