Company extends beyond core payment services with its Payment Plus Platform, starting with WhatsApp Liquido Store - A "Shopify" Within WhatsApp; Liquido tops $300 million in payments processed during closed beta and raises $26 million in funding
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 4, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Liquido, the next generation payments company for Latin America, emerged from stealth today to launch publicly. The company spent the last two years building a comprehensive and flexible payments infrastructure to modernize and democratize digital payments access for Latin American businesses, similar to what Stripe built in the U.S. Liquido's core payment services serve a wide range of needs and customer preferences, all through one unified and integrated API. The company has already processed more than $300 million in payments through a closed beta with several top consumer brands, and now, after extensive testing, it is ready to open access to its best-in-class technology to merchants across Latin America.
Additionally, Liquido debuted its Payment Plus Platform (PPP), which runs on top of its core payment services, extending capabilities in new and exciting ways. PPP is designed to create customer experiences tailored to local markets and grow within verticals. Its initial solutions include the first-of-its-kind WhatsApp Liquido Store and Payment Success Booster.
To accelerate deployment and development of additional capabilities, Liquido raised $26 million in funding from Index Ventures and additional investors, including Base Partners, Restive Ventures, Mantis VC and UpHonest Capital, all of whom are recognized for supporting innovative fintechs throughout the world.
Built Exclusively for LatAm
According to Statista, the transaction value of digital commerce in Latin America was estimated at more than $100 billion in 2019 and is now expected to increase by approximately 73% by 2025– growing further to reach $371.2 billion by 2027. Yet, credit cards only account for 23% of total digital transactions, leaving the remainder to different mechanisms that struggle with deliverability, reliability and user experience issues. Despite its market size and opportunity, the Latin American payments market remains fragmented. Liquido fills the need with world-class payments infrastructure that will transform payments within the region.
"Between my work at Uber and DiDi, I spent several years devoted to the LatAm market, and I was struck by the prevalence of cash payments for rides," said Shanxiang Qi, Liquido co-founder and CTO. "This observation led me to conclude that even the middle and upper echelons of society in the region lacked convenient access to digital payments, which ultimately limited options for business. We needed to create a way for businesses to offer better, more secure financial services to deliver what the market deserves."
A New Way to Transact
With Liquido, businesses can accept and process all forms of payment– from credit and debit cards to bank transfers to digital wallets, and even cash – in order to increase payment acceptance rates. Liquido also provides alternative solutions to help companies to make payroll payments as well as pay suppliers, associated businesses and more through bank transfers. Now, the company takes payments further.
After multiple rounds of ideation and customer testing, Liquido has introduced the first offering for its PPP: the WhatsApp Liquido-Store. It allows merchants to effortlessly create a mini Shopify-like storefront within WhatsApp without any coding knowledge required. Customers can browse, find and buy from merchants all within the familiar environment of WhatsApp, which is the most used social network in Latin America, with more than 94% penetration in several countries. Liquido's core payment service offerings help close the loop within the WhatsApp context, boosting shopping conversion rate and enhancing the overall customer experience.
Not only does this functionality enable merchants to maintain a close relationship with customers and offer smoother shopping experiences, it also empowers them to explore new ways of conducting business, such as hiring crowdsourced community sales representatives, running promotional events for loyal customer groups, and even creating real group buying experiences.
Addressing the Achilles Heel
The Latin American market has struggled as traditional payment methods like credit cards have resulted in high fraud rates and low payment success rates while more secure, newly developed and quickly evolving local instant payment methods have taken a toll on convenience, leading to longer user flows involving multiple clicks, information entries, and sometimes even app-switching, all of which contribute to low payment go-through rates. To solve these problems, Liquido launched its Payment Success Booster on the PPP.
Payment Success Booster helps merchants achieve higher payment success rates without taking on additional risks. Key features include customizable fraud flagging and transaction blocking, WhatsApp payment recovery, flexible payment method switching, and smart routing and retrying. With options like these, Liquido significantly enhances the overall e-commerce experience for both merchants and customers.
"In the rapidly evolving LatAm market, there is typically high consumer demand for advanced technology, products, and experiences, while product development and adoption lag behind. As a result, companies like Liquido must break out of their horizontal service layer to extend offerings both upstream and downstream to guarantee seamless delivery and an exceptional user experience," said MK Li, Liquido co-founder and CEO. "While developing our PPP narratives, invaluable insights and new possibilities have come from our pilot users. For example, an early adopter launched Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns with direct click-through to their branded WhatsApp Liquido Store. Innovative usage like this validates our direction and fuels our determination to provide the solutions our customers and users deserve in this vibrant economy."
Built and Backed by Insiders
Liquido was co-founded by Shanxiang Qi, an Uber alum who worked on the company's expansion in China, Southeast Asia and Latin America and also served as the Head of Payment and Head of Growth for DiDi's LatAm expansion, and MK Li, a former VC who began his career at Google, followed by Microsoft Silicon Valley. The pair had discussed issues plaguing Latin America for several years, along with the opportunities that existed, as they were persistently inspired by the region. At the beginning of 2021, they came together to start Liquido with the mission of maximizing the potential of clients by simplifying and optimizing the payments connectivity and experience in Latin America.
"Shan and MK tapped into payments in a part of the world that was ripe for disruption," said Mark Fiorentino, Partner at Index Ventures. "Based on their previous work, they each brought a depth of understanding to the issues and developed one of the most advanced, yet practical, payments systems found anywhere in the world. We are incredibly bullish on Liquido and are excited for merchants– and their customers– to experience the benefits."
About Liquido
Liquido offers cross border and local businesses in the Latin American countries a comprehensive and flexible payments platform that guarantees existing business, unlocks new revenue and maximizes reach for today's market. With innovative solutions designed to meet local needs, Liquido uplevels what digital payments can be. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with additional offices in Brazil, Mexico and Asia. It is backed by index Ventures and other institutional and individual investors. Learn more at http://www.liquido.com.
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SOURCE Liquido
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