Bold
“Can a Colombian merchant acquirer become the financial OS — payments, account, credit, investments — for every SMB in LatAm?”
Founded2019
HQBogotá, Colombia
FoundersJosé Vélez
Total raised$130M+
Latest roundSeries C, 2024
IndustryFintech / SMB banking
The story
Founded 2019 as a Colombian merchant acquirer selling cheap card-acceptance dataphones to micro and SMB merchants. Expanded from pure payment acceptance into an SMB financial OS — Bold Capital launched embedded credit (2023), and Bold CF was structured as a regulated Compañía de Financiamiento (Colombian finance company) to offer a deposit account, credit card, QR payments and investments. Today Bold operates two legal entities: Bold Pagos (Bold.Co S.A.S., the acquirer/payments business) and Bold CF (the regulated lender/account-provider).
Last 12 months
Product timeline
2019
Founded in Bogotá as an independent merchant acquirer for SMBs, launching low-cost payment dataphones.· launch
2022
Raised $55M Series B led by Tiger Global to expand digital payments in Colombia.· funding
2023
Launched Bold Capital pilot — embedded credit lines for merchants on the platform.· lending
2024
Raised $50M Series C led by General Atlantic; IFC joined to support financial inclusion.· funding
2025
Expanded into full SMB financial OS: Cuenta Bold (account), Tarjeta de crédito, QR Bold, investments, and online payments APIs under Bold CF Compañía de Financiamiento S.A.· banking
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Bold
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
5 layers disclosed in Bold’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Bold Pagos (self-operated acquirer)Datáfonos (self-operated POS terminals)Botón de Pagos (self-operated)Link de Pago (self-operated)API Pagos en Línea (self-operated)QR Bold / Bre-B (self-operated)PSE (local Colombian debit rail)
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: significant
7 more providers across 4 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.