“Can a Central American card-controls SaaS company become the embedded financial infrastructure layer for banks and businesses across LatAm?”
Founded in 2013 in Costa Rica as a payment technology company, IMPESA built Monibyte as a B2B2C SaaS card-controls platform sold to banks across Central America. It later expanded into a direct-to-consumer Visa Prepaid card and crypto wallet (Monibyte App) targeting the unbanked, and launched Kipo — a PayPal-to-local-bank transfer service — as a separate product line. By 2023, IMPESA was expanding Monibyte's corporate expense management into Mexico via Banca Afirme, pivoting from a Costa Rica-centric fintech to a regional LatAm embedded finance infrastructure provider.
IMPESA (Monibyte) moves money over Visa Direct.
IMPESA (Monibyte)'s cards run on Visa.
IMPESA (Monibyte)'s crypto products run on Paxos.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 3 layers in IMPESA (Monibyte)'s stack: Money movement (Visa Direct); Card network (Visa); Crypto (Paxos).
IMPESA (Monibyte) is founded in 2013 and headquartered in Escazú, San José, Costa Rica.
IMPESA (Monibyte) has raised $11M in total.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against IMPESA (Monibyte) and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.