IMPESA (Monibyte)
“Can a Central American card-controls SaaS company become the embedded financial infrastructure layer for banks and businesses across LatAm?”
Founded2013
HQEscazú, San José, Costa Rica
Total raised$11M
IndustryFintech / SMB banking
The story
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.
Product timeline
2013
IMPESA (Innovación en Medios de Pago Electrónicos S.A.) founded in Costa Rica.· pivot
2021
Launched Monibyte App (B2C mobile e-wallet with Visa Prepaid Card) targeting unbanked users in Central America.· banking
2022
Integrated Paxos crypto transaction engine into Monibyte App, enabling cryptocurrency trading within the wallet.· banking
2022
Kipo service selected by PayPal for expansion into additional LatAm markets.· pivot
2023
Expanded Monibyte corporate expense management platform to Mexico in alliance with Banca Afirme.· banking
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by IMPESA (Monibyte)
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
3 layers disclosed in IMPESA (Monibyte)’s embedded-finance stack
Money movement
Card network
in the full report
Crypto
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
2 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.