Kapital ties rewards to operating accounts
Fernando Sandoval, co-founder of Kapital, on tropicalizing Brex for LatAm
Kapital is trying to turn rewards from a margin leak into a retention engine tied to the customer’s full operating account. In U.S. corporate cards, cashback is usually funded out of interchange on card spend, so the more a fintech pays back, the more it gives up from its core take rate. Kapital instead ties rewards to rent and operating payments, then redeems them into vendor discounts that keep customers transacting, holding deposits, and using more products.
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Kapital’s broader model is not built around card spend alone. It charges for a corporate dashboard, sells working capital through Kapital Flex, and monetizes deposits, treasury, and payments, which gives it more room to use rewards as part of a multi product banking relationship instead of a standalone card subsidy.
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The practical difference is what behavior gets rewarded. Brex and Ramp grew in a market where card spend and interchange were the center of the workflow. Kapital says corporate expenses are only about 10% of customer spend, so it wants to reward rent, collections, and recurring operating flows that pass through its accounts.
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This fits Kapital’s LatAm SME thesis. The company is positioning itself as the system that shows owners cash in, cash out, receivables, payables, financing, and treasury in one place. In that setup, rewards are less about acquiring spend volume and more about pulling the customer’s daily financial operations into one ledger.
The next step is a tighter loop between rewards, deposits, and cross sell. As Kapital expands into payroll, employee benefits, and more B2B2C products, rewards can become a low cost way to keep more of a company’s cash flow inside the platform, which is far more valuable than simply paying points on swipe volume.