Kapital's Pay-for-Workflow Strategy
René Saul and Fernando Sandoval, co-founders at Kapital, on the fintech opportunity in LatAm
Charging early is not just monetization, it is Kapital's filter for whether the product solves a painful enough problem to change customer behavior. In Mexico, many SMBs still run cash flow from Excel or memory, so getting owners to pay for software that shows payables, receivables, and payment links in one banking app is a strong signal that the product is saving them time and reducing day to day chaos.
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Kapital is not selling a nice to have dashboard. It puts the operating account, AP and AR workflows, cards, and working capital in one place, so an owner can open the app, see who needs to be paid, see who owes them money, and send or collect funds immediately. That kind of daily workflow supports paid adoption from the start.
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This is also a deliberate contrast to U.S. fintech playbooks. Mercury still markets core business banking as free, with paid plans layered on later, and Ramp says its core card and expense software is free. Kapital chose to prove demand by collecting software revenue earlier, then stacking lending, payment, and interchange revenue around it.
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The results show up in the model. In the interview, Kapital said about 40% of revenue came from tech revenue and 60% from lending, cards, and related financial income. By 2024, the business had scaled to $184M in annualized revenue, showing that charging for the workflow did not slow adoption, it helped anchor a broader multi product relationship.
Going forward, the winners in LatAm SMB fintech are likely to be the companies that get paid for controlling the operating workflow, not just for issuing a card or loan. If Kapital keeps turning the bank account into the place where owners run the company every day, pricing becomes a feature of trust and product depth, not a barrier to growth.