Kapital Tropicalizes Brex for LatAm
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Fernando Sandoval, co-founder of Kapital, on tropicalizing Brex for LatAm
You have to see the bank as an ally that provides the information you need to operate your business.
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Kapital is trying to turn business banking from a place where money sits into the system of record for how an SMB runs day to day. The product logic is simple, if the bank sees card spend, bill pay, deposits, receivables, and payroll timing, it can tell a business when cash will get tight and then attach the right product, like working capital, treasury, or expense controls, at the exact moment of need.
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In practice, this is why Kapital bundles a bank account with corporate cards, expense tools, AP and AR, a lightweight planning dashboard, and lending. A merchant is not just paying bills through Kapital, it is feeding Kapital the operating data used to underwrite Flex loans and drive product attach.
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That is a sharper fit in LatAm than in the U.S. In Kapital's market, cash flow failure is a core SMB problem, so lending is a front line product. By 2024, Flex had become Kapital's star product and helped push payment volume to $8.4B, while deposits grew from $241M in Q1 2024 to $569M in Q4 2024.
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The comparison with Brex and Ramp shows how the model diverges. Brex first won on fast card issuance and free spend tools, then expanded into banking. Ramp used card and bill pay workflows to move into higher margin finance software. Kapital is compressing those layers into one stack for underserved LatAm SMBs, where fewer incumbents already cover the workflow.
The next step is deeper automation, where the bank not only shows the cash picture but actively runs more of the back office. As Kapital adds treasury, payroll, contractor payments, and more planning tools, the winning product will look less like a standalone bank account and more like an operating console for the entire business.