Kapital Bank-Led SMB Finance OS
Diving deeper into
René Saul and Fernando Sandoval, co-founders at Kapital, on the fintech opportunity in LatAm
The owners of the SMBs or their accountant or their CFO, the only place they look is where their money is.
Analyzed 5 sources
Reviewing context
Kapital is trying to own the operating screen, not just sell a bank product. In practice that means the place where an SMB checks balance, pays suppliers, sends payroll, sees invoices, tracks who owes it money, and draws working capital all lives in one workflow. That makes the bank account the daily command center, which is much stickier than a standalone card or loan.
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Kapital built around Latin America's e-invoicing rails, which let it pull accounts receivable and payable data directly into the banking product. That removes the need to stitch together separate ERP, treasury, and payment tools, and helps explain why it positions the bank account as the main financial dashboard.
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This is a different playbook from Brex and Ramp, which started from the card and then expanded into expense management and bill pay. Kapital argues cards only show a small slice of company spend, while the operating account sees the full cash cycle, so it can support lending, collections, vendor payments, and software fees from one place.
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The business model follows that product design. In the interview, lending contributed about 60% of revenue and software about 40%, and later coverage showed deposits rising from $241M in Q1 2024 to $569M in Q4 2024 as Kapital layered more treasury and operating tools onto the account. More daily usage creates more cross sell and more payment volume.
The next step is deeper automation around the same operating hub. As Kapital adds treasury, stablecoins, payroll, and AI driven finance workflows, the company can move from being where SMBs check money to being where they decide what to do with it. That pushes the category toward a bank led finance operating system for Latin American businesses.