Colombia's Bold raises $11.7M debt line from BBVA Spark to expand merchant lending
What's the deal? Colombian fintech Bold has secured a 37,450,000,000 Colombian peso debt facility — roughly $11.7 million — from BBVA SparkDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the venture arm of the Spanish bank. The company will use the money to expand lending to micro, small, and medium-sized businesses across Colombia.
The structure: The deal is a bilateral loan, not an equity round. CuatrecasasDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → advised Bold and PPUDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → advised BBVA Spark on the negotiation and documentation.
What's the endgame? Bold started six years ago selling low-cost card readers to small shops. It now processes about 20 trillion pesos a year in card and QR payments, and has built out deposits, credit, and savings products.
Its ambition reaches further. "Bold was born as a card-reader company, but our aspiration has always been to become the digital bank for SMEs in northern Latin America," said chief executive officer and founder José Vélez (translated from Spanish). "Credit is the chapter we are writing now."
How it works: Bold's lending assesses a business's ability to pay based on its sales behaviour, rather than relying only on credit-bureau history. The approach is pitched at merchants that struggle to access traditional financing.
BBVA Spark framed the facility as a bet on the wider ecosystem. "The impact goes beyond Bold," said Eduardo González, country manager for Colombia and Argentina, noting the loan should help "thousands" of small businesses reach new credit options (translated from Spanish).
Why now? Bold has served more than 700,000 merchants in Colombia and Peru, giving it the transaction data to underwrite loans at scale. The facility deepens its shift from payments hardware into financial services, building on a $50 million equity round in 2023.
The signal: The loan fits a Colombian pattern of fintechs tapping institutional debt to scale their credit books — consumer lender Addi has drawn facilities from Goldman SachsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, FasanaraDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and BBVA Spark. Bold's line is modest beside those, and a bank loan is not a new investment round. But it marks commercial banking putting capital behind a payments startup's push into SME credit.
Read more: latamfintech.co
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
