BS2, a digital bank in Brazil that leads efforts to digitize banking in that country, has announced the acquisition of the Israeli fintech, WELL. This merger is expected to push the efforts to BS2 to upgrade and add features that would help to attract more users and provide better services to its existing customers.
WEEL is an online vendor that is focused on financing B2B companies and BS2 would hope that this acquisition would help it to emerge as the first neobank in Brazil. The race towards digitalisation for banks has well and truly begun and more and more banks are looking to shed their legacy banking image and are moving towards making their system support digital services. The newer banks are already on to the digital bandwagon and it is important for the older banks to follow.
“We have ambitious growth plans. WEEL has the best products and the best digital credit expertise. It perfectly complements our offering and positions us as the leading digital financial services provider for small and medium-sized companies. The SME segment has often been ignored. Banking product development generally focuses only on individuals and large corporations. We’re going to change this logic”, points out Magalhães.
While BS2 is more of a digital bank, it would expect WEEL to bring in its technology and experience as far as credit and lending is concerned, especially in the B2B segment as the fintech has been working with small and medium enterprises over all these years. The technology and the credit platform of the company would be integrated into BS2 to boost its credit and lending services.
“We are creating a unique experience in which the customer will have access to best-in-class digital products that provide simple solutions to their day-to-day challenges. Small and medium-sized companies will find in BS2 a one-stop-shop for all of their banking and credit needs”, said Neumann, CEO, and founder of WEEL.
These are interesting times for Latin America as all the major financial firms are making a beeline to this market as the markets in Europe and North America are becoming exhausted and Asia is also about to reach the saturation stage as far as digital banking and trading are concerned. It is expected that Latin America and Africa would be the next frontiers for all these companies and this is why we are seeing the existing companies there also getting ready for the increased competition that they are likely to face in the coming months.
