Episode 6 - Carlos Marín from Akua
In this episode I sit down with Carlos Marín, CEO and co-founder of Akua.
Guests
Show notes
In this episode I sit down with Carlos Marín, CEO and co-founder of Akua. Carlos has held leadership roles as Country Manager for Colombia and Peru at many interesting fintechs like Pomelo and PayU, and Fintech & Digital Partnerships Director at Mastercard.
He is now launching Akua, a fintech startup that aims to transform payments worldwide by making them simple, fast, and secure, driving financial inclusion and setting a new industry standard.
With him, we will talk about the fintech market in Latam, the credit ecosystem in the region and the leadership of Brazil in that direction.
In this episode
Carlos Marín explains why Latin America's card acquiring rails, built decades ago, need replacing, and how Akua is building cloud-native acquiring infrastructure with one API for the region. He explains why credit penetration is low, from missing data and heavy cash use to interest-rate caps, and how Brazil's early opening of its payments market put it years ahead. He also shares how Akua raised an oversubscribed pre-seed round in about three months.
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction: Carlos and Akua
- 2:30Fragmented payment rails in Latin America
- 5:16Opportunities: infrastructure and credit
- 8:55Why credit penetration is low
- 13:02Interest-rate caps
- 17:19Open finance and real-time payments
- 21:54How Brazil got ahead
- 27:36Raising Akua's pre-seed round
- 33:39Building product while fundraising
- 36:19Hiring and culture in a remote team
Key facts
Akua builds cloud-native, API-driven acquiring infrastructure so merchants can process payments across Latin America through a single API.
The card rails most Latin American transactions run on were built about 30 years ago, before the internet.
Carlos has worked in payments for about 15 years, including about ten at Mastercard and as an early Pomelo employee who launched its operations in Colombia, Peru and the Andean markets.
Credit in Colombia reaches only about 25% of its potential.
Colombia has about 20–25 licensed financial institutions, and most of them serve the same roughly 5 million visible clients.
Cash accounts for 70–80% of payments in Colombia.
Colombia's cap on interest rates stops banks lending to riskier segments and pushes people to illegal lenders; Carlos favours more flexibility.
Colombia's central bank is building a real-time payments system, Bre-B, expected the following year, and Brazil's PIX technology was among the options considered.
Brazil moved to a four-party card model 10–15 years ago; acquirers grew from two to more than 25, enabling neobanks like Nubank, C6 and Banco Inter.
Brazil is about four to six years ahead of Mexico and Colombia in payments.
Akua raised a 4.3 million pre-seed round about four times oversubscribed, after meeting more than 80 funds in about three months; 20 committed.
Akua started hiring in August with angel money and had most of its infrastructure running on AWS by the end of that month.
Akua had 23 people, about 90% in technology, fully remote, and expected about 25–26 by year-end.
Akua starts with Visa and Mastercard and plans to add real-time payments.
Questions and answers
Why is credit penetration low in Latin America?
Missing and unshared data, heavy use of cash, and in some markets inflation or interest-rate caps that make lending uneconomic.
Why is Brazil ahead?
It opened its card market to a four-party model early, which multiplied acquirers and issuers and let the regulator later build PIX.
How did Akua raise its round?
On the founders' combined payments experience and a pitch deck, with a full data room and a team already building product.
Why does culture matter in hiring?
In a fully remote, senior team, culture is what keeps speed sustainable; founders join interviews to check fit.
People
Topics
Related reading
Stripe agrees to acquire Parafin to bring embedded small business credit to the 18,000 platforms on Stripe
Apple Pay launches in India with Axis Bank as its first issuer
Lloyds and Visa settle $750K in stablecoins in a live cross-border pilot, with funds arriving in under an hour
Citi and Coinbase expand their partnership so Citi's corporate clients can accept stablecoin payments