Tuna is on an ambitious mission to improve the Latin American payments market. Tuna has raised two seed rounds of $3 million from Canary and Atlantico.
Juan Pascual, Paul Ascher, and Alex Tabor met on the engineering team at Peixe Urbano. Tabor founded Peixe Urbano and Juan Pascual worked together to develop a method of handling payments in different markets.
Peixe Urbano was eventually abandoned and Tuna was founded in 2019. Tuna allows merchants to test credit card processors and anti fraud providers and optimize payments processing using one integration and no-code interface.
Tabor explained that Latin America's e-commerce market was highly consolidated. This meant that few banks had more control. To verify that a buyer is real, merchants use an address verification system. This involves sending information to banks and receiving a score from the bank indicating whether it is genuine.
This score in the U.S. is used to verify that the purchaser is legitimate, but it wasn't implemented in Latin America, he said. Latam merchants must instead tap into other organizations that possess this data.
This process requires manual analysis and constant adjustment due to fraud. Tunas A/B instead tests processors and antifraud providers in real-time and gives a guarantee that a swap provider decision is based upon objective data that takes into account all components of performance such as approval rates and not just fees.
The company has added 12 new customers in the last year and seen its revenue rise 15%. It has a large customer base that includes Riachuelo in Brazil. The platform can also be integrated with VTEX, Magento, and WooCommerce.
Latin America has a lower than 10% share of ecommerce in total retail. Marcos Toledo, Canarys managing Partner, stated via email that ecommerce in Latam is at an inflexion point. Not only has the global pandemic driven online purchases to increase, but there has also been fintech innovation in recent years.
E-commerce sales in Brazil grew 73.88% between 2000 and 2020. However, Toledo stated that there is still much to be done. Tuna's project will assist companies in navigating the current situation and make it easier to sell online.
Toledo was introduced to the Tuna team by Julio Vasconcellos (his partner and one of the co-founders at Peixe Urbano). The firm was excited to learn that other Tuna co-founders were starting businesses that applied some of the optimization techniques they created at Peixe.
We admire the vast tech knowledge that Juan, Paul, and Alex bring to a highly technical business. Also, we appreciate their vision to create an impactful solution for companies across Latin America. Toledo added. Tuna's no-code solution is very exciting as it can be scaled and will help companies get higher margins. It also drives their developers to new endeavors. Developers are a scarce resource in the region.
Tuna will use the new funding to expand its team, increase customer success, and R&D to meet the demand for an ecommerce industry that is expected to exceed $200 billion by 2020. Tabor stated that Tuna has plans to use the funds to help fulfill this demand.
Next, he hopes to be able show traction in Brazil's payments optimization and facilitators before moving onto other countries. He identified Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico as potential markets.
