Infrastructure is one sector that has remained mostly unaffected by the global venture crisis. Companies that provide banking as a service and assist other firms in providing their own financial services and products continue to make money.
Dock, situated in Sao Paulo, offers a full-stack payments and digital banking “platform” across the region, where there is a huge demand for financial infrastructure that can help improve inclusion. The startup has raised $110M in a growth fundraising round led by Lightrock and Silver Lake Waterman from the United Kingdom, valuing it at more than $1.5B. The funding round saw participation from existing backers Riverwood Capital, Viking Global Investors, and Sunley House Capital.
Funds usage
Dock intends to use its additional funds to expedite its product development and global expansion objectives, as well as to expand its workforce. The company currently employs 1,936 people and has operations in So Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. It has operations in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic, in addition to Brazil.
Dock is the result of the merger of three companies — Conductor, Dock, and Muxi — in August 2021 in order to provide “full” financial services and end-to-end technology for the payment and digital industries. Conductor was a 25-year-old, 80-person credit card processing company with yearly sales of $4.3M (not to be confused with a company called Conductor based in the U.S.). Riverwood Capital and Antonio Soares, who is currently the CEO of Dock, bought out 100% of Conductor in 2014, effectively forming Dock. After receiving an undisclosed amount from Visa Ventures in 2018, the firm secured $170M in a round headed by Viking Capital in 2020.
Business model
Dock claims that its open API and cloud-native solution enable “any organisation” to provide financial services such as bespoke card launch and administration, payment processing, banking as a service with digital accounts, mobile payments, and fraud management.
Fintechs, retailers, banks, and technology businesses are among the company’s clients, and they are all focused on not only improving the customer experience for the already banked, but also on bringing previously unbanked and underbanked individuals into the digital payments and banking systems.
Dock now has 65M active accounts because of its ties with over 300 customers. Its cloud service processes more than 5B transactions per year. The number of total monthly active accounts processed by the company in December 2021 was up 55 percent year over year to 48.4M, according to the corporation. Meanwhile, year over year, the number of active digital banking accounts increased by 380 percent.
“This is only the beginning for us,” said Antonio Soares, CEO at Dock. “This investment validates our vision of bringing great solutions to the market that solve real business problems for our clients, while increasing and democratizing access to financial services. As we close this funding round, we are excited to continue innovating and expanding while building products that help our clients grow by providing fast, efficient and personalized financial services to their customers. We add value because payments and banking are complex global businesses with local specificities, and we understand that better than anyone else.”
“Dock’s mission is perfectly aligned with our focus on building a sustainable future,” said Marcos Wilson Pereira, Managing Partner and Head of Latin America at Lightrock. “Despite positive advancements over the last few years, the financial services market in Latin America still has significant room for accelerated growth. We’re excited to partner with Dock to enable greater financial inclusion, which will drive economic growth and increase fairness.”
Dock bought Cacao, a Mexican card processing startup, and BPP, a payments institution registered by the Central Bank that specialises in banking as a service, as part of its expansion ambitions last year (BaaS).
