A well-known software for trading stocks, the Mexican investing platform Flink, has been bought by Webull, which provides the company with a foothold in the Mexican market.
There was no disclosure of the financial terms of the transaction. Even though Webull was founded in China, it is headquartered in the United States. It competes with Robinhood in the United States as a low-commission online trading platform providing cash management services. Recently, it relocated its headquarters from New York to St. Petersburg, located in Florida.
The Mexico City-based company Flink, established in 2017, has successfully collected $70 million in funding, including a Series B investment of $57 million that was disclosed in August of 2021. Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, ALLVP, Clocktower, and Mantis Venture Capital, which the Chainsmokers established, are among the investors who have shown their support. Consumers in Mexico can now invest in fractional shares of publicly traded firms in the United States without paying fees.
Webull is also acquiring the Mexican brokerage Vifaru Casa de Bolsa, which Flink had previously committed to acquire in May of 2022. This acquisition is a part of both transactions.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Sergio Jiménez Amozurrutia, CEO and co-founder of Flink, expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that only a tiny portion of the population in his nation, which has a population of over 120 million people, could participate in the capital markets.
2018 marked the debut of Flink’s mobile application, which included a wallet service and a digital and physical worldwide debit card supported by Mastercard. In 2020, the company began offering users the option to purchase and sell fractional shares of NYSE-listed stocks for as little as thirty pesos, entirely free of commissions. It had 1.6 million users as of August 2021. Today, the number of times it has been seen is unknown.
In a written statement, Ruben Guerrero, the CEO of Latin America for Webull, characterized the Mexican market as “a young and vibrant population that has a strong and untapped demand for technology-based wealth building solutions.”
In addition, he stated, “We believe that the early success of Flink is proof of this demand, and that Webull’s approach of utilizing technology to provide low-cost access to global markets for investors in all economies is a perfect fit for Mexico.” “We anticipate building on the success that Flink has achieved by providing its customers with a more comprehensive range of investment products, technology that is easy to use, and support that is of the highest caliber.”
Customers of Flink will continue to have access to buying and selling equities in the United States through the Flink platform. Within several months, Webull intends to introduce native Mexican investing and cash management solutions and incorporate its technologies into the platform.
A subsidiary of Webull that is a member of FINRA and a broker-dealer registered with the SEC was the entity responsible for introducing the Webull trading platform in the United States in 2018. Over eight million accounts have been established across the world as of today. The United States of America, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Japan, and the United Kingdom are among the nine markets in which Webull presently works. Mexico is the ninth country that Webull operates in.
