Sonae IM invests in US fintech Citcon
Sonae's technological investment arm is betting on the company Citcon's solution, used in 30 thousand shops, which allows online and offline payments via digital wallets.
Sonae IM has just completed its first investment in a fintech, adding to the portfolio the mobile wallet payment provider Citcon, founded in 2015 and chaired by Chuck Huang, which has large companies such as L’Oréal, Tumi, Texas Instruments, Macy’s, Revolve and Panda Express as clients.
The technology investment arm of the group led by Cláudia Azevedo participated in a US$30 million (€25.8 million) Series C investment round from the company, which was led by Norwest Venture Partners and Cota Capital, and also included Sierra Ventures.
Citcon’s solution, which is already implemented in more than 30,000 shops, allows retailers to accept more than a hundred different payment methods, including mobile wallets such as Paypal and Alipay, local payment schemes and traditional credit cards.
“Providing access to new payment methods is becoming a necessity for retailers and merchants, driven by the strong consumer adoption of wallets and other alternative means to credit cards. Citcon has the best platform in the market, easy to integrate (…) and we believe it has the conditions to become a market leader,” points out Manuel Queiroz, Sonae IM’s investment director.
With about 40 direct investments, Sonae IM holds stakes in more than thirty companies. It has invested over €135 million in the last 15 years, concentrated in three strategic areas: cybersecurity, digital infrastructure and technologies applied to retail.
