Kontigo (YC S24) - USDC-Smart Neobank for Latinos.

Founders

Gino Guatavita

Co-Founder & CTO at Kontigo. Tackling one of the biggest challenges in the region, access to credit and the financial system. Currently 500M+ people on Latam are under-banked, we are solving this with alternative data, AI and Web3.

jaCf

jesus alberto Castillo ferrer

I'm a Venezuelan founder obsessed with closing the financial inclusion gap for 1.7 billion humans. Previously built the largest micro-lending platform in Venezuela, reaching over 500k SMBs in low-income communities with no financial history, implementing Muhammad Yunus methodology powered by ML. Co-founded the first LLM marketplace in LatAm using micro-payments instead of subscriptions. Founder at Bicuye, the most exotic Agave-Based Liquour with an Ultra-Premium membership club.

About Kontigo

We’re building Kontigo, a USDC Smart Neobank for Latinos in the U.S. and Latin America.

We launched our Peer-to-Peer onramp 20 days ago and we’ve already had $540k in deposits, 10k active users and a +300k waitlist.

The founding team has built and scaled fintechs in Latam, and it’s ex-Venmo, Nubank, Rappi, MercadoLibre, Ualá, Platzi, and Yuno.

We’re already backed by DST Global, Soma Capital, Pioneer Fund, Transpose + 10 YC alums.

Sending money to Latin America is just as painful as holding it due to the region's fragmentation into 33 countries with 39 different currencies.

On one hand, cross-border payments to Latam are absurdly expensive (up to 20% per transaction). Conversely, over the past decade, currency depreciation across the region has become unsustainable. (some countries surpassing the trillion percent ).

Kontigo solves this with a USDC global wallet & a BTC savings account.

- Like Venmo, but on-USDC. - Like Zelle, but for cross-border payments. No limits. - Like Nubank & Revolut, but without inflationary currencies. Bitcoin-backed.

User wallets are connected to an AI-private banker on WhatsApp to execute international USDC transactions.