Female-founded fintech Noh raises $3m to automate splitting the bills
After closing a seed round of $3m led by Kindred Ventures, fintech Noh is preparing to enter one of the hottest untapped markets in Brazil: multi-player or shared finances. Brazil is one of the world’s top nations for making joint purchases. Noh promises to automate the division of expenses, taking away the stress of chasing money owed by friends and the hassle of transferring cash for every individual bill. Noh’s ultimate goal is to become the country’s main payment method.
Noh was founded in November 2021. Its first product, an app that functions as a shared digital wallet, will launch in mid-March. Users will be able to make payments by bank slip (or ‘boleto’), Pix (Brazil’s ubiquitous electronic payment system) or a prepaid Visa card issued by Noh.
After registering and opening an account with Noh, each user can create as many groups as they want. Groups can be fixed, for people who share recurring expenses (such as electricity bills, rent, or weekly football games) or temporary, for one-off purchases like a vacation trip or birthday lunch with friends. Users then transfer funds to the shared digital wallet, and set how much each person will pay for an expense or account – an even split between participants, 60/40, or any other percentage of their choice.
“In Brazil, sharing is a way of life. We share almost everything: our housing, our food, Netflix, the lottery ticket pool. However, when it comes to paying for these things, we still depend on one person with one card or bank account. Noh brings people together in a single payment, giving them the convenience of paying a Boleto as a trio, or making a Pix payment as a group automatically”, says Ana Zucato, CEO of Noh.
The $3m seed round was led by Kindred Ventures, owned by Kanyi Maqubela and Steve Jang. Noh also welcomed contributions from Positive Ventures; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Frederick Blackford’s Future Positive fund; The Twenty Minute VC by Harry Stebbings; and Propel Venture Partners.
As part of Noh’s growth strategy, the company sought out a number of entrepreneurial angels with expertise in the local market, plus fintech experts behind multimillion-dollar startups. These include Patrick Sigrist (iFood) and André Penha (Quinto Andar), who are joined by Tom Blomfield (founder of Monzo), Pedro Condrade (founder of Neon), Ayo Omojola (Cash App), Dhaval Chadha (Justos) and Scott Belsky (founder of Behance).
CEO Ana Zucato’s leadership is unusual for Latin America, where less than 5% of fintechs have been founded by women. Prior to Noh, Zucato worked at Intuit (the world’s largest fintech), Truora and GuiaBolso. She is joined by co-founders Felipe Cabral, ex-Quinto Andar, and Octavio Turra, former CTO of GuiaBolso.
Noh’s app is free to download, and there is no charge for users to make transactions. As Noh functions as a payments solution, its revenue comes from the establishments’ interchange fees for each transaction.
Open Banking will play a key role in bringing Noh’s ambitious growth plans to life. In the future, Zucato intends to add extensive banking integrations, so that the amounts can be debited directly from the users’ bank accounts. As a result, the company was born with a vision that goes far beyond its debut product. “Imagine that in every e-commerce, marketplace or delivery application you will be able to find a ‘Split Account’ button. This button will be powered by Noh,” says Zucato.
Kanyi Maqubela, managing partner at Kindred Ventures, adds: “The first era of financial technology required moving identity and money online. Once software can interact with the financial system, two powerful levers are unlocked: programmability, and social. Noh has managed to create a platform for social money and programmable money in one. This is the future of how money will move, and they are on the bleeding edge of it.”