Claudia Garavini was supposed to stay in the United States for two months. A decade later, the Venezuelan native is still here – and helping build a fintech designed for people who made the same leap.
“I’ve lived very closely what it is to be an immigrant,” Garavini told Refresh Miami. “Most of us at Félix have, at some point in our lives, been immigrants. That’s something that we keep very close to our culture.”
Garavini, now VP of strategy and business development at Félix, joined the Miami-based company three years ago while finishing her MBA at Harvard Business School. Back then, the product had been live for only six months. She started part-time supporting fundraising and product research, then stepped into a full-time leadership role. Today, she sits on the executive team, overseeing partnerships, geo expansion, and new verticals.
Félix set out to fix a frustrating reality: sending money from the U.S. to Latin America is often slow, expensive, and inconvenient. Many immigrants still stand in line at physical locations and pay percentage-based fees.
Félix flipped that model. The product runs entirely on WhatsApp. There’s no app to download. A user can send a voice note that says, “Send mom $200.” The chatbot confirms the recipient and processes the payment instantly. Funds can be deposited into a bank account or picked up in cash. After the first free transaction, the fee is a flat $2.99.
“We see Félix as much more than a remittance company,” Garavini said. “We are the financial companion of Hispanics in the U.S.”
Instead of expanding globally, Félix has focused tightly on U.S.-Latin America corridors. Mexico launched first in 2022, followed by Guatemala and Honduras. In 2024, the company added El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. This year brought Nicaragua and Colombia, with Peru and Ecuador coming soon.
Each new corridor means serving a new diaspora community inside the U.S. “We need to understand the differences between each immigration population,” Garavini explained.
That cultural focus shapes the tech. Félix was early to conversational finance, training its AI models on real user data and even adjusting tone and language by corridor. The company also uses stablecoins behind the scenes to lower costs and increase speed.
The growth numbers reflect that traction. Over the past 12 months, Félix doubled its team from 150 to 300 employees. Its user base more than doubled, growing from 175,000 to 400,000.
“There’s a trust barrier on the first transaction,” Garavini acknowledged. “But once they do it, they never leave. And they bring their family and friends.”
Much of that growth has come through referrals, not heavy marketing spend.
Miami has played a central role. After considering other states, the founders chose South Florida as headquarters. “It’s proved to be a strategic move,” Garavini said. Most of the executive team is based there, and the city’s fintech ecosystem has helped with both capital and talent.
Still, remittances are only the beginning. On WhatsApp, users ask about credit scores, loans, and financial basics. Félix treats those questions as signals.
“We absorb that,” she said. “We plan, we test, and we work to serve them.”
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