By Riley Kaminer
In the US, it’s easy to take digital money transfers for granted. Whether you’re sending a friend a few bucks or putting a down payment on a house, transfers are effectively immediate and painless.
When it comes to sending payments globally – especially between businesses – the situation isn’t so simple, explained Gaston Taratuta, founder and CEO of Miami-based digital advertising company Aleph.
“Let’s say you want to advertise on Twitter from Argentina or Poland or India,” Taratuta told Refresh Miami. You need to do KYC, be able to collect a local currency, settle the exchange rate, pay taxes – and then remit all this money to Twitter in one check. We’re enabling this digital marketing to happen, A to Z, from sales to cross-border payments.”
This payment platform will provide a straightforward cross-border credit and payment offering. Aleph Payments enables advertisers globally to apply for a line of credit to pay their invoices in their local currency to Aleph. The company plans to focus on B2B cross-border payments.
Taratuta expressed particular excitement about the value that this will unlock for small- and medium-sized businesses. “Even if you go down the street to Chase, they’ll charge you 20% a year for a loan – and that’s if they’ll even lend to you,” he said. “SMB is a great opportunity for us because we give them a loan to experiment with buying media. Then they can buy more when they see how well it works.”
Aleph has been in the game for over 15 years. The company is present in 130 countries with a staff of 1,700 and $2 billion in business volume. But at its core, Aleph in many ways has the spirit of a startup.
“We need to keep evolving as the tech evolves,” Taratuta said of “surfing the wave of adtech” and creating unique products and services along the way. He added that critical to Aleph’s success is creating an offering that no one can replicate – a mote, in startup vernacular.
With the global market for cross-border payments and remittance services expected to grow from $37.15 trillion in 2020 to $39.9 trillion by 2026 – plus worldwide digital ad spend on track to surpass $600 million this year – Taratuta believes that this new offering is coming at a better time than ever.
“There is a major shift happening from offline to online GDP,” he said, noting just how much spending is happening online and for digital goods versus in-person and for physical goods. “We are going to become an enabler of digital payments. That’s the future, and we’re going to be propelled by those two factors.”
Taratuta has been active in the Miami tech scene since he landed here in the ’90s, first working at Universo Online in Brazil and then founding digital communications and marketing company Internet Media Services.
“Miami is the place to be,” he said of the opportunities present in our ecosystem, especially with respect to fundraising and ease of travel. “Miami has become an epicenter, not just for Latin America, but a place to do global business as well.”
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- smartBeemo educates next-generation eCommerce entrepreneurs, creating economic opportunity along the way
- Industry-backed Suffolk Technologies is unlocking VC dollars to usher in the next era of construction tech
- In wake of SVB and First Republic collapse, CapStack collects $6M to build inter-bank marketplace
- Breaking barriers of time and space with Yupix’s VR platform
- Beacon Council’s new leader: ‘The tech sector is essential’ for Miami’s economic growth
- Novo secures $125M to provide small businesses with working capital
