Why We Invested in Quipu, the AI Credit Bureau Built for Latin America’s Informal Economy
At Decelera, we believe the most transformative companies emerge when founders understand a problem from the inside and decide to rewrite how an entire system works. Quipu is exactly that. In a region where millions of micro-entrepreneurs operate without financial history, with limited access to credit and caught between slow bureaucracy or informal lenders, Quipu is building the infrastructure that finally makes it possible to assess risk where it was previously impossible.
Its approach is simple but powerful: using artificial intelligence and alternative data to turn the informal economy into a financeable segment. Instead of relying on traditional bureaus that reject the majority of those without credit history, Quipu builds credit profiles based on real, day-to-day signals from micro-businesses. It is a solution designed for the Latin American reality, not to exclude it..
Juan Cristobal Constain, Co-Founder and CPO at Quipu during his Pitch at #DeceleraMexico2024
The Challenge: Making the Invisible Creditworthy
Informality dominates the productive structure of Latin America, where more than 50% of the workforce lacks access to basic financial services. In Colombia, the gap is even more evident: only 21% of formal microbusinesses apply for credit, and among informal ones that number drops to 10%. The rest are trapped in a system unable to measure risk without documents, statements, or credit history.
Banks want to lend, but they don’t have the data. Cooperatives want to grow, but their manual processes don’t scale. Digital wallets have millions of users, but lack reliable risk criteria to originate productive credit. And those who need capital most operate outside systems designed to evaluate formal employees, not neighborhood entrepreneurs.
Quipu understood that the problem was not financial, but informational.
Why We Invested in Quipu
Quipu developed a credit platform that uses AI to translate non-traditional data, such as behavior in messaging apps, SMS, social media, inventory images, or business videos, into predictive models with accuracy comparable to traditional bureaus. This makes it possible to grant productive credit even to those who have never appeared in the financial system.
The technology already demonstrates impact: a scoring engine based on more than 1,100 variables, proprietary algorithms for income, image, video, and social media analysis, with predictions for default, loan size, and fraud, models that double the approval rates of traditional financial institutions, consistent improvements in portfolio quality across all channels.
The combination of embedded distribution, proprietary technology, and models trained on real-world data positions Quipu as the infrastructure that institutions, wallets, and telcos have been waiting for to serve a segment historically impossible to evaluate.
Founders: Complementary Strengths and a Shared Origin
Quipu was born at MIT, where Mercedes Bidart and Juan Constaín met while studying and working on urban development and financial inclusion. Both came from years of working with microbusinesses and local governments, and both faced the same frustration: public policy could not close the credit access gap because there was no effective way to measure risk in informal contexts.
Mercedes brought experience in public policy and urban design in Argentina and Colombia. Juan added a background in regional development, public innovation, and economic inclusion models. At MIT they found the path to scale a solution that did not depend on slow state structures, but on technology capable of adapting to millions of users without friction.
Along the way, Eduardo Carrasquilla joined the founding team as CFO, bringing more than 10 years of experience in the financial sector, having led operations for Sura Asset Management across six Latin American countries.
The team combines social vision, deep understanding of the problem, and operational discipline. That mix is now one of Quipu’s greatest strengths and the reason the company has achieved so much with so few resources.
Why We Believe Quipu Will Win
We invested in Quipu because it combines:
A mission aligned with a massive economic and social opportunity
Technology designed to solve a structural problem at its root
Embedded distribution that enables scale without costly user acquisition
Risk outcomes that improve quarter after quarter
A founding team that understands the problem, the region, and the end user better than anyone.
Quipu is building the first credit bureau designed for Latin America’s informal economy. And if the region aspires to real financial inclusion, Quipu will be a central piece in how that future is built.
Shaping the future
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