Spero Ventures invests in Mati

Spero Ventures is backing a Mexico City-based business called Mati, Tech Crunch reported.

Spero is backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, according to the news agency. Mati, an identity verification technology developer, initially launched in San Francisco, but then decided to move its operations to Mexico City to be closer to untapped markets in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.

“After developing the technology in San Francisco, we chose to start commercially in Latin America," Filip Victor, one of the co-founders, said in a statement, the news agency reported. "It has been the perfect petri dish for us: the markets here, especially in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, are very exciting. These countries have the highest payment fraud rates in the world, which makes their identity issues the most interesting."

Victor considered the new generation of fintech startups across Latin America as a good thing, as well as the regulations, according to the news agency.

 “We view the fintech regulations sweeping across LatAm as an opportunity to help a lot of promising fintechs and marketplaces get to the next level,” Victor said, the story said.

Shripriya Mahesh, the founding partner at Spero, said in a statement that providing solutions to identity-verification problems motivated company to invest in Mati, the news agency reported.

“For us, identity is foundational to scaling the vast array of gig economy, fintech, social and commerce platforms that represent our collective future of work,” Mahesh said, according to the news agency. “The ability to have safe and trusted interactions at an unprecedented scale, especially with people in places where national identity infrastructure is limited, will create opportunities and global connections we can’t yet even forecast.”

Mati wants to continue to expand its geographic footprint and didn't disclose the amount of money it raised, Tech Crunch reported.