A Miami remittance company has landed nearly $90 million from Silicon Valley

Business admin September 2, 2026 0 Comments

A Miami remittance company has landed nearly $90 million from Silicon Valley

The wealth boasted about by visitors or new residents to South Florida is getting handed down to ordinary people.

Félix Pago, a finance startup focused on remittances and with headquarters in Miami, has obtained $87 million in equity in a financing round led by respected Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The new capital will speed up the tech company’s ability to come up with new products for Hispanics in the United States and also fund expansion into new markets.

Andreessen Horowitz, known as a16z, was founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

QED Investors also joined in the round. The Alexandria, Virginia-based firm was co-founded by Nigel Morris, who also co-founded Capital One.

“We’re incredibly proud to back the team at Félix as they continue their mission to build better, more tailored financial tools for this underserved community,” said Ali Yahya, general partner at a16z crypto, in a statement issued on Sept. 1.

The new financing also includes $113 million in debt from General Catalyst, another respected firm based outside of Boston.

Félix, launched in 2022, was founded by Manuel Godoy, a native of Venezuela, and Bernardo García, originally from Mexico. They met at the Wharton School of Business and both live in Miami.

“We are very bullish on the tech scene and startup scene in Miami,” Godoy, also the company’s CEO, said in an interview with the Miami Herald.

Each of their personal experiences influenced the idea for the company. Sending cash back to their home countries was always difficult.

“Moving money has always been a universal pain,” Godoy said.

Félix started by focusing on remittances, when people send cash to their home countries. That remains a huge market through WhatsApp.

In 2024, Mexico received $64.7 billion in remittances, about 3.7% of its gross domestic product, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Most of that came from the United States. These remittances “are a valuable lifeline for millions of households in Mexico,” the report said, “especially in the poorest states.”

Yet that process remains complicated, the October report noted. It also bears costs.

In the U.S.-Mexico corridor, the average fee is slightly below 5% of the value of the remittance for a $200 transfer, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found. While not exorbitant, that “is still somewhat above the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of average remittance fees below 3 percent by 2030,” said the report.

Félix started with Mexico as its first market, and it remains its largest market. In 2025, users sent $2.3 billion to Mexico. The company is now in 11 Latin American countries.

Nicaragua is one of the startup’s top five markets. Colombia launched the most recently, but “is growing the fastest,” Godoy said.

The company also expanded to provide mobile top-ups, which allow people in the U.S. to buy mobile credit and pay for cellphones for family members in Latin America.

Since founded, the company has processed more than $8 billion in transactions.

The new money will also help Félix develop new products and services in lending and savings, around its AI-powered technology: The cognitive financial companion it’s developing will allow the company to tailor its products to individual needs. It’ll continue to use partners because it’s not a bank.

About 20 years ago, Godoy left Venezuela to study at the California Institute of Technology, one of the top engineering universities in the world, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. But finding money or a loan in those first days in Pasadena to finance his education may have been his hardest challenge, even more than the school’s curriculum.

“I had to hack my way to figure out how to pay for school,” he said. “It was a long road.”

This story was originally published September 1, 2026 at 10:37 AM.