Tech Roundup: The digital bank of the favelas

Welcome to our Tech Roundup, where we bring you the biggest stories in technology and innovation in Brazil and Latin America. This week: The digital bank born in the favela for the favela.

In a Brazilian favela, a different kind of digital bank

In the last decade, low-income customers have been the main target of fintech companies disrupting Brazil’s banking sector. However, not all new players have catered to this audience. 

Over three years ago, G10 Bank was the first digital bank created within the favela for the favela. With a capital of around BRL 1.8 million (provided by G10 itself and partnering businesspeople who preferred to remain anonymous), the bank was founded in São Paulo’s Paraisópolis, the sixth-largest favela in Brazil.

Context. G10 Bank is the fintech arm of G10 Favelas, a group of leaders and entrepreneurs from ten of Brazil’s largest communities working to dismantle the common (and wrong) perception that favelas are miserable, disorganized places susceptible to all kinds of illegal activities. Part of this work is to provide these communities’ residents with access to financial services. 

• “When I was president of the residents’ union of Paraisópolis, we created several projects to include the unbanked population. With the creation of G10, however, we saw that the ideal path would be the creation of a kind of BNDES [Brazil’s national development bank] for the favelas,” Gilson da Cruz Rodrigues, president of G10 Favelas, tells The Brazilian Report.

Backdrop. Favelas have multiplied across the country in the past decades — there are more than 11,403 today, home to 16.6 million residents. If favelas were a state, they would be the third-largest in the country, according to preliminary data from the 2022 Census. 

• This assessment may be an understatement, as data collection in...