What Akua does

Akua is a Colombia-headquartered, AI-native payment infrastructure company founded in 2024 by CEO Carlos Mario Marín Arroyave, CTO Juan Jose Behrend, and COO Rodrigo Rodrigues. The company provides acquiring-as-a-service, multi-rail payment processing, risk and fraud management, financial operations, data and reporting, and merchant services to banks, acquirers, PSPs, PayFacs, fintechs, neobanks, and ecommerce platforms across Latin America. Operating today in Colombia and Uruguay with planned expansion into Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and Central America, Akua positions itself as the only cloud-native Acquirer-as-a-Service in LATAM with the acquiring license, direct Visa/Mastercard connections, and bank-grade certifications included in the bundle.

The platform is built 100% proprietary and 100% cloud-native on AWS, deployed active-active across 2 regions and 6 simultaneous datacenters with 99.999% uptime, <50ms P50 latency, and capacity for 50M+ daily transactions and 12,000+ peak TPS. Direct ISO 8583 connections to Visa and Mastercard sit alongside REST APIs and SDKs in Node.js, Python, PHP, Go, Ruby, iOS, and Android, supporting 50+ LATAM payment methods (cards, real-time bank transfers, wallets, cash, BNPL, cryptocurrencies, and forthcoming stablecoin rails). Layered across the stack is the Akua AI ecosystem of 30+ specialized proprietary agents — including Agentic Payments, Merchant Support, Analytics, Insights, KYC/KYB & AML, Fraud Operations, Chargebacks, Reconciliation, Legal, and Compliance — orchestrated via a native Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server that connects external LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini) to live payment operations with full auditability. The platform holds PCI DSS 4.0 Level 1, PCI PIN, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and 3DS 2.x certifications.

Akua monetizes through five revenue streams: transaction-based processing fees on multi-rail infrastructure, white-label platform licensing for PSPs, PayFacs, gateways, banks, and ecommerce platforms, usage-based pricing on AI agents and Data & Reporting consumption, recurring SaaS platform fees on multi-year enterprise contracts, and implementation/integration services for onboarding. Pricing is uniformly quote-based with "Talk to sales" or "Request demo" CTAs; time-to-market is marketed at under 4 weeks for fintechs and under 90 days for Acquiring-as-a-Service. The company has raised $13M to date ($4.3M pre-seed in Oct 2024 led by Propel, H20, and Rally Cap; $8.5M seed in Oct 2025 co-led by Flourish Ventures and Cathay Latam with Atlantico, Honey Island 4UM, Krealo/Credicorp, and Simma Capital).

Name

Akua

Legal name

Akua Technology Holding Ltd.

Website

https://akua.la

Company type

Private

Founded year

2024

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Akua is a Colombia-based, AI-native payment infrastructure provider offering acquiring-as-a-service, multi-rail processing, risk/fraud management, and merchant services powered by 30+ proprietary AI agents to banks, acquirers, PSPs, PayFacs, fintechs, and ecommerce platforms across Latin America.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Payment Infrastructure

NAICS

Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities (52232)

SIC

Security Brokers, Dealers & Flotation Companies (6211)

akta.pro primary industry

Multi-Currency Accounts, Wallets & IBAN Services (FSAMAIAG)

akta.pro secondary industry

Digital Wallet Infrastructure (Tokenization, Wallet-as-a-Service) (FSAMAEAI)

Keywords

• Payment infrastructure platform
• Acquiring-as-a-service
• Multi-rail payment processing
• AI fraud prevention
• Payment orchestration

Headquarters

HQ city

Bogotá

HQ country

Colombia

HQ region

Latin America

Offices3 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Transaction-based fees (acquiring/processing): Core revenue stream derived from processing payment transactions on multi-rail infrastructure supporting 50+ payment methods across LATAM, including card and alternative payment method transactions. Acquiring-as-a-Service model delivers 12,000+ peak TPS with 99.999% availability; multi-rail processing and AI smart routing drive higher approval rates and per-transaction economics.
2. White-label / OEM platform licensing: Licensing of the full Akua platform (checkout, SDKs, Tap to Phone, fraud, reconciliation, AI agents, merchant dashboard) for rebranding by PSPs, PayFacs, gateways, banks, acquirers, and ecommerce platforms; Acquiring-as-a-Service bundle includes the acquiring license, direct Visa/Mastercard connections, PCI DSS 4.0/PCI PIN/SOC2/ISO 27001 certifications, and white-label merchant dashboard.
3. Usage-based pricing on AI agents and Data & Reporting: Usage-based monetization on the AI agents ecosystem (20+ specialized agents) and Data & Reporting platform including SQL Workbench, automated report generation, and the Analytics/Insights/Ask AI agents; consumption scales with transaction volumes, agents invoked, and reports generated.
4. Implementation, integration, and managed services: Professional services revenue from onboarding PayFacs, PSPs, banks, and fintechs onto the platform (sub-4-week time-to-market for fintechs; <90-day time-to-market for Acquiring-as-a-Service), sandbox provisioning, certification support, and ongoing managed operations for clients without in-house payment operations teams.
5. Subscription / SaaS platform fees: Recurring platform fees for access to the AI agents ecosystem, risk & compliance suite, financial operations, merchant services, and core white-label infrastructure sold on multi-year contracts to banks, acquirers, PayFacs, and enterprise fintech customers.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion4 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Akua is a cloud-native, AI-native payment infrastructure platform that delivers acquiring-as-a-service for Latin America. It offers direct ISO 8583 connections to Visa and Mastercard, multi-rail processing across 50+ payment methods, an AI agents ecosystem (20+ specialized agents orchestrated via MCP), and white-label capabilities for banks, acquirers, PSPs, PayFacs, fintechs and ecommerce platforms. The platform bundles payments processing, risk/fraud, reconciliation, settlement, merchant services, and data/reporting into a single API- and MCP-accessible stack deployed on AWS.

Product overview

Akua is a single, unified AI-native payment infrastructure platform (not a loose collection of separate tools) that enables acquirers, PayFacs, PSPs, banks, fintechs, and ecommerce platforms across LATAM to process, operate, and scale modern financial products. The platform is composed of five tightly-integrated core modules — Payments Processing (multi-rail with Smart Routing, Checkout, Tap to Phone, Split Payments, Recurring, and the forthcoming Stablecoins Rails), Risk & Fraud (ML fraud models, 3DS, KYC/KYB/AML, Network Tokenization), Financial Operations (Settlement & Clearing, Reconciliation, Payouts, Tax Management, Billing), Data & Reporting (SQL Workbench, dashboards, automated reports), and Merchant Services (Merchant Hub, Terminal Management, Promotions, Advance Payments) — plus a Core layer (organizations, white-label, webhooks, feature flags). Layered across the entire stack is the Akua AI agents ecosystem (20+ specialized proprietary agents including Agentic Payments, Merchant Support Agent, Analytics Agent, Insights Agent, Legal Agent, KYC/KYB & AML Agent, Financial Agent, Reconciliation Agent, Fraud Operations Agent, and Chargebacks Agent), orchestrated via a native MCP Server that connects external LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini) to real payment operations. The platform is delivered as two go-to-market offerings: Acquiring as a Service (AaaS — including License Enabler, Full Stack AaaS, and the AWS-based Cloud Native Processor) and the Merchant Experience Suite (white-label merchant portal, customer intelligence, terminal management, promotions, and advance payments). Industry and business-model solutions for PayFacs, PSPs, banks, fintechs, ecommerce, retail, marketplaces, SaaS, and financial services configure the same underlying modules to each operator's needs.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Akua AI: Akua's suite of 20+ proprietary AI agents for autonomous payment operations, including Agentic Payments, Merchant Support, Analytics, Insights, KYC/KYB & AML, Reconciliation, Fraud Operations, Chargebacks, Legal, Financial, Compliance, Merchant Onboarding, Integration, Support, Voice, and Network Expert agents.

Products and services

• Akua Platform 100% proprietary, modular and AI-native payment infrastructure stack with 30+ specialized agents and API/MCP-configurable, enabling banks, fintechs, acquirers and brands to scale modern financial products on card rails, local payments, stablecoins and agentic payments across LATAM.
• Payments Processing Multi-rail AI-powered processing module covering online and physical payments across 50+ LATAM payment methods, including Multi-rail Processing, Payment Activity, Split Payments, Smart Routing, Checkout, Recurring & Subscriptions, Alt. Payment Methods, Payment Links, Click2Pay, Elements, Tap to Phone, Mobility, and forthcoming Stablecoins Rails.
• Risk & Fraud AI-powered risk platform with specialized ML models trained on millions of LATAM transactions analyzing 200+ features in real time. Includes Fraud Prevention, Smart Retries, Chargeback Management, KYC/KYB & AML, AI Rules Generator, and Cybersecurity. Detection runs in under 100ms in production.
• Financial Operations Reconciliation, settlement, invoicing and cashouts automated on a single platform with real-time visibility. Includes Settlement & Clearing (T+0 same-day), Reconciliation, Payouts, Cashouts, Merchant Engine, Tax Management (Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru), and Billing & Invoicing.
• Data & Reporting Data platform with SQL Workbench, AI Agents and automated reporting. Provides live metrics dashboards, scheduled report generation (regulatory, tax, QMR), direct SQL queries against the payment data warehouse, and three AI Agents (Data Analytics, Insights, Ask AI).
• Acquiring as a Service Cloud-native Acquirer-as-a-Service for LATAM with direct connections to Visa and Mastercard. Includes License Enabler, Full Stack AaaS and Cloud Native Processor (AWS). Time-to-market under 90 days, 12,000+ peak TPS, 99.999% availability, PCI DSS 4.0, PCI PIN, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications.
• Akua AI Autonomous AI agents for payments: 20+ specialized proprietary agents that process, decide and optimize every transaction automatically. Built on Model Context Protocol, connecting any LLM (Claude, GPT, Gemini) with real payment operations. Includes Super Agents, orchestration engine, and the native MCP Server (`npx akua-mcp`).
• Agentic Payments End-to-end conversational autonomous payments agent that orchestrates the entire flow from conversational onboarding to PCI-compliant card enrollment, MCP-based catalog purchase, and zero-click autonomous payment execution. White-label, deployable on any channel (Telegram, WhatsApp, web).
• Merchant Experience Suite Complete white-label suite of tools to give merchants a unified portal experience. Includes Merchant Hub & Dashboard, Customer Intelligence (AI), Terminal Management, Promotions Engine, Advance Payments, and Native Ecommerce — all under the customer's brand.

Quantifiable outcome

• 60-80% reduction in operational workload from AI agents
• +13 more outcomes

Segments9 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration8 records

AI capability14 records

Feature12 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered flagship and minor.

• VisaflagshipTechnology or IntegrationDirect ISO 8583 connection to Visa via Akua's Acquiring-as-a-Service offering, with Visa network tokenization, higher approval rates, lower fraud, and direct processing on card rails. Visa is featured as a partner logo in the website and infrastructure diagrams.
• MastercardflagshipTechnology or IntegrationDirect ISO 8583 connection to Mastercard via Akua's Acquiring-as-a-Service offering, with Mastercard network tokenization, higher approval rates, and direct processing on card rails. Mastercard is featured as a partner logo in the website and infrastructure diagrams.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)flagshipTechnology or IntegrationAkua is built natively on AWS with active-active deployment across 2 AWS regions and 6 simultaneous datacenters. The "Cloud Native Processor (AWS)" is one of two flagship product configurations alongside Acquiring-as-a-Service. AWS is featured in the infrastructure diagrams and partner logos.
• Colombia FintechminorOthersColombia Fintech (industry association) is displayed as a partner logo in the Akua website footer, indicating an ecosystem/affiliation relationship within the Colombian fintech community.
• Cubo (Brazilian tech hub / Itaú)minorOthersCubo is displayed as a partner logo in the Akua website footer, indicating an ecosystem/affiliation relationship with the Brazilian corporate innovation hub.

Scale indicators9 records

Recent moves8 records

Expansion highlights7 records

Direct peers

• Kushki: Kushki is a LATAM-focused payment infrastructure company (founded in Ecuador, HQ in Colombia) offering acquiring, processing, and orchestration across the region. It is the most directly comparable competitor to Akua, targeting banks, acquirers, and fintechs with multi-rail processing and white-label capabilities.
• dLocal: dLocal is a cross-border payment processor specializing in emerging markets including LATAM, offering local payment method coverage and acquiring infrastructure to global merchants. Comparable to Akua in regional payment specialization and multi-rail processing for enterprise merchants.
• EBANX: EBANX is a Brazilian-founded LATAM payment processor that processes cross-border transactions across 15+ LATAM countries for global digital commerce. Comparable to Akua in regional multi-rail coverage, payment method breadth, and merchant acceptance focus.
• Yuno: Yuno is a LATAM payment orchestration platform that enables merchants to route transactions across multiple acquirers and payment methods. Comparable to Akua in multi-acquirer orchestration and AI-driven smart routing for enterprise merchants in the region.

Broad incumbents

• Adyen: Adyen is a global, publicly-traded payments platform offering unified acquiring, processing, and risk management across multiple regions including expanding LATAM coverage. Comparable to Akua in enterprise acquiring-as-a-service model and direct card network integration, but at vastly larger global scale.
• Stripe: Stripe is a global payment processing platform with a full stack spanning acquiring, fraud, issuing, and treasury, actively expanding across LATAM. Comparable to Akua in API-first developer-focused payments infrastructure and direct network connectivity, though at much broader global scale.

Regional players

• PagSeguro: PagSeguro is a major Brazilian payment processor offering acquiring, POS, ecommerce, and banking services primarily in Brazil. Comparable to Akua in acquiring infrastructure and multi-payment-method coverage but focused predominantly on the Brazilian market.
• Stone Co. Stone Co. is a Brazilian publicly-traded merchant acquirer and banking platform serving SMBs and enterprise merchants in Brazil. Comparable to Akua in acquiring-as-a-service and multi-payment-method processing for merchants, though concentrated in Brazil.
• Clip: Clip is a Mexican payment processor offering card-present acquiring, mobile POS, and ecommerce solutions primarily to SMBs in Mexico. Comparable to Akua in acquiring infrastructure and Tap to Phone capabilities, though focused on the Mexican market.
• Conekta: Conekta is a Mexican payment processor and API-first platform offering online payments, fraud prevention, and point-of-sale solutions. Comparable to Akua in developer-first API payments and Latin American acquiring focus, though concentrated in Mexico.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat7 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/akua_tech

Compliance5 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Subsidiaries2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds2 records

Investors15 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Akua