Ping wants to simplify global payments while helping Latin Americans embrace crypto • TechCrunch
If the global pandemic taught us anything, it’s that you could work from anywhere as long as you had a computer and a good wireless signal. But getting paid when, for example, you live in Argentina but work for a company on the other side of the world is not so easy.
Many fintech startups have taken on this challenge, including Ping. The company was started in 2021 to solve payment challenges in Latin America, where approx. 70% of the population do not have a traditional bank account.
Today, it is a digital payment tool, available on Android, iOS and desktop, that facilitates international payments for remote workers, contractors and freelancers in both their local currency and in fiat and cryptocurrency.
Ping users create a free account in US dollars to receive wire transfers in either their local currency or crypto, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. It also provides an invoicing system so that freelancers and contractors can send invoices to their employers. The company earns money from fees from its professional level.
The company was founded by Argentine natives Pablo Orlando, Mary Saracco and her brother, Jack Saracco. The team has a heavy background in both cryptocurrency and finance, having previously worked in organizations such as UBS Investment Bank, the World Bank, Deloitte and the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange.
As more Latin Americans worked from home after the pandemic, Mary Saracco said the company realized how important it was to have a stable way to get paid among inclusive countries — and unstable economies made it “extremely attractive to earn US dollars.”
“So we said, ‘OK, obviously there are a lot of people working remotely in Latin America looking for higher paying jobs in dollars. Why aren’t we helping people?’” she told TechCrunch. Ping is now used in 16 countries.
That’s also when Jack Saracco’s background in crypto came into play. He led the building of the company on the rails of Latamex, Latin America’s largest fiat-to-crypto gateway that provides what he told TechCrunch is a safe option for users to buy and sell crypto from exchanges like Binance.
The ability to open a US bank account or a crypto account and receive a payment in US dollars while seamlessly switching from one to another and making withdrawals in any country was “definitely an interesting niche market growing in the region,” added Jack Saracco.
This combination of payment from anywhere and the ability to operate in crypto seems to have caught on early for Ping. The platform launched four months ago, and in its first month of operation, the company generated over $1 million in payment volume, CEO Pablo Orlando told TechCrunch.
He also said it’s too early to discuss much of the company’s traction, but said users are coming back monthly, and in some cases within 15 days, to use Ping again.
The company is also now working on $15 million in seed funding from a group of investors including Y Combinator, Race Capital, BlockTower, Danhua Capital, Signum Capital and Goat Capital.
The funds will be used for team expansion, including marketing and sales hires, and for product development in what will be a premium feature that will be a monthly subscription. Mary Saracco expects it to launch in March.
