Jelou has raised $10 million in funding to take its WhatsApp-based transaction system into the United States, after testing and scaling the model in some of Latin America’s regulated banking markets.
The New York- and Quito-based company says its software has already handled more than $100 million in real financial operations, including payments, account openings and credit decisions, all completed inside chat conversations.
The new capital will be used to expand Brain, its core platform, and strengthen its expansion into the US small business market.
Messages have replaced calls and emails, but money still moves elsewhere. Customers are usually pushed into apps, forms or call centres at the most critical point. That break costs time, trust and revenue.
Jelou’s system is built to remove that break.
The Series A round was led by Wellington Access Ventures, with backing from Krealo, the venture arm of Credicorp, and Collide Capital.
With this raise, Jelou’s total funding now stands at $13 million, following an earlier seed round supported by Act One Ventures and Arca Continental Ventures.
Rather than acting as a help desk, Brain is designed to carry out tasks. Businesses can use it to collect missing customer details, confirm identities, trigger payments and move financial processes forward without leaving WhatsApp.
It links directly to a company’s existing systems and runs at scale, while allowing human teams to monitor and step in when needed.
“When customers are most ready to act, things usually fall apart,” said Luis Loaiza, chief executive and founder of Jelou. “They get redirected out of the conversation, put on hold, or asked to repeat themselves across systems.
“We built Brain so businesses can meet customers where they already are and complete the entire operation securely inside chat. This round allows us to scale that model across the Americas and push conversational AI beyond talk into execution.”
Jelou started in Ecuador in 2017, impacted by an observation. People were already buying, selling and asking questions through messaging apps, but the actual transactions were still scattered across insecure and outdated channels.
Loaiza and his team, drawing on years of work in encrypted communications, set out to make chat a place where serious business could be completed, not just discussed.
That approach has gained traction. The company now works with more than 500 businesses across 13 countries, including banks, retailers and consumer goods firms.
Operating in Latin America forced Jelou to build with regulation, security and scale in mind from the start, a discipline that now underpins its US expansion.
Investors see the timing as favourable because businesses are working to reduce expenses and close sales faster, while customers expect everything to happen in one place, without friction.
“Jelou recognises that the future of AI is centered around communication channels embedded within the everyday workflow,” said Jackson Cummings, head of Wellington Access Ventures.
“They are developing a platform that integrates voice AI, chat AI, payments, and identity into a single application layer. This strategic approach positions Jelou as an early mover in bringing transactional AI to messaging in Latin America.”
Jelou plans to turn Brain into a bigger operating layer for conversational business, allowing companies to build and run full WhatsApp-based services from a single interface.
The company wants to change the norm, where businesses have to happen on websites or apps. Now it’s bringing it inside the conversations people already trust.
