Portão 3 pivoted a stranded travel startup into corporate spend management — $60M in 2022

Portão 3 was founded as a corporate travel startup in 2020 by Bianca Pereira and Fernando Nery, and released its product just as COVID hit Latin America and "all airports closed," Pereira recalls to TechCrunch (February 14, 2023). The timing was "terrible," she says, but the founders concluded the software they had built could still help enterprise businesses manage corporate spend generally.

CFOs in Brazil hate corporate cards, Pereira says — a great tool, but all they receive at month's end is a transaction statement "impossible to trace back," plus fear of fraud, reconciliation and operational mess once spending is decentralized. Portão 3's answer wraps the card in software: "budgets" configured for where employees can spend, how much and when, auto-approving transactions, and a centralized invoice platform that reads QR codes on uploaded receipts, cross-examines them for fraud and checks every item against company policy.

In 2022 alone the company says it facilitated over $60 million in transactions and issued more than 1 million physical and virtual cards, with nearly 600 enterprises across Latin America using the technology — including Bitso, CredPago, SulAmérica and 123 Milhas. Portão 3 claims profitability as of December 2022 and 20% month-over-month growth, and says its software cuts 33% of the time spent on payment-management processes.

After Y Combinator's Summer 2021 cohort, it closed a $3.6 million seed round led by Better Tomorrow Ventures in February 2023, with Endeavor Scale Up, Fincapital, Pareto and Flexport participating. BTV's Jake Gibson says card issuing itself has become largely commoditized; his firm invested because Portão 3 built the controls, fraud detection and Brazilian government invoice-database integration that make cards usable for large enterprises.

Company-reported: $60M+ in transactions and 1M+ cards issued in 2022, ~600 enterprise clients, profitable since December 2022 and growing 20% month over month.

The corporate travel product launched into closed airports; rather than fold, the founders re-used their spend-control software for corporate spending generally.

Brazilian CFOs distrusted corporate cards — untraceable month-end statements and fear of fraud and reconciliation — so Portão 3 wrapped the card in policy controls and invoice verification.

Card issuing had commoditized, per investor Better Tomorrow Ventures, so the durable value was the financial-management platform, not the plastic.

Measurable savings — 33% less time on payment management — gave CFOs a concrete reason to decentralize employee spending.

A pivot need not throw the product away: the travel tool's rails — policies, approvals, receipt matching — solved corporate spend broadly, once CFOs' fear of fraud and reconciliation was answered.

The February 2023 seed round funds a product and growth team; the company had just hired an ex-Samsung director to lead sales and stood at 30 employees. Portão 3 is focused on growing in Brazil with an eye toward expanding across Latin America, and wants to push into logistics, retail and freight customer segments. TechCrunch notes the pivot mirrors US-based Navan (formerly TripActions), which also moved from corporate travel into general spend management; Better Tomorrow Ventures sees the same pattern in its stakes in Ramp and Mendel.