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Western Hemisphere

Mundi and Column Partner on a US$150 Million Facility for Mexico-US Trade Finance

The Editor

The Editor

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CEO Martín Pustilnick and Co-Founders Sebastian Kontarovsky, Paulina Aguilar Vela, and Juan Christensen
CEO Martín Pustilnick and Co-Founders Sebastian Kontarovsky, Paulina Aguilar Vela, and Juan Christensen

Mundi, a Mexican fintech that finances exporters, has secured a credit facility of up to US$150 million from Column, a nationally chartered US bank. The agreement is Column's first credit arrangement with a financial technology company focused on cross-border trade in Mexico. Combined with recent renewals of existing debt lines, the deal brings Mundi's accounts receivable capacity to roughly US$325 million, more than double what it could previously deploy.

Mundi was founded in January 2020 by chief executive Martín Pustilnick alongside Sebastian Kontarovsky, Paulina Aguilar Vela, and Juan Christensen, and began operating that July from Mexico City. Its business is working capital for small and mid-sized Mexican exporters: rather than waiting 30 to 90 days for international buyers to pay, exporters receive funds upfront while Mundi assumes the collection and the risk of non-payment. The company has raised from Union Square Ventures, Base10 Partners, Upper90, FJ Labs, and Exor, and previously reported that customers increased exports by an average of 30% within six months of working with it. "The facility allows us to access funds daily and within minutes to provide working capital and speed to supply chains," Pustilnick said. Brian Fishbein, investment director at Column, said the bank's infrastructure would strengthen the regional productive ecosystem.

Market Context

The financing arrives at an unusually consequential moment for Mexican exporters. Mexico is now the largest trading partner of the United States, having shipped more than US$550 billion in goods over the preceding twelve months and holding roughly 17% of the American import market, with about 85% of Mexican products entering tariff-free against competitors facing duties of 10% to 25%. Monthly exports were growing at an annual pace of 21% as of April 2026.

That position is being renegotiated. The USMCA review formally opened on July 1, 2026, with Mexico and Canada proposing a 16-year extension while the United States countered with annual reviews over a decade. Mexico brought 13 concerns to the table, including preventing unilateral tariffs, eliminating steel duties, and preserving automotive competitiveness. For exporters, the uncertainty is operational rather than abstract: buyers hesitate, payment terms stretch, and the working capital gap widens precisely when access to it matters most. Trade finance for small and mid-sized companies has historically been underserved by Mexican banks, which is the gap Mundi was built to fill and which the Column facility is intended to widen.

The Signal

"The facility allows us to access funds daily and within minutes to provide working capital and speed to supply chains." — Martín Pustilnick, co-founder and CEO, Mundi

Regional Relevance

For the United States: American importers depend on Mexican suppliers whose ability to fulfill orders is constrained by cash flow rather than capacity, and a US-chartered bank extending US$150 million into that gap is effectively financing the supply chains serving American buyers. Column's decision to make its first Mexico-focused fintech credit agreement now, during an active trade renegotiation, is also a signal about how a US lender reads the durability of the relationship. For US companies that have relocated sourcing to Mexico under nearshoring, supplier liquidity determines whether that shift holds under stress.

For Mexico: Small and mid-sized exporters generate a substantial share of the country's US-bound trade but have limited access to bank credit, and the traditional factoring market has been expensive and slow. A facility of this size expands the pool of companies that can accept large orders without waiting months to be paid. The timing matters as well: during the USMCA review, the practical resilience of Mexican exporters depends less on treaty language than on whether they can finance production through a period of uncertainty.

The Other Side

Is this equity, debt, or something in between? The announcement describes a credit facility of up to US$150 million, not an investment in Mundi. The capital funds the company's lending book rather than its operations, no valuation is involved, and the phrase "up to" means the full amount is available rather than committed. Coverage that frames the figure as a raise conflates two different things.

What happens to this book if trade conditions deteriorate? Mundi's model involves assuming the risk that international buyers do not pay. That risk is manageable when export volumes are growing 21% annually, and it concentrates quickly if tariffs are imposed or orders are cancelled during the USMCA review. Mundi has not disclosed default rates, and doubling deployable capacity into a portfolio exposed to a single trade corridor increases that concentration.

Does more available credit reach the companies that need it? Trade finance tends to flow toward exporters with established buyers and predictable receivables, which are also the companies with the best access to conventional bank credit. Whether an additional US$150 million expands the market to smaller and newer exporters, or simply increases the supply of capital chasing the same qualified borrowers, is not addressed in the announcement and is the difference between widening access and repricing it.

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