Intuit Buys ZeroPaper, Its First Acquisition In Brazil

Accounting software giant Intuit is looking to raise its game in international and emerging markets, and it’s doing so in part by way of acquisition: the U.S. company has bought ZeroPaper, a startup out of Brazil that offers cloud-based accounting services to small businesses, specifically money management solutions. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

ZeroPaper says in a blog post confirming the deal (in Portuguese) that it currently has some 450,000 customers using its cloud-based software. Going forward, the idea will be to migrate them to Intuit products like QuickBooks.

“We plan to integrate ZeroPaper into the QuickBooks Office ecosystem,” a spokesperson confirmed to me. ZeroPaper will continue to sell its existing software, she adds, but, “When we have localized QBO for the Brazil market it will offer a natural progression of business management software.”

ZeroPaper, founded in 2012 by Árley Moura, André Macedo and Carlos Eduardo Alves Braga, is the first exit out of Brazil’s 21212 accelerator, which also invested in the company.

“21212 was always very confident about ZeroPaper’s potential of disrupting the finance management market and impacting thousands of small businesses in Brazil, and this transaction proves how far these entrepreneurs could get after only 2 years of operation,” said Frederico Lacerda of 21212, from the digital accelerator where ZeroPaper was created, in a statement. “This was the first major exit of a business accelerator in Brazil,” Lacerda said.

ZeroPaper raised a total of $200,000 — pocket change for your average Silicon Valley startup but enough to build its business until it reached revenue generation.

Intuit is eyeing up Brazil as the seventh largest economy in the world with 16 million small businesses. “We are thrilled to work with ZeroPaper to reach small businesses, many just getting started and others, more established and larger businesses in need of the robust solutions in the QuickBooks Ecosystem, Dan Wernikoff, SVP & GM of the Small Business Group, commented in a blog post.

Intuit has made four acquisitions so far this year, including Acrede in the UK, PaySuite and KDK Softwares (counting fiscal year 2015, which started on August 1, 2014).