Mexican bitcoin exchange Bitso has raised $2.5 million in a latest round, drawing support from Mexico-based foreign exchange, Monex Group, along with Mexican VC firms Variv Capital and Xochi Ventures, and US investors Digital Currency Group (DCG), FundersClub, Bitcoin Capital and Blockchain Tech Limited.

The investment was divided into two tranches – the first tranche closed in May, while the most recent closed last week, CoinDesk reported. With this funding, Bitso aims to make it easier for the underbanked in Mexico to gain access to financial services and to meet the company’s hiring goal.

Speaking with CoinDesk, Bitso's co-founder and president Daniel Vogel said that he believes the expertise of Monex and other investors will help the startup grow from its "strong footprint" of users in Mexico to elsewhere in Latin America.

"We are very interested in the rest of Latin America. There are some places where there's been a significant amount of bitcoin activity in Latin America, but there are other places that are very, very quiet. I think those places are very interesting."

Bitso customers currently use their account for various purposes including paying for online games and facilitating alternative p2p lending platforms and much more. Vogel said that very few of these users are making speculative investments.

"We almost have no speculative players in our exchange," he said. "Most of what we see are people who are using this technology to achieve something."

He further said that he has been engaging with Mexico's central bank, Banxico, the Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) and the Ministry of Finance (SHCP) in order to help improve regulatory clarity in Mexico. Despite the increased KYC/AML requirements, Bitso currently has 20,000 customers and processes about $2.5 million worth of transactions a week on an average.

"We think this technology has all these really, really interesting properties and when we see people getting loans, connecting with global capital markets, making payments internationally”, he said.