Investment rounds only happen if the numbers support them.
Pomelo has attracted 150+ corporate clients including major banks like Bancolombia and BBVA by offering embedded finance APIs for card issuance and payment processing. The company's founders leveraged frustration with legacy financial infrastructure to build modern solutions supporting multiple currencies and cryptocurrencies across the region.
- Pomelo raised $160 million total, including a $55 million Series C in January 2026
- 150+ corporate clients including Bancolombia, BBVA, Banco Santander, Lulo Bank, Addi, Rappi, Didi
- Three Argentine founders: Martín Irigoyen (CEO), Hernán Corral (COO), Juan Fantoni (CCO)
- Colombia is second-largest market by revenue and headcount; serves as hub for Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Central America
Argentine fintech Pomelo, which raised $160M, is expanding beyond Latin America with new products in global cards and real-time payments, positioning Colombia as a regional hub for further growth.
Three Argentine financiers sat in boardrooms across Latin America and kept running into the same wall: the infrastructure that moved money was built in the 1970s and 1980s, before digital payments existed. Martín Irigoyen, Hernán Corral, and Juan Fantoni had each spent years inside that system—Irigoyen and Corral had launched Naranja X, a digital bank, together in Argentina; Corral had been the third employee at MercadoPago; Fantoni came from Mastercard. They knew the problem intimately. They also knew it was solvable.
In 2020, they founded Pomelo with a specific bet: that banks, fintechs, and tech companies across Latin America didn't need to build payment infrastructure from scratch. They needed APIs—clean, modern connections to card issuance, processing, and management. Pomelo would be the bridge. Within five years, the company had signed more than 150 corporate clients, a roster that reads like a map of the region's financial establishment: Bancolombia, BBVA, Banco Santander, GNB Sudameris, Lulo Bank, Addi, Rappi, Didi. Each one could now launch credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards, and multi-currency offerings without building the machinery themselves.
The founders' frustration had been widely shared. Irigoyen describes it plainly: they watched a region desperate to modernize, trapped by incumbents who had no incentive to change. Pomelo's insight was that the solution didn't require replacing those institutions—it required giving them better tools. The company built technology that let customers pay in pesos, dollars, euros, or cryptocurrencies, depending on what made sense for their transaction. It was a small shift in how you thought about money movement, but it unlocked something the market had been waiting for.
By January 2026, Pomelo had raised $160 million across multiple rounds, including a $55 million Series C that closed in the middle of a difficult fundraising environment for Latin American startups. Irigoyen is matter-of-fact about what that means: "Investment rounds only happen if the numbers support them." The numbers had.
With that capital came a shift in ambition. Pomelo announced two new product lines: global cards and real-time payments. The logic was straightforward—much of what the company had built for Latin America could be sold elsewhere. Multi-currency cards designed for people who need local currency for daily spending and dollars or crypto for international transactions aren't a Latin American problem; they're a global one. Automated chargebacks, where artificial intelligence handles fraud reversals that normally require manual coordination between banks and Visa or Mastercard networks, solve a friction point everywhere.
Real-time payments represented a different kind of expansion. Brazil's Pix and Colombia's Bre-B had shown that the region was ready to move beyond traditional card networks. Pomelo was moving with that momentum, building into a space where the company had no legacy constraints.
Colombia occupies a particular place in this strategy. Irigoyen doesn't describe it as a market—he calls it a hub. From Colombia, Pomelo serves Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and Central America, excluding Mexico and the Caribbean. It's the company's second-largest operation by revenue and second-largest by headcount, after Argentina. Gabriel Santos, president of Colombia Fintech, sees what Pomelo has done: "They've transformed how payment services are digitized, making the experience more efficient for businesses and people. In a market where consumers demand more, their technology has proven its value in reducing friction." That friction reduction, Santos suggests, drives adoption.
But Pomelo's ambition now extends beyond serving the region better. The company is positioning Colombia as a strategic node in a global expansion, a place where it can build products that work everywhere. Irigoyen's vision reaches further than fiat currency and traditional banking models. He sees a financial system that has already begun to transcend those categories. Pomelo is betting it can help build what comes next.
Citas Notables
In each of those earlier experiences, we were frustrated having to work with incumbent players from the 1970s and 80s, when digital payments didn't even exist. We saw Latin America's need to modernize its payment infrastructure.— Martín Irigoyen, CEO of Pomelo
Pomelo has transformed how payment services are digitized, making the experience more efficient for businesses and people. Their technology has proven its value in reducing friction.— Gabriel Santos, president of Colombia Fintech
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did these three specific people, at this specific moment, see something everyone else missed?
They didn't miss it—they lived inside it. Irigoyen and Corral had just tried to build a digital bank in Argentina using the old infrastructure. Fantoni had watched Mastercard's limitations from the inside. They weren't theorizing about the problem; they were frustrated by it every day.
But frustration alone doesn't build a $160 million company. What was the actual insight?
That you don't need to replace the old system. You need to give the institutions inside it better tools. Banks and fintechs weren't going anywhere—they had customers, they had licenses, they had capital. They just needed modern plumbing.
So Pomelo became the plumbing.
Exactly. An API that lets a bank launch a multi-currency card without building the entire payment processing layer themselves. That's not revolutionary in Silicon Valley terms, but in a region where most financial infrastructure is decades old, it's transformative.
Why does Colombia matter so much to the global strategy?
Because it's not just a market—it's a proof point. If you can serve Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and Central America from Colombia, you've built something that scales across borders and languages and regulatory environments. That's a template for going global.
What's the real bet underneath all of this?
That the future of finance doesn't look like what we have now. Irigoyen talks about transcending fiat currency and traditional models. Pomelo is building infrastructure for a financial system that's already starting to exist—one where crypto, local currency, and real-time settlement all coexist. They're not predicting that future; they're building the pipes for it.