Lemon's crypto-everyday bet: 5M users, profitable, $20M Series B for LatAm

Lemon is an Argentine fintech founded in Buenos Aires in 2019 by Marcelo Cavazzoli and Borja Martel with US$50,000 from family and friends. The bet: Argentines living through inflation and capital controls would keep pesos and bitcoin in the same wallet and spend both with a Visa card, rather than treat crypto as a trading terminal. It was the first dual-currency crypto app in the Argentine market.

The wedge was making crypto tangible. The Lemon Cash app pairs a wallet with a dual Visa prepaid card that lets users pay in pesos or crypto and earn cashback in Bitcoin, so a coffee purchase becomes the on-ramp to holding digital assets. A US$16.3M round in 2021, led by Kingsway Capital with Coinbase Ventures, Draper Associates, Valor Capital and Banco Supervielle, funded product development and the first expansion push, starting with Peru.

Lemon survived the 2022 crypto bear market and became profitable. By October 2025 it reported 5M users and 1M+ monthly active users, was Argentina's most-used crypto app per Sensor Tower, had issued 150,000+ Visa cards and reached 1M users in Peru within a year, projected ~US$9.3B in 2025 processed volume (up 57% year over year), and custodied over US$160M in user assets with public proof-of-reserves.

In October 2025 Lemon closed a US$20M Series B co-led by F-Prime and ParaFi, with DRW Venture Capital, VanEck, Endeavor Catalyst, Persea VC, Alumni Ventures, Lambda Class and Aave founder Stani Kulechov participating — the largest crypto round in Latin America in three years. The funds back launches in Colombia, Mexico and Chile, a Brazil relaunch, and a goal of 10M users within 12 months.