The archive · Money & Fintech · Product decision · 2021–2026
Pomelo's card-infra bet: US$160M raised, 150+ clients, stablecoin rails next
Argentine fintech Pomelo bets card programs shouldn't take 18 months to launch; API-first issuing and processing won over 150 banks and fintechs
Pomelo
What the business is
Payments infrastructure: API-first, cloud-native card issuing and processing that lets fintechs and banks launch prepaid, debit and credit cards across Latin America through one integration, processing directly with Visa and Mastercard
Starting capital：US$9M seed (May 2021); US$35M Series A (Oct 2021); US$18M extension (Aug 2022); US$40M Series B (Jan 2024); US$55M Series C (Jan 2026) — US$160M total
How it started
Founded in Buenos Aires in 2021 by Gastón Irigoyen, Hernán Corral and Juan Fantoni, Pomelo raised a US$9M seed within three months, still pre-product, and went live with its first prepaid-card client in Argentina in January 2022. The founding complaint: launching a simple prepaid card took 12–18 months, and companies had to repeat the whole process in every market.
What happened
Pomelo expanded to Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. By January 2024 it had more than 100 corporate clients — Rappi, Bitso, Stori, Nomad, PayJoy and AstroPay among them — with revenue up 200% in 2023 and capacity for 55 million transactions a day. A US$40M Series B led by Kaszek funded a push into credit-card management as SaaS. By 2026 the client list had grown past 150, adding traditional banks like Santander, BBVA and Bancolombia, and revenue had grown more than 250% in two years.
How it ended up
Still running and scaling. In January 2026 Pomelo raised a US$55M Series C co-led by Kaszek and Insight Partners — bringing total funding to US$160M — to deepen its two biggest markets, Mexico and Brazil, and to move beyond cards: a global stablecoin-denominated card and AI-powered, real-time payment processing.
Background
Latin America runs on cards, but launching one was a slog: 12–18 months per market, new licenses, new processing deals, new compliance, repeated everywhere. Pomelo, founded in Buenos Aires in 2021 by Gastón Irigoyen, Hernán Corral and Juan Fantoni, bet that this pain was the business — an API-first platform that does issuing, processing and regulatory heavy lifting so a fintech can launch a card program in weeks.
The founders raised a US$9M seed within three months, pre-product, and went live in January 2022 with a prepaid product in Argentina. The wedge was BIN sponsorship and direct network relationships: Pomelo holds licenses with Visa and Mastercard and technically issues cards on behalf of clients, absorbing the compliance work that usually gates the market. From there it expanded to Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru.
The model proved out across the fintech wave: by January 2024 Pomelo had 100+ clients — Rappi, Bitso, Stori, Nomad, PayJoy and AstroPay — revenue up 200% in 2023 and processing capacity of 55 million transactions a day. A US$40M Series B led by Kaszek funded a credit-card management SaaS, and the client base kept compounding: by 2026 it passed 150, with Santander, BBVA and Bancolombia now customers, and revenue up more than 250% in two years.
The January 2026 Series C — US$55M co-led by Kaszek and Insight Partners, US$160M raised in total — was explicitly about what comes after cards: a global stablecoin-denominated card and agentic, real-time payments. Irigoyen framed the round as consolidation: Pomelo as the critical layer as Latin America modernizes payments, with traditional banking itself now a growth segment.
What has to be true
- Card programs took 12–18 months per market because issuing, processing and compliance were bespoke; standardizing them on one API was a real 10x speedup
- BIN sponsorship let small fintechs launch regulated products without building their own licenses — a wedge incumbents wouldn't offer
- Clients compounded: each fintech that launched on Pomelo became proof for the next, until banks like Santander and BBVA started buying the same rails
- Revenue grew >250% in two years because the product is transaction-volume infrastructure, not a subscription that maxes out
- The expansion beyond cards into stablecoin and real-time rails keeps the same API moat relevant as Pix and digital dollars reshape LatAm payments
What can be applied
Don't compete with incumbents, remove them: Pomelo packaged licenses, processing and compliance into an API, and banks themselves became its fastest-growing customers.
Aftermath
As of September 2026 Pomelo is still scaling, with the US$55M Series C earmarked for Mexico and Brazil growth and for new products: a USDC-denominated global card built with Circle, tokenization services and AI-powered chargeback management. Its stated goal is to become the core payments layer for the region — including Central America and the Caribbean — and to use stablecoin rails to move beyond Latin America into new markets.
Sources
- Pomelo levanta US$55 millones y acelera su expansión en la industria financiera
- Argentina's Pomelo raises US$55 million to boost payment offerings
- Pomelo stacks $40M to scale its payments infra business in LatAm
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