The Buenos Aires-based startup’s new infrastructure aims to allow fintechs and embedded finance players to launch virtual accounts and issue prepaid and credit cards via “compliant” onboarding processes. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital payments all over the world, and Latin America is no exception. While the majority of transactions are still done in cash, there are still over a billion cards in the region. Cards have an estimated payments volume of $900 billion per year, and yet 95% of these transactions are being processed by local incumbents, asserts Pomelo. This is a problem the company’s founders experienced firsthand in previous roles, and are eager to solve by creating a new payments infrastructure.
Pomelo’s goal is to solve the problem by creating a new generation of financial services infrastructure that allows companies to build a fintech business and launch cards “much faster” throughout Latin America. For now, the three-month-old company is in its infancy — the pre-product phase, which makes it even more notable that the company managed to raise such a large seed round. Pomelo plans to use its new capital in part to open offices in São Paulo, Brazil and Mexico City, and hire dozens of people in those cities as well as in its home base of Argentina. The company currently has about 15 employees, 11 of which are engineers. It of course plans to continue building out its offering.