The fintech-as-a-service providing platform, Pomelo established in early 2021 and works to offer financial services and infrastructure to the fintechs and submerged finance firms to allow them to issue credit cards and prepaid and also helps in launching digital accounts.
The Argentina headquartered fintech was granted a mastercard and payment license in Argentina.
The co-founders of the company, Gastron Irigoyen and Hernan Corral believe that every company can be a fintech company and their goal is to lubricate that path by enabling them with indispensable technology.
The platform intends to renovate the possibilities in payment services.
A $9 million seed round was raised by the company just 5 months ago and now the company announced that it has secured $35 million capital in a series A round of funding.
The valuation at which the fund raised was not specified by the LatAm fintech, however they said that this is the largest funding in Series A done by any firm of Latin America.
This propitious round was headed by Tiger Global Management but a sew of some high profile investors also participated including Index Ventures, QED Investors, BoxGroup, Insight Partners, Monashees, SciFi, Greyhound, Clocktower and Gilgamesh Ventures.
Along with them, some of the angel investors are supporting this series A round such as Angela Strange of a16z, Biz Stone, Max Levchin, Martin Varsavki, William Hockey, Itai Damti and others.
After struggling with the financial transaction problems, Pomelo’s co-founders decided to solve them by creating a brand new payment infrastructure.
Gastron Irigoyen, the CEO and co-founder of Pamelo elaborated in their last raise how monstrous it was to build a fintech and issuing cards in Latin America and that they were familiar with them by their previous experiences.
He further added that to launch a simple prepaid card, it takes almost 12 to 18 months and unfortunately the firms have to go through the agonizing experiences of replicating the process in every operated market.
The company wants to launch cards throughout the Latin America that are much faster and it was also claimed the startup that the API driven company gives a new way to-
- Built a complaint onboarding activity.
- Launching the local financial system interconnected virtual accounts and
- Issue credit and debit card all over in Latin America.
Gastron Irigoyen said that there are different and their own regulations and nauseous of every market which leads the legacy providers to offer poor tech at extravagant rates. This status quo frustrates most of the technical teams and founders which leads to slow down their product sale that gives lack of regional solutions.
He added that at Pomelo, their goal is to make LatAm look like Europe and that will happen when they unlock several markets in a short span of time, to help their partners, which will allow them to develop their business without worrying about anything.
With the fresh capital, Pomelo aims to deploy the fund in to accelerate the roadmap of product by Pomelo and to continue the development and innovations in their fintech-as-a-services business.
They also want to increase their headcount, which is just 100 employees till now and they want to increase it to minimum 150 by the end of 2022.
The lead investor of series A, Global Tiger Management’s partner, JohnCurtius notes that there is a boom in the technology of LatAm and some of their emerging startups are on their way to transform and renovate the entire industries.
The 2001 founded American investment firm, Global Tiger Management has its main focus on the financial technology, consumer and software industries.
Partner of Global Tiger Management, John Curtius said that in recent years, they have seen some of the excellent consumer product disrupt, consumer banking, insurance and lending and now, they are highly excited to be partnered with Pomelo that gives a different perspective of Latin America, their great goal of new regional financial technology infrastructure and a tough and strong team, capable to execute with the greatest standards.
Conclusion
Pomelo raised $35 million just after 5 months of its $9 million seed funding. The round was led by Global Tiger Management along with several high profile investors and some of the angel investors also including Index Ventures, QED Investors, BoxGroup, Insight Partners, Angela Strange of a16z, Biz Stone, Max Levchin, Martin Varsavki, William Hockey, etc. the round was done with the aim to deploy the fund in accelerating the roadmap of product by Pomelo and to continue the development and innovations in their fintech-as-a-services business and also in increasing their headcount.
FAQs
Ans. Gastron Irigoyen y Hernan Corral.
Ans. $35 million?
Ans. No, this is series A round.
Ans. Global Tiger Management.
Ans. Not specified by Pomelo.
