Pomelo Raises $55M… and Pushes Deeper Into LatAm Payments
Hey Payments Fanatic!
Pomelo just raised $55M in a Series C to scale across Latin America and beyond.
Kaszek and Insight Partners co-led the round. A strong signal of long-term belief in the region. Mexico and Brazil are the priority. Scale matters there. Regulation too.
Pomelo is also moving past cards. Stablecoin-denominated credit cards in USDC. Real-time, agentic, cross-border payments next.
The client mix says it all. BBVA, Santander, and Bancolombia, alongside Binance and Western Union. Banks and global platforms, same rails.
In LatAm, where inflation and FX friction are daily realities, this stack is starting to look structural...
One More From the Infrastructure Layer
Ecommpay and NORBr are teaming up to help merchants expand globally with less friction.
The partnership gives platforms instant access to acquiring, orchestration, and 100+ local and international payment methods, without rebuilding their stack.
Another quiet move. Another reminder that payment progress happens in the infrastructure.
Scroll down to see what else is moving in Payments today 👇
Cheers,
INSIGHTS
📈 Visa analytics across 6 crypto cards, the growth is hard to ignore: spend volume increased from $14M at the start of 2025 to $91M by December 2025.
NEWS
🇦🇷 Argentina’s Pomelo raises $55 million to boost payment offerings. The round will be used to grow Pomelo’s credit-processing business with a focus on Mexico and Brazil, and to support the launch of a global stablecoin-denominated credit card, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Gaston Irigoyen said in an interview.
🇬🇧 Ecommpay has joined forces with NORBr to provide NORBr partners with instant access to Ecommpay’s full-stack acquiring and orchestration ecosystem. Through the partnership, businesses gain instant access to enterprise-grade tools to help them expand faster and operate more efficiently.
🇳🇱 Wero launches in Dutch online stores in October 2026. Daniel van Delft said the shift from iDEAL to Wero will reshape Dutch payments, beginning with a dual “iDEAL Wero” brand. Wero introduces new features such as recurring payment authorisation and will expand to online and physical stores as part of the European Payments Initiative.
🇦🇪 Mastercard and Moneythor provide payment enrichment for First Abu Dhabi Bank. Through this collaboration, FAB’s customers now see real merchant names and logos, organised spending categories, intuitive summaries of transactions, and forward-looking cashflow forecasts. Additionally, BoxCommerce and Mastercard launch a Prepaid Card Program to give SMEs direct, instant access to their earnings. Through this collaboration, the ecosystem approach not only strengthens SME access to financial tools but also paves the way for future innovations.
🇮🇳 PhonePe has secured Sebi approval for its IPO. The $14.5-billion startup plans a $1.5-billion OFS, with Walmart, Tiger Global, and Microsoft set to sell shares. Strong payments dominance and rising revenues underpin investor confidence.
🇺🇸 PayPal introduces Free DIY tax filing for PayPal debit card customers. PayPal today announced a new partnership with april, allowing U.S. PayPal Debit Mastercard® customers to file their 2025 federal and state tax returns for free using april's DIY tax filing service, saving approximately $1603 in typical costs.
🇵🇹 SIBS launches Multibanco Connect and promises to revolutionise the payments market. This new solution eliminates the need for manual entry of purchase amounts at the payment terminal, offering a more efficient and fluid checkout experience.
🇺🇸 Block, Inc. surpasses $200 billion in credit provided to customers, using real-time behavioral data rather than traditional credit scores. The approach has delivered high repayment rates and low losses, highlighting how Block’s integrated ecosystem supports more inclusive and sustainable lending.
🇺🇸 TreviPay teams with Visa to offer banks a pay-by-invoice tool. The partnership combines TreviPay’s order-to-cash automation technology with Visa’s commercial payment capabilities to help issuers transform fragmented B2B spend into strategic, issuer-financed, invoice-based transactions.
🇺🇸 Zepz acquires Pomelo to expand credit services for cross-border communities. By utilising the Pomelo product, Zepz is expanding its ability to support these broader financial needs. Pomelo’s capabilities in cards, lending, and credit building complement Zepz’s strengths in global payments, enabling customers to access a more complete set of financial tools over time.
🇺🇸 House of Doge unveils ‘Such’ app to power dogecoin payments. The Such app aims to simplify Dogecoin transactions and support new forms of digital payments across global markets. It combines wallet creation, real-time tracking, and merchant tools into one mobile platform.
🇬🇧 Wise serves 11 million customers as volumes hit £47 billion. Wise moved £47.4 billion in cross-border transactions during its third fiscal quarter, a 26% jump from the same period last year as the London-based payments company continued adding customers and expanding its infrastructure footprint.
🇵🇪 dLocal partners with HONOR to launch localised payments in Peru's growing tech landscape. Through this partnership, dLocal enables HONOR to accept payments from Peruvian consumers via a broad range of local payment methods through a single API integration.
🇳🇱 Adyen nominates Herna Verhagen as Supervisory Board member and Chair. Herna Verhagen brings more than 20 years of experience in executive and non-executive leadership roles. Read more
🇪🇺 Revolut Pay is now compatible with Google’s Agent Payments Protocol. By adapting the protocol for account-to-account flows, Revolut aims to position Revolut Pay as a default rail for agentic shopping, combining instant payments, built-in fraud monitoring, and higher conversion potential as commerce shifts toward AI-led experiences.
🇧🇷 Brazil Central Bank ex-official launches stablecoin. Tony Volpon, former deputy governor at the Central Bank of Brazil, unveiled the BRD stablecoin via his firm Inovação, offering institutional investors exposure to Brazil’s high-yield government debt through a digital token.
🇺🇸 Affirm enhances credit underwriting with real-time financial insights. The financial technology firm is now integrating advanced real-time data points to provide a more accurate snapshot of users’ financial health during transactions. This development aims to make credit approvals more responsive to the fast-paced changes in people’s economic circumstances.
🇺🇸 Affirm brings installment payments to housing costs. Affirm is piloting a new buy now, pay later option that allows renters to split monthly rent into two payments, expanding BNPL beyond everyday purchases to housing costs. The limited program is being launched in partnership with Esusu.
🇬🇧 Conferma appoints Currencycloud's Mark Ledsham as CEO. Ledsham brings nearly two decades of experience in the financial and payments industry. He began his career as a manager at Deloitte Australia and later held senior positions at OFX, Euronet Worldwide, and Macquarie Group.
🇬🇧 payabl. appoints Breno Oliveira as Chief Product Officer. In his new role, Oliveira will lead payabl.’s product strategy and execution, overseeing the continued development of the company’s modular platform and its flagship unified interface, payabl.one.
🇺🇸 Federal Reserve opens door to Main Street’s post-check payments future. The U.S. Federal Reserve is nudging modernisation, with an information request that underscores the risks of maintaining the status quo, giving businesses a concrete reason to plan a phased transition to electronic payments.
GOLDEN NUGGET
Google is turning Agentic Commerce into real infrastructure.
The missing piece? UCP 👇
Today, AI agents break at checkout, every agent needs custom integrations with every merchant and PSP.
That doesn’t scale.
Google’s answer: UCP, an open commerce standard built with Shopify, Etsy, Walmart, Target, and backed by Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal.
What changes:
👉 Integrate once → work everywhere
👉 Secure agent payments with cryptographic mandates
👉 Built-in human escalation for high-risk moments
Instead of building custom integrations for every agent-platform-merchant combination, you integrate once and reach everywhere.
It's modular - merchants choose which capabilities to support:
- single-item checkout
- multi-item carts
- loyalty programs
- post-purchase tracking.
It's vendor-agnostic - works across any surface or platform, not locked to Google's ecosystem.
Most Importantly: When agents need human input, there's an escalation layer that surfaces critical transactions to real people.
Why now:
UCP already enables direct checkout inside Google Search AI Mode and Gemini in the US 🇺🇸 without leaving the conversation.
Merchants stay merchant of record. Customer ownership stays intact.
Bottom line:
This is how agentic commerce stops being a demo and becomes rails.
📷 Source: Rakesh Gohel
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