Palomma Series A raises $10 million, total now $14 million
Palomma Series A is $10 million, led by Cometa. Headlines citing $14 million describe cumulative funding, while the rent book is still mostly payments.
Having tracked how Latin American fintechs turn a payments pipe into credit, the figure that matters in the Palomma Series A is the one several headlines skipped. Medellín-based Palomma raised $10 million of new equity led by Mexican firm Cometa, Mary Ann Azevedo reported for Crunchbase News on November 11, 2026. Co-founder and Chief Executive Cipriano Echavarría, ex-Nubank, said the new equity is $10 million and that $14 million is the cumulative total, including $4 million previously undisclosed.
Forbes Colombia called the Cometa-led round $14 million and did not separate the older capital. El Colombiano headlined $14 million and never stated a $10 million Series A, though the plan it quotes is about $4 million for the commercial team and collections and about $6 million for financial products. Portafolio matched the Crunchbase split the same day. Crunchbase News names Volpe Capital, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Tekton Ventures, Simma Capital and Yango Ventures, plus existing backers Y Combinator, 17Sigma, Nido Ventures and Norte Ventures.
What the $10 million is for
Palomma Plus is rewards and credit-building for tenants. Palomma Advance pays landlords up to 12 months of rent upfront. Palomma Protect covers the owner or the manager for up to 36 months if a tenant defaults, El Colombiano reported. Crunchbase News said unlaunched Palomma Flex would split one month of rent into two installments, while managers pay a software fee and Palomma keeps an unpublished share of rent.
The company told Crunchbase News it processes about $130 million of rent a month for more than 200,000 tenants through more than 500 property managers in Colombia, about $1.5 billion annualized. About $3 million of Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is roughly 0.2% of that annualized flow, not a disclosed take rate. The company called the ARR climb about thirtyfold in 18 months. Portafolio's series, also from the company, runs from $0.09 million in September 2024 to $3 million in September 2026, about 33 times across two years, and neither set is audited.
A pilot book, and a quiet response
About 500 guarantees and about 100 advances are live, Echavarría told El Colombiano, against targets of 30,000 and 4,000 next year, plus a 12-month goal of 400,000 tenants and about 1,000 managers. Net revenue retention of 390% after 12 months, per Crunchbase News, cannot be from lending at that advance count. It is managers buying more of the rail.
"We want to win Colombia," he told Crunchbase News. "In the U.S., you can build one solution and be really large because the market allows it. In Latin America, if you want to be really large, you need to do all the things." He named EliseAI, Bilt, TheGuarantors and Flex. On artificial intelligence (AI), Managing Partner Pepe Bolaños of Cometa wrote that outdated processes can become "a proprietary data asset that can be leveraged and monetized through AI."
Gabriel Marcassa, a partner at Volpe Capital, told Forbes Colombia that real-estate finance has changed slowly and that Palomma could lead that shift. Forbes set the company against Grupo Aval and Grupo Bolívar. Neither group, nor the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia, nor customers listed by Latam Fintech Hub, including Portada Inmobiliaria, Alberto Álvarez and Londoño Gómez, is quoted on the round.
Echavarría told Portafolio the firm entered Y Combinator in January 2023 as an account-to-account processor, then stalled for a year as Cobru and Bre-B, Banco de la República's instant-payment system, threatened to make local payments a commodity. Managers who needed rent collected became the channel, the same shape as finmid's lending through Bolt and Skroutz. He framed the aim as a Nubank for real estate, echoing David Vélez's advice that payments enable credit.
El Colombiano and Forbes, citing the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), put renting households at 41% and about 8 million. The company told Portafolio the share is about 45%, still about 8 million homes and about $30 billion a year. Bolaños told Crunchbase News the count is nearly 8 million. The rates do not match.
Guarantees remain on Palomma's book while it seeks an unnamed insurer, Echavarría told Crunchbase News. Headcount was 18 on November 4, 2026, up from about 14 when the Palomma Series A closed roughly three weeks earlier, with one customer-service employee beside AI agents. A jump from about 500 guarantees to 30,000, while Palomma still holds the default, puts the loss on $10 million of equity. Mexico, Brazil and the Spanish-speaking United States stay behind Colombia.
El Colombiano, citing Ruta N, said Medellín startups raised $216 million of venture capital so far in 2026, 38% more than in all of 2025. This round is nearer FinMaq's equipment Series A than Clara's corporate-spend raise. If guarantees scale before an insurer shares the default, the Palomma Series A is a risk the disclosures do not size.
Reporting by Rick Steves. Filed 13 November 2026, 09:19 GMT.
Senior Reporter, Regulation and Fintech
Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011.
