Palomma, the Colombian fintech that automates rent collection for real estate agencies, raised US$14 million in a combined operation: a Series A of US$10 million led by the Mexican fund Cometa, with the participation of Volpe Capital, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Tekton Ventures, Simma Capital and Yango Ventures, and the return of Y Combinator, 17Sigma, the fund of Pierpaolo Barbieri, founder of Ualá, Nido Ventures and Norte Ventures. Added to that is US$4 million from a pre-Series A round that the company had not publicly disclosed.
Palomma was founded in Medellín by Cipriano Echavarría (CEO), an economist at Duke, former Morgan Stanley and part of the team that launched Nubank in Colombia; Felipe Monsalve (CTO), MIT engineer with stints at Meta and Bloomberg; and Nicolás Gómez del Campo (AI leader), Mexican engineer from MIT and former JP Morgan.
The company entered Y Combinator in January 2023 with an account-to-account payment processor and has focused on the rental market since early 2024. In just 18 months, it went from zero to more than 500 real estate clients and more than 200,000 tenants, and is positioned as the largest rental collection platform in Colombia.
The country has a particular weight in this market: according to DANE, 41% of Colombian households, nearly 8 million, live in rent, one of the highest rates in the world. In Latin America, the company estimates that the market brings together 50 million tenant households and a volume of around US$200,000 million annually.
From collection to financial products: guarantees and advances on the same basis
Palomma’s model starts from the collection, collects the rent and transfers it to the owner, and builds on that infrastructure two financial products with a higher margin: Palomma Advance, which advances the owner up to 12 months of rental income, and Palomma Protect, a guarantee that covers the rent for up to 36 months if the tenant defaults.
Today, those products represent small volumes compared to the total user base, about 500 active guarantees and about 100 advances, but the company set aggressive goals: reaching 30,000 guarantees and 4,000 advances in the next year.
To achieve this, the capital is distributed with a specific criterion: about US$4 million to strengthen the commercial team and expand the collection product, and another US$6 million to develop financial and AI products.
The platform already uses artificial intelligence agents to streamline contract approval processes and answer questions from home seekers. “We are creating financial infrastructure that solves all their problems,” said Cipriano Echavarría in statements to El Colombiano.
Medellín as a base, with Mexico and Brazil on the horizon
Palomma’s operation is concentrated in Antioquia, between 80,000 and 85,000 of its 200,000 tenants are in that region, partly because there the rental is managed to a greater extent through real estate agencies, which is the company’s central channel.
For next year, the priority is Colombia: reaching 500,000 tenants and 1,500 real estate agencies. In parallel, Palomma is already exploring Mexico, Brazil and the Hispanic market in the United States as next expansion destinations.
The round comes at a time of acceleration of the Medellin ecosystem: according to data from Ruta N, Medellín startups raised US$216 million in venture capital so far in 2026, 38% more than during all of 2025, and the city occupies sixth place in StartupBlink’s Latin American ranking.
Palomma thus joins a group of Colombian fintechs, along with FinMaq and Celes, that in recent weeks closed rounds with regional and international fund syndicates, in a sign that venture capital is once again looking closely at the country’s ecosystem.
