Palla

Palla is a US-based cross-border payments company that supplies financial institutions, fintechs, marketplaces and enterprises with infrastructure for instant peer-to-peer international transfers. Its offering combines a REST API (v3), pre-built "P2P Payment Blocks" such as payment links, transfer connections, transfer profiles, an FX calculator, transaction history and receipts, and fully white-labeled applications that partners can launch under their own brand. Palla handles foreign exchange, payment-rail optimization, KYC, compliance screening and partner banking on behalf of its customers, and exposes webhooks with HMAC signing and idempotent request handling.

The consumer-facing use case originated with remittances: senders in the US initiate transfers from a mobile app and international recipients receive funds, including directly to a debit card, in seconds. Palla describes the US outbound remittance opportunity it targets as a $65bn-a-year market. Company materials cite a median transfer time under 10 seconds, more than 50 live corridors, 99.999% platform uptime in 2025, and more than 2.5 million enrolled users, with a disclosure that 90% of transfers complete within 120 seconds and that timing can vary with identity, fraud, sanctions and AML review or receiving-institution processing.

The company was founded in 2020 and participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch. Its founding team consists of CEO Enrique Perezalonso, CPO Andrew Mason and CTO Gregory Piccolo, and its team size is listed as 22.

Founding story

Palla was founded in 2020 to address the slow, largely cash-based and inconvenient process of sending and receiving remittances from the US, aiming to let senders complete a transfer in a few taps and recipients receive funds in seconds. It joined Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch. Co-founder and CEO Enrique Perezalonso has more than 25 years of experience in financial institutions and fintech across marketing, product, operations and sales, holds an MBA from MIT Sloan and previously worked at McKinsey & Co. Co-founder and CPO Andrew Mason was previously CPO of Lana, a US neobank co-created by BCG. Gregory Piccolo is co-founder and CTO.

Business model

Palla sells cross-border payment infrastructure to partner institutions rather than operating solely as a direct-to-consumer remittance brand. Partners embed Palla's prebuilt components and APIs into their existing apps or deploy Palla's white-labeled applications, while Palla manages FX, rail selection, compliance and banking relationships. Consumer-facing flows shown by the company display a per-transfer fee (illustrated at $2.99) alongside a quoted exchange rate.

Company materials illustrate transfer fees charged on consumer payments (shown as $2.99 per transfer) and foreign-exchange rates applied at the point of transfer, delivered through partner-branded or embedded experiences.

Traction

Company materials report more than 2.5 million enrolled users, over 50 live corridors and 99.999% platform uptime in 2025. A named partner reference cites over $100m in international deposits, 250,000+ users enrolled, an 8-second median transfer time and a 10-week launch. As of the May 2025 funding announcement, Palla had partnered with more than 30 financial institutions and distribution networks reaching a potential user base of over 150 million people.

Latest developments

In May 2025 Palla announced a $14.5m Series A led by Revolution Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Ardent, Cowboy Ventures, Dash Fund, Uncommon Capital, Meta Fund, Evolution VC, First Check Ventures, Vitalize and DeepWork Capital. Proceeds are earmarked for expanding payment corridors, releasing new money-movement features, broadening the product suite and scaling operations, with emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean; additional partner integrations were slated to launch before the end of the year.