Pálpito Is Building the Prediction Market for Latin America
Backed by ROW and Rerail, we’re live and building the infrastructure to bring prediction markets to the region.
We never announced it. We were busy building. Since then we have shipped an exchange and signed our first distribution partners. So this is a late announcement, but a better one: we can now show you what the money turned into.
Pálpito is a prediction markets platform built for Spanish-speaking Latin America. People take a position on the outcomes they care about (fútbol, elections, the economy, culture), and the price tells you what the crowd thinks will happen.
A new financial product, and a region left out of it
Prediction markets are becoming one of the most important new financial products of this decade. They turn opinions into prices. A price of 65 cents on an outcome implies a 65% probability, and anyone who thinks the market is wrong can act on it.
Incumbents proved the demand. But Latin America has been left on the sidelines. There are no local payment rails into these products, no markets built around what people here actually follow, and no product designed in Spanish from day one.
We think that is backwards. This is a region of more than 400 million Spanish speakers with strong opinions on fútbol, politics and the economy, and a generation already comfortable managing money on their phones.
The opinions are already there. What's missing is a trusted place to put a price on them.
Giving shape to a new asset class
We believe prediction markets represent the emergence of a new asset class: one where the underlying value is tied to the outcome of real-world events.
For the first time, people can trade their views on everything from interest rates and elections to fútbol and culture, with prices that continuously reflect what the market believes will happen.
But a new asset class needs more than demand. It needs market infrastructure, liquidity, transparent rules, reliable settlement and trusted distribution.
That is what we're building at Pálpito. We're giving this new asset class a home in Latin America, making it accessible through local currencies, relevant markets and the financial apps people already use.
Our ambition isn't simply to bring prediction markets to the region. It's to help make event-based trading a permanent part of its financial ecosystem.
How Pálpito works
On Pálpito, users fund their account in local currency and buy or sell positions on real-world outcomes. Every trade is peer to peer. There is no house on the other side, and every market resolves against an objective, public source.
The second half of our thesis matters just as much. In the US, prediction markets took off when they showed up inside apps people already used. We are building for that from the start. Pálpito is a consumer app, and it is also an exchange that plugs into the fintechs and wallets millions of Latin Americans already trust with their money.
Partners bring the users, the payments and the relationship. We bring the markets, the liquidity and the technology. Our first distribution partners are already signed, and together they reach millions of active users across the region.
The exchange, the company and the rules are built to be global. Go-to-market is local: country by country, with local markets, local payments and local campaigns.
What we built
We soft-launched in June 2026, days before the World Cup kicked off. Since then we have listed hundreds of markets across sports, politics, the economy and entertainment, in Spanish, Portuguese and English.
Most of what we built is infrastructure, not screens:
- Our own exchange: a central limit order book, a double-entry ledger and real-time settlement.
- A partner platform: APIs, credentials, documentation and real-time data, so any fintech can launch prediction markets inside its own app.
- Liquidity tools: APIs for market makers, plus our own system that seeds liquidity on new markets from minute one.
- Per-country onboarding: identity checks and local payments, configured market by market.
A small team built all of this, delivering what would have taken much larger teams at the companies we came from. That is the point: we know the craft, we know our users, and AI multiplies what each of us can do.
Investors who backed us before there was anything to show
A pre-seed is a vote of conviction in people. ROW and Rerail cast theirs before there was a product, a market or a single user.
ROW led the round. Guilherme has been the investor every founder hopes for: in the details when it matters, out of the way when it doesn't, and always pushing us to think bigger about what Pálpito can become.
Rerail joined alongside them. Anthony has opened more doors for us than we can count, and has been a constant source of introductions, advice and support.
Their conviction helped us build the foundation we are operating on today.
Why us
I have spent my career building financial products for Latin America. I was the CPO at Arcus, a payments company we sold to Mastercard in 2021. I was then CPO at AstroPay, building payments for millions of users across the region.
Those years taught me two things. Distribution in Latin American fintech is won through partners, not just ads. And the hard part is never the app: it is the money movement, the local rails and the trust underneath it.
That is exactly what Pálpito is built on. Our team is made of operators who have collectively built more than ten platforms in the region, experts in payments, APIs, infrastructure and delivery.
What comes next
We are preparing our next launches and growing our partner network across the region.
We are also hiring. If you have scaled a consumer fintech in Latin America, grown a community from zero, or love hard problems in exchanges, ledgers and real-time systems, we'd love to hear from you.
If you run a fintech, wallet or neobank and want to offer prediction markets to your users, let's talk.
And we have more news to share very soon. Stay close.
Xabi Valdecantos, CEO & Founder, Pálpito
Pálpito is a prediction markets platform for Latin America. Learn more at palpito.com.