How Palla Financial navigates selling to banks with no standard buyer: from remittance teams to CEOs | Enrique Perezalonso

Episode notes

The cross-border payments market remains stubbornly difficult despite billions in venture capital and countless smart founders attacking the problem. The core challenge isn't technology - it's economics. Western Union's margins weren't exploitative greed; they reflected the brutal reality of cash distribution networks, compliance infrastructure, and dual-country regulatory overhead. Palla Financial cracked this by inverting the entire model: instead of fighting for expensive US-based senders, they partnered with Latin American banks to let recipients pull funds. This approach taps into the world's largest remittance corridor ($160+ billion annually flowing from the US to Latin America) while sidestepping the customer acquisition bloodbath. In this episode, ⁠Enrique Perezalonso⁠ , CEO of ⁠Palla Financial⁠ , breaks down why recipient-driven payments eliminate distribution costs, how they rebuilt their product three times based on bank feedback, and why the "no CAC" embedded model still requires massive partner investment to actually work.

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