Pomelo Pay

Pomelo Pay is a London-based fintech company that enables businesses to accept contactless card and digital payments through any smartphone, without requiring dedicated card terminal hardware. Founded in 2017 by Vincent Choi, the company began with the insight that the payment infrastructure available to UK small businesses was unnecessarily hardware-dependent, expensive, and inaccessible to many of the entrepreneurs who stood to benefit most from card acceptance.

The company's core product transforms any NFC-enabled iOS or Android device into a point-of-sale terminal, allowing market traders, mobile tradespeople, pop-up businesses, and sole traders to begin accepting contactless payments immediately upon downloading the app. Pomelo Pay was one of the first UK payment businesses to implement software-only tap-to-pay technology, enabling card acceptance without any physical card reader. The platform also offers QR code payments, payment links, and online shop capabilities — providing a flexible, hardware-light payment toolkit suited to businesses that operate across multiple settings.

Pomelo Pay has evolved from its origins as an SME payments tool into a broader B2B payments platform operating across the UK and Asia, with offices in London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Thailand. The company is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under the Electronic Money Regulations, has achieved PCI Compliance Level 1, and has partnered with Mastercard to support its merchant services offering. It became the largest payment processor in the Maldives and has processed over $10 billion across both European and emerging markets.

The company raised £1.1 million to continue developing its tap-to-pay application and expand the merchant user base across UK small businesses and sole traders. It had previously raised €2.3 million in seed funding and a $10 million investment round.