In 2010 he won the Girobio stage race; the amateur version of the Giro d'Italia; and in 2011 he won his first professional race at the Giro dell'Emilia.

Betancur had been scheduled to join the Liquigas–Cannondale team in 2012, but remained with Acqua & Sapone. Betancur left Acqua & Sapone at the end of the 2012 season, and joined Ag2r–La Mondiale on a two-year contract from the 2013 season onwards.

He started his 2013 with a seventh-place finish at the Tour of the Basque Country, including a second place on stage 3. He went on to light up the Ardennes Classics, coming 3rd at the Fleche Wallone after an early attack with just over 500m to go and scoring a 4th place in Liege-Bastogne-Liege, where it was his attack which created the final select group of six who contested the finish.

After a 12th-place finish at the Tour de Romandie, Betancur went in to the Giro as an outsider for a top 10 GC position. Initially things went poorly, as he lost time on the descent of stage 3 and on the long time trial of stage 8, by the end of which he was down in 28th position, 6.08 down on the leader and eventual winner Nibali. However, following second places on stages 9, 10, and 15, and some brilliant performances in the other mountain stages, he worked himself up to 7th place and just two seconds off the white jersey for the best young rider (which he had actually gained on stage 15, but lost in the stage 18 time trial) by the penultimate stage. On the final mountain stage, although he punctured at the bottom of the final climb, he managed to catch up and overtake most of his GC rivals, finishing 4th on the day. He ended the Giro as best young rider and 5th in the general Classification.

In December 2013, Betancur confirmed he would be focusing on the Tour de France for 2014. However, he failed to fly from his training base in Colombia to France on June 3, blaming a viral infection, and changed his target to the Vuelta a España.

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