Open finance infrastructure, agentic banking, and cross-border payments converge as Prometeo connects 7,500+ financial institutions across Latin America and the US through a single API. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Ximena Aleman, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Prometeo, to unpack what it takes to standardize fragmented banking systems across 30 countries and bring that playbook to the American market.

Tedd and Ximena cover why US banking infrastructure is more fragmented than most people realize, how Prometeo's account verification now covers 85% of US bank accounts, and what agentic banking looks like when AI agents operate real bank accounts with built-in compliance controls. The conversation also addresses the open banking pricing debate, CFPB 1033 as a US expansion accelerant, the Nacha preferred partner announcement, and why only 2 to 3% of VC funding reaches female-led startups.

Find out more

1️⃣ Disaggregate your payment stack layer by layer; calling it "mature" hides gaps that cost you money.

2️⃣ Build infrastructure for corridors, not single countries, starting with the highest-volume trade routes your customers operate.

3️⃣ Bring non-bankers onto your product team to challenge workflows that insiders have normalized for decades.

4️⃣ Give smaller financial institutions a revenue stream tied to open banking adoption instead of pricing them out.

5️⃣ Pitch the outcomes your infrastructure enables, not the technical specs of what you built.

LINKS

Guest:

Ximena Aleman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ximena-aleman-7913439a/

Company:

Prometeo Website: https://prometeoapi.com

Prometeo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prometeo-openbanking

Fintech Confidential:

Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen

Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential

X: https://x.com/FTconfidential

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fintechconfidential

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fintechconfidential

SUPPORTERS

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ABOUT

Guest: Ximena Aleman is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Prometeo. She started her career in journalism before moving into marketing and tech leadership, completing an MBA at Universidad ORT Uruguay. She was named one of the Top 100 Women in FinTech in 2024 and is a World Economic Forum Agenda Contributor.

Company: Prometeo is an open finance infrastructure company providing a single API for cross-border banking, connecting 7,500+ financial institutions across Latin America and the US. The company is backed by PayPal Ventures, Samsung Next, and Antler.

Host: Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and host of Fintech Confidential. The show is produced by DD3 Media, delivering entertaining and informative content focused on the people, tech, and companies changing how you pay and get paid.

DD3 Media is a multimedia and marketing agency founded by Tedd Huff specializing in content creation and production for the fintech and payments industry. As the production company behind Fintech Confidential, DD3 Media produces podcasts, live streams, video content, and onsite events for global audiences.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Episode Highlights

00:54 Welcome to Fintech Confidential

01:03 Dfns: Wallets as a Service (sponsor)

02:25 Meet ProMateo Founder

04:39 Outsiders Spot the Gap

06:38 Infrastructure Before Open Banking

10:21 Borderless Banking Explained

16:21 Why US Banking Feels Messy

18:56 Standardizing Fragmented Systems

20:42 Agentic Banking Kickoff

23:34 Limiting Agent Liability

24:49 Compliance and B2B Accountability

27:32 Monitoring Agents Like Card Rails

30:07 Sky Flow: Building Fast and Secure (sponsor)

30:30 Skyflow Privacy Vault

31:10 AI Bookends And Middle

32:01 US Credibility Milestones

33:06 Account Verification Playbook

35:56 FDATA Advocacy Meets Sales

39:51 Crystal Ball Agentic Payments

41:39 Open Banking Pricing Debate

48:44 LatAm Vs US Open Finance

51:27 Strategic Investors And Trust

53:42 Women In Fintech Funding Gap

55:36 Founder Advice And Farewell

57:43 Show Wrap And Sponsor Reads

58:29 Hawk AI - Realtime Fraud Monitoring (sponsor)

59:15 Disclaimer

This has been a production of DD3 Media with all rights reserved. This content is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

© DD3 Media. All Rights Reserved.

It's not just not working, it's, it's, it's broken.

Yeah.

The banking infrastructure in each of this country speaks its own language

that can be very confusing.

Each language, it creates an inefficiency.

So a lot of times we think about the outflow, not the inflow.

Our notion of real time has also.

Accelerated and now is.

Now

we're really good in the US with coming up with new ways, but we're

really bad at getting rid of the old ones.

It's not a coincidence.

It's commitment.

It's misunderstood that the technology may not be that mature.

None of us came from like financial sector,

fully open banking and allowing access.

When someone asks for it, guess what?

They still have to do it.

This isn't anything new,

and so it's not about.

How you're thinking is about what you are doing towards it.

You have to make it happen.

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Welcome FinTech confidential leaders one-on-one series.

I'm Ted Huff, your host, and the CEO of FinTech advisory firm, Voler.

This is where I sit down with the people who are actually building.

The infrastructure underneath FinTech, not just talking

about it, actually building it.

And my guest today is Sina Aliman, the co-founder and CO CEO of Pro Mateo.

And if you're not already tracking them, here's the short version for you.

They've built an open finance infrastructure platform that connects

over 7,500 financial institutions across Latin America and the United States.

It's all done with a single API.

They've been backed by some enormous players in the industry.

PayPal Ventures, Samsung Next Antler, elevate.

Sina was also named one of the top 100 women in FinTech back in 2024, and this

literally just dropped this morning.

Pro Mateo is just named a Nacho preferred partner for account validation

and open banking, and yes, we will definitely, absolutely get into that.

So Stephen, welcome to the show.

Hi, de, thanks for having me.

Very happy to be here talking all things FinTech.

Hopefully I can get a little bit of confidential pieces

out of you as we talk today.

But folks, open finance is, as a concept itself, is become mainstream.

So, you know, when you started it really wasn't, uh, especially in

Latin America, there are fragmented financial systems, inconsistent APIs.

Most of the fintechs were building one-off integrations just to figure out how to

move a little bit of money here and there.

You saw something a little different and that's why you decided to build poeo at

a time, really when open finance wasn't even term for people in Latin America.

I'm really curious, what did you see?

That others weren't paying attention to?

Well, I think that we might be a little bit nuts.

It was not just about focusing in the, in the details, you know,

being outsiders that drove us to.

Being able to see something that was not there, you know?

And, and, and I think that, that, that was the, the key thing with us.

I come from a, a different, uh, area, like my, I major in journalism,

uh, then went to work with, uh, media outlets and then focused into

marketing, sales, uh, then an MBA in, in tech because, uh, I, I saw what.

The tech was,

he goes, why not?

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Because why not?

No.

And and, and I really loved it.

And for me it was a life changing experience, of course.

Um, but, uh, then, um, rod, who is co-founder and co CO alongside me, uh,

his, his background was cyber security, you know, and then Eduardo, who was

CTO, his background was API development.

And so none of us.

Came from like the financial sector.

Like we didn't have that background, that experience, that knowledge.

Uh, and I thought that, and I think that because that we were able to

understand where the problem was and think that we could actually address it.

You know, I think that.

Perhaps if it was the other way around, if we had like a long

trajectory, like working in the, like largest brands, uh, financial

brands in Latam, Itau, Santander.

Like, I, I think that we might have just keep it, you know, like

thinking, okay, this is how it works.

Uh, and it works like this because it works like this, you know?

But I think that, uh, it was actually not understanding.

How it work, but actually understanding how it should work, that we were

able to think, okay, uh, this is something that should exist.

Uh, let's build it.

So when you look back at the early days, what was the

moment when you knew that this was a real infrastructure gap, not just.

A technical inconvenience.

I think that for me, infrastructure came as, as, as a

concept at the same time that when we started building this, like for

us, open banking wasn't even a worth, you know, like we started building

this API infrastructure even before eo, uh, in our previous startup,

which was a personal finance manager.

Uh, and so we had.

Created like this interoperability engine with different financial institutions

that allowed us to connect with them.

I think that back then we would start talking, of course, digital

transformation, API adoption and, and that this was a thing happening

in the FinTech space, but actually the FinTech space was something new.

Like, uh, I am based in Euro y. I am UYN, and I always joke that euro,

that FinTech wasn't even a word.

You know, uh, because we started talking about FinTech like two

years after that, you know, and like everything comes later to UY This is

something that all your Ys mentioned.

Uh, and so FinTech wasn't even a word that I remember pitching like this

notion like, like this concept about.

Middleware, this API middleware that we are building this infrastructure because

the value is not in the middleware itself, but actually what this middleware enables.

And that's why it's infrastructure, you know, like thinking about it, uh,

in terms of like the technology that enables other technologies, other products

and services to happen to, to move around, to create value for the society.

Uh, and that was the insight, you know, and then it became, of course

like, okay, there's a vertical in the FinTech space, which is infrastructure,

you know, but that, uh, happened like years after that first pitch.

Um, and I am truly a, a, a true believer of this concept.

You know, like, uh, that actually what we are building is the rails

in which the financial sector will move in the years to come.

You know, and I think that we will talk AI uh, later on, uh, this, this

podcast, uh, um, this conversation, but.

Something that for me is overwhelming.

You know, that amazes me is understanding the impact that AI will have in, in

financial infrastructure and vice versa.

Like, I remember like when, when pitching this concept about, uh, open

banking being infrastructure and we believe we building infrastructure of

course, like the next question was, okay, but infrastructure for what, what

will happen over this infrastructure?

And by then, like use cases there were like.

Very small, like you could mention like what you could think about,

you know, and PFM, personal finance manager of course was one of them.

You know, like create scoring of course was one of them.

But what else?

And so I will always say like, we are thinking with the tools that we have now,

but eventually something else will come and this infrastructure will make sense.

Not for these use cases, but actually for what will come next.

And so when I saw.

Like the impact of a ai and especially agent ai, it became so obvious that

this infrastructure would serve that and will, would power that movement for me.

Uh, like I consider the, this like one of my big wins, you know?

Well, I mean, in that context, right?

Building infrastructure in, in these markets, you, you can't always.

Or seldom are able to, to wait until the regulators have mandated very

specific standards and is actually the exact lens that I, I think we need to

understand your, your expansion into the us Maybe we could, we could move

into talking more about, I guess I would call it borderless banking, is

probably the way I would approach it.

You've really.

Gone beyond the original idea.

The piece that a lot of people talk about also that, that I work with is they're

always looking at Latin America, like that's, that's like the largest corridor

for especially B2B payments in the world between the US specifically, like the

us the latam is, is huge for that and.

The number one problem that we always run into is that there's all this legacy

cross border banking infrastructure, and I know you've run into it as well.

It's like, it, it's not just not working, it's, it's, it's broken.

It's broken.

Um, and like the, there're like this, it's huge

swing where, where it's going.

And I, I had had the conversation.

Uh, with Keith Vander Lee from BV and K on, and I met with him at FinTech Nerd

Con last year and sat down with him.

One of the things that really surprised us as we were looking at

some of the information preparing for it is the sheer amount of volume

of traffic and transaction value coming from latam into the us.

And a lot of times we think about the outflow, not the inflow flow.

So this, this is my roundabout way of saying like,

yeah,

walk me.

Walk me through.

I mean, it's a huge swing, right?

So walk me through what borderless banking actually is, because I

think when people hear the word borderless, um, they immediately

picture the diaspora communities.

They think of, you know, all of these other things, but

don't look really behind that.

So just help us paint a picture, help us understand like what does

borderless mean to, from Mateo and.

I agree.

The system is broken.

That's the kickoff of the conversation, but the, the system is not broken

in the US as it is not broken in Mexico or in Colombia or in Chile.

Like the system is broken because it works.

At a local scale, and we've done a lot to upgrade those local schemes,

you know, with realtime payments, with new players, with blah, blah blah.

Like a has happened over the last.

Eight to 10 years.

But still, when you look at it from a global PERS perspective,

it keeps being broken.

You know, and this is because global trade has accelerated, expanded, and

the way we approach time has changed.

You know, like five years ago, like 12 hours was.

Half a day, it was like, okay, the, the time that it is.

But now the, the time that it is, is real time.

Like we are always benchmarking with real time and, and our notion

of real time has also accelerated.

A couple of years ago, real time was one, two minutes and now I'm talking

with customers and I'm saying like, real time is three to five seconds.

And they are saying like, no, it's milliseconds.

Of course it's hard for infrastructure to infrastructures globally keep upgrading to

this behavioral rhythm that we are having.

Like everything like real time is now.

And, and, and now is, now it's not the, the within two

seconds or one minute is now.

And so I think that when you look at it from a global perspective, besides this

behavioral change, you also have like this thing about countries, each country

working differently, but at the same time working alongside all the rest.

I, I know that I mentioned that I, I am based in UY and so

when we started, like for us.

Doing a thing in Euro just for U for Uy was such a narrow market and it

became obvious that we could, with our infrastructure, address the region.

And so Palm Regional now, like Proto became Palm Regional from the

kickoff, you know, 30 countries.

Each of these countries has, its, speaks its own language.

Like it, I always say its own taste, just its own flavor to Spanish,

you know, and it's very different.

I am like, uh, uh, in, in Mexican and the YPO in Chile, um, elta, which is very

gyan, the infrastructure in each of these, uh, the banking infrastructure in each of

these countries speaks its own language.

Okay.

And so how you breach that?

You know, like, because.

E each language it's creates, uh, an inefficiency difficulty

when they need to work together.

And we started addressing all of these inefficiencies, you know, and

standardizing this layer realized, like, of course, but we are not

addressing the most important corridor that Latin America has.

And that's the Yes.

Well, and that's where, that's kind of where I'm, I'm

sitting here listening to the way you described this, right?

And it's like, I'm starting to look at as like, what is the friction point that.

The legacy like you, you moving into the US and, and all these cross border

pieces, what is like the, the most friction full point that these solutions

have historically missed, and why do you think your experience of having to

bridge those gaps in these, these Latin American countries that are similar

but different, give you and pro Mateo.

A specific edge in solving it when crossing over into into

the rest of the Americas.

The first thing that I will point out, which I feel might be a

little bit of polemic, is that we tend.

From latam, we tend to perceive the US first world infrastructure, you know,

developed country, a lot of financial penetration, you know, like a lot of

FinTech adoption, FinTech disruption.

But when you double click in how the banking system works, I would say that the

infrastructure feels rather me, you know?

And so from a banking infrastructure perspective, you wouldn't say

that the US has a leapfrog.

Any country in Latin America, you know, and so the US banking system is perhaps

as broken as la, the latam banking system.

When we double click, we could see the same gaps in infrastructure.

Many times they are overlooked because the credit car rails work that well.

And so, okay, like I have a credit card and I don't need this or that, because

this works over Visas infrastructure.

And so that's why the bank, like the financial infrastructure is

perceived as so robust and mature.

But when we talk about the banking system, it's not okay.

And so I think that that was the first thing that we needed to like somehow

reframe in order to understand that there was an opportunity in the us.

I think it's really, I I I, I love how you've, you've positioned

that because a lot of times, even when I have clients that are in other

parts of the world, the, the idea of us having a mature ecosystem, yes, the

ecosystem itself is mature, but a lot of times it's, it's misunderstood that

the technology may not be that mature.

Or it may be overly mature.

Maybe it, it's, it's at the end of their life.

Right.

And there's a heavy leaning on that side of it, which then introduces

its own set of problems for, for speed, accuracy, the number of

players that have to be put in place.

It's like, although it is, again, it's mature.

It like, I love how you said it.

Is it, it's

because I think that the thing is, when

you look at it, it's mature.

Why?

And then you start to understand which are the components, the, the pieces that

are mature and which are the ones that are not, you know, and it's always like

that you have to somehow disaggregate in order to understand where's the ones

We would say we, we jokingly, like me and a, a number

of folks that I work with and, and payments especially bank to bank

side payments, is that we jokingly say we're really good in the US with

coming up with new ways to move money.

We're really bad at getting rid of the old ones, and I think that is a piece

that, that when you look at it from an organization coming into the US, that

can be very confusing because there haven't been any government mandates that

really say, you can no longer use this.

You must use that.

That, that just doesn't happen.

And so we get this, it just keeps stacking on top of each other.

So you have all these choices, all these options, and they

all work completely different.

They all have different rules.

They all have different timing.

They, they all have like different infrastructures.

It, it can be, it exhausting.

To try and figure out how to try and normalize this.

Yes, exactly.

And I think that that's where we provide value because, uh, from our experience

in latam, basically what we had to do, uh, was living aside differences.

Understand which are the commonalities, you know, like how

can we create a standardization?

How can we put together fragmented systems?

What's the important thing that needs to be there?

Time after time, after time is the date is the balance.

What is it?

You know what, which is the relevant information?

And so that standardization that we were able to build is what

we bring as a value to the us.

You know, understanding what needs to be there and what is nice.

What is interest noise and needs to be aside and yeah, I think that

that's the power of standardization

and I think, you know, to, to kind of round out

talking about borderless banking.

I mean, yes, infrastructure does solve some of these pieces for

moving money across borders, but.

That isn't the only piece.

Like you mentioned earlier, the experience, the data, like

all these different things I thought was really exciting.

And you and I talked about this at Money 2020 last year here in Las Vegas.

You all had decided like we're looking really heavily into a agentic banking

and that was at a time when like, I know it's only been a few months, but it's

kind of hilarious to me that even back in October that was just kind of like.

That's a really cool idea that we might go explore, but you move fast forward to

today, and that is a, a super important topic that everybody is doing it and the

fact that you, you become this massive infrastructure provider in Latin America,

you launched agentic banking solution.

That is a big thing to do.

So I, I would, I would love for you to help me kind of unpack it.

Really define what Agentic banking is and let's, let's start with how you've

done it in latam and then we'll talk about maybe like where you're going, like

Yes,

definitely is definitely it Tools, is it like, like I'm,

there's so many open questions here, so I'll just let you get started.

So agents are here to say basically what they need to do is they

need to operate financial infrastructure.

That was, uh, the kickoff for us when we understood that through our

documentation, an agent won't be able to connect with our platform.

We sell.

We need to change this because in the very near future, our API

won't be integrated by a developer.

Our API will be integrated by by an agent.

And so basically what we've done over time is to create the modules.

That allow agents to connect to EO and start using our platform.

This makes me think like there, there's a, a big difference

between delivering AI tools that are to be used inside of FinTech.

Kind of what you're talking about doing that integration using an agent,

and then you got the other side, at least my opinion of age AI agents that

are executing on financial actions.

Which one of these, or boths are you going down the path and why

does, does this distinction matter?

Does the distinction matter between the tools that you use

and the actions that it takes?

Or is, is it symbiotic?

I think it feels for Roberto is sort of symbiotic, you

know, like the two things go combined.

I think that where we perhaps, uh, provide more value.

Is by enabling agents to operate their own bank accounts.

And how we have approached it at Promeo at least, is basically through the

question, in which way can we limit the liability of an agent moving money?

And so basically that's creating a system that the agent can

operate, but it's somehow safe.

Environment, meaning that it's restricted to the things that, that BA bank account,

it's enabled to move and operate.

Okay?

And so by limiting the scope of the bank account, you are limiting the,

the capabilities that that agent has.

Okay.

But at the same time, you are enabling that agent to move money, to make

payments, and to understand the financial information that that move,

that money movement has created.

Now you get me going down, my, my, my compliance

hat starts to go on, right?

Like, and it's nice and snug, right?

No, I'm so wheezing the brain a little bit.

What is the regulatory compliance side of this look like for, for you at Pro Mateo?

When, when you realize that the entity that's initiating this transaction,

whether it's a payment, whether it's opening a new account, what, whatever

this action is, ends up being a large language model or some other AI

agent, how are you solving for the.

Audibility and liability in these agentic workflows.

'cause that seems to be the thing that every financial institution that I talk

to and every agentic company I work with is like I'm seeing or trying to figure out

how to manage through this piece of it.

And this is like.

Concern number one at the point.

At this point,

definitely.

And that's my impression as well, uh, across Latin America, you know, like I

should agree, it is compliance adaptation that we are going through, but basically

our system is fully eligible and at the same time, the agents that can operate

that, those bank accounts are agents that have been onboarded to our platform.

And so we are full B2B, that means that there is a company.

That's responsible.

For that agent, you know, and it's granting permission to

that agent to do this or that.

And so it's not that our platform, it's open for agents everywhere to,

to open their bank accounts, but actually that we are engaging with

companies that can enable that one.

To enable their agents to operate certain bank accounts, you know,

and I think that somehow that frames liability and compliance and make

it more addressable and manageable.

But I think that that's part of the transition.

You know, like we go, we have to go through that path, path in order

to this, uh, to get more adoption.

Uh, and I think that's something that happens in latam different to the US is

that, as I mentioned before in the US.

The more robust infrastructure per financial infrastructure is

per perhaps the one from Visa and Master in Latin America, most

financial in collection and more.

Yeah.

I would say, yeah.

Financial Incl has been through alternative payment methods through

banking, banking accounts, through Neobanks and so through Wallet.

So anything but card payments is what it sounds like.

Right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Oh, exactly.

And so B infrastructure is not the.

Prevailing is not the most important, and so how can we upgrade the level

of infrastructure of these players in order to make them agentic ready?

That's our task.

Open Claw has been out.

A lot of people have been using it.

They've been leveraging it.

The number one concern with that is security.

Locking that down so that it doesn't do things you don't want it to do and doesn't

spend money, you don't want it to spend and, and all these different things.

And especially with Pro Mateo being the B2B side of the piece of it.

How are you making sure that the agent that is doing, making the action happen?

Is the agent that is supposed to be doing it and has been given authority to do so.

That's embedded into a system because adaptability and monitoring

of the transactions is a key component of the cybersecurity that we provide.

Okay.

And so it's not that the agent is there like just transacting, but it's actually

that we have a system that allows us to monitor how the agent is acting.

And I think that that's the key component.

Sometimes it, I feel it's overlooked that when we transact through any platform.

That platform has systems that are monitoring how we transact

and we have flags, we have alerts.

Visa like sends you, uh, SMS, uh, sends you a notification, sends

you an email your bank as well.

You know, like, is this purchase yours?

Are you doing this transaction?

And that is happening because the system is being, is monitoring our activity.

The same happens when you are.

Enabling an agent to perform transactions, you have to monitor

how that agent is performing.

That's what I am, uh, referring when I'm talking about monitoring and audit.

The transactionality of the agent is actually be reading what's happening,

you know, and making sure that the agent is acting the way it should act,

and that the system is being approached the way that it should approach.

But what I stress here is that this is a core component of the

financial infrastructure everywhere.

It's not something new.

It's not something that it's, that is happening because we are releasing agents.

This is something that our platform already has because we enable payments,

we because we make verification of PE, because we enable access to balance

that movements, our system has been designed to be secure, to be compliant.

So we have monetary systems.

That monitor everything that's happening in our platform.

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you, you still have the perspective of human

in the Loop type scenarios.

Right?

And like the discussions I've had.

I feel like a broken record because every time I talk about AI and

agentic and all these different pieces, I, I always say we're, right

now we're in the age of bookends.

We have the side that has all the information and can regurgitate

it back to us so that we can make a decision on what to do.

And then we have the agents that once we've decided what we want to

do can actually execute on it for us.

But we've got this messy middle that everybody's still trying to figure out.

And I think the way that Pro Mateo has approached it really.

Really puts you on the cutting edge of what these types of infrastructures

can do and it really creates like this third thread, I guess I would say that

that kind of ties it all together.

It's about where, where you're building the credibility in the US market now.

I mean, like you guys had had an announcement just today, April 14th.

No, today's the 15th.

See, I can't even get my days right.

So April 15th with the Nacho preferred partner.

Um, if we go back a little bit in December, you made the announcement

of the name match feature with your US verification, API.

If we, if we go, heck, I skipped over January, the F-D-A-T-A membership

that you had in place there.

Like, like there's so many things that you're doing.

I think it's important for me to understand this.

This isn't a coincidence, right?

Like these things didn't just happen to happen.

You, you sequence these deliberately.

What does it mean to you being a preferred partner and what does

it unlock for promeo in the us?

And last but not least, what did it take to get there?

It's not a coincidence, it's commitment.

We are fully committed to providing.

Best in class financial infrastructure in the US and that's what we have been

doing since we decided that we would actively create product in the us.

Why Verification of pay for us, uh, account verification, account ownership,

or global account verification.

It has many different names.

All of them means.

Very similar.

The same, which is being able to verify a bank account before sending

a payment, being able to verify account ownership over the account.

This is an infrastructure that we've been creating in Latin

America over the last five years.

We are the go-to player for account verification extensively in latam.

We've got relevant, very relevant experience on how to build this

infrastructure, you know, and that's what we are taking to the us.

That sort of experience.

As I mentioned before, what is this experience about?

Is about fragmented markets.

What is the us a very fragmented market.

Um, and so I think

more fragment than a lot of people think.

'cause you know, yes, we've got some federal regulations, but we've got

at least 50, if not 51 different jurisdictions that have their own rules.

And then within those jurisdictions they have tens if not hundreds

of additional jurisdictions and they, it just, it kind of.

The, the macro level of it gets so convoluted at some point, so

it's, it's crazy.

And it's crazy and I think, yeah, and I think that's something that different from

the US from latam, is that in the US you don't have like a central repository of.

Banking data.

Basically what we are doing is leveraging the infrastructure, the,

the, the experience that we've had in Latam, uh, out how to standardize this

fermentation, how we can create, uh, understanding from this foundation.

And basically we've re, we've released, uh, our account verification

product and that allows our customers to be able to name Matt.

The bank accounts like 85% of the bank of the bank accounts

in the country, which is huge.

Improves a lot what's in the market right now.

We are very bullish, very happy about the product that we've crafted for the

us and so I would say that it took the five previous years, you know, like

experience that we were able, yeah,

tenacity, like just yes, not giving up.

Definitely and, and I think that also being able to

understand that we could do it, that the experience that we have is pertinent

to the problem that the us the US has.

We can outperform what there's in the market right now.

Something that also took a little bit of time for us to.

I do also want to hit on and, and for everybody, I apologize for using

yet another acronym, the F-E-A-T-A is the Financial Data and Technology Association.

And Stephen, you, you had joined them in January and you've, you've

spoke at events about why Latin American FinTech is moving north.

I mean, we're, we're talking, I mean, the.

F-D-A-T-A is Canadian, so like you're, you're going as far north as

you pretty much can in the Americas.

With that one, this really kind of two-pronged, one being sales, which

we would expect, I mean, we want the company to be profitable to make money

and continue to grow, but there's also this advocacy and policy play

that I feel like is in there as well.

Do those two things have to happen together?

Why did you decide.

To run them in tandem.

Why did you decide to do the advocacy and the policy and

leverage that to drive the sales?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and I, and the second part of my, my answer would be, I know that for

EO they are, because for us, building infrastructure has not been about the

billions that we could make by building the infrastructure, but actually.

Believing about the impact that that infrastructure will have and

the impact that we could build.

Through our technology, and that's why the name is Promeo.

You know, like the Prometheus is a Greek titan, the one that, uh, provided fire

to the humans, you know, stole the fire from the gods and gave it to the humans.

And I think that for us it was always sort of that spirit.

A little bit rebellious.

I always joke that a little will, we feel it a little bit more humbly, but there

is in, in the core of our company, yes.

A rebellious sentiment about the state of the financial sector and this

eager about building it differently and being able to do it differently.

And of course like big part of this is state that we think that things can work.

In a different way, and we thought about it in latam and we think about it as like

the Americas, you know, like we think that everything can work differently.

We.

Really believe that there are benefits into having a single API standardizing

this infrastructure because we believe that there's this bond between the

regions, you know, and that there's a natural corridor, as you mentioned.

And so this creates development and this has this, this impact

that is what we want to see.

And of course that implies like we advocating for it.

For this change towards this change?

Yes, of course.

I feel like this creates Vir cycle because it makes the the issue

more relevant because at the same time, people can relate to Case

Simena, EO open banking, uh, that work for us a lot in Latin America.

And we were early adopters of open banking pioneers that.

Made us perhaps at the, at the beginning, I'm talking 2018, we were

the first one talking about banking.

You know, like as I mentioned, we seemed like, okay, this.

Na Sky is talking about open banking coming to Latin America.

You know, like, uh, they are 10 years ahead and that might happen in the us

uh, but we already have experience.

So we will leverage the experience that we have, uh, being pioneers and,

and talking about these issues that we feel are very near to, to our core.

Everything we've covered so far.

I mean, from borderless banking, agentic banking, we talked about.

The latest not in news, the F-D-A-T-A, realistically, all of these things are

pointing towards one question, and that is where does open finance go from here?

And with that question, I have to reach over and pull out my fun crystal ball.

This is my favorite part of every episode.

So we're gonna sit,

I love it.

Sit the crystal ball right here so you can look deep inside of it.

Ag Agent banking is live today.

Where does it go in the next 18 months?

And what is the use case that makes it completely undeniable?

Payments Common people using it every day.

When you say common people using it every day,

what does that mean to you?

My

sister?

What would she use it for?

How would she use it?

Why would she use it?

Uh, buy the uniform, uh, like the school, the

school uniform for her daughter, uh, buy clothes, uh, for her.

Well, so the next question I have, and again, I

want you to keep looking forward.

Help me, help me see what's up 18 though that I can't see.

18 months.

18 months, yep.

So us open banking regulation, we have the CFPB 1333 still in motion.

What does the regulatory environment accelerate in your US expansion

or is this a headwind for you?

No, it accelerates definitely the expansion to the us.

We'll provide our open finance suite more.

We completely,

you know, one of the conversations I had with David Glazer

from Alah, who's the CEO here in the us?

You know, we, we looked at this and one of the big things that, that we're

talking about is the fact that it's widely known to JP Morgan charging for access

for what we would consider open banking.

Do you think that's right?

And then secondarily, what do you think doing that does to the

US market in the next 18 months?

Yes and no and it delays.

Financial institutions should charge for a, for this is, is and a no.

At the same time, I think that they shouldn't charge for certain use cases

and they should charge for other ones.

So I'm a, a convinced person that open banking should be partially free because

open banking should address is the right of the user to access its financial data.

And the access to that right should be for free at certain point, because

it's my data that I am granting access to the bank that has my money.

And so I'm already paying for that bank account.

I'm already paying to the bank for certain services, and so being able to check

my bank account or grant access to that information to a third party, that should

be for free me Jimena as a end user.

Persona for certain use cases.

I understand that monetization should exist and that you could monetize the API.

But then I think that those should be particular APIs created particularly

to, to provide value added services on top of the open information.

And I think that that's a little bit more complex, but I think that

provides the granularity so that open Banking Pro creates impact.

And at the same time, it creates money and businesses.

Uh, and so that's why yes and no.

And then what I think is that if it's fully charged, you know, like if every

API call has a price, what we'll have is like as lower adoption of open banking.

I appreciate that the bank feels that they need to charge for it

because yes, they've got data security and they've got all this stuff and

they've gotta like do all this fun things.

So it's really cool.

But guess what?

Even without fully open banking and allowing access, when

someone asks for it, guess what?

They still have to do it.

This isn't anything new.

They already have these, these restrictions in place.

They've got like all these things in place.

So I feel like this is analogous to when there were no free checking accounts

in the US when you had to pay to have a debit card, when you had to pay for like

access to all of these financial tools.

And I think right now it is, it is a how long can I make money off of this until

I can no longer make money off of it?

Because it's an expectation.

I

have access

to and, and I think that that's why focusing on JP

Morgan, it's perhaps not like the ideal scenario because when you talk

about financial institutions, not all financial institutions are JP Morgans.

And so in Latin America, for instance, what happens is that in the, in best

case scenario, you have a country.

In which not all the financial landscape is concentrated in four major banks.

That happens in U Hawaii, you know, but then when you go to other countries,

Brazil and Mexico for instance, larger, you have more complexity.

Uh, it's more diverse, the financial landscape.

But you have many small financial institutions that are attending particular

parts of the country, like towns.

Uh, many similar to like great unions, you know?

And so you would expect them to adopt open banking.

You will expect, expect them to ab amplify themselves to provide

access to this information.

And so I believe that for those smaller financial institutions, you have to open

the door for them to monetize because what you want at the end of the day is for

that them, they adopt the infrastructure, you know, and they should provide

part of that infrastructure for free.

Like I, I, I, I'm convinced that this is what needs to happen.

At the same time, I think that they might under, they need to understand

that there is a revenue stream that comes from having that infrastructure

in place because that's the, the driver of adoption that they have.

I can see that perspective.

Right.

Is like the, the major pushback that I've gotten from community banks and

credit unions when we talk about this, because I, I like to ask their opinion.

And they brought up a very similar perspective.

What you did is, Hey, we're not a JP Morgan.

Like we don't have billions of dollars to spend on infrastructure

and all these different things.

And you know, looking specifically at credit unions in the US the idea is our

goal is to make our our members happy and give them as many tools as possible.

If I can't serve them in all these other areas because I'm spending so much money

in this one area, just to give them the ability, and this is something I've

heard, give them the ability to share that information out to a third party who could

meet or beat our products and services.

Am I not just doing a disservice to myself?

And so, yes, it is extremely complicated.

I I probably take way too of an altruistic perspective on it.

Is it, it's not the bank, it's not the FI's data.

They shouldn't have control over it.

I, I totally agree, but I think that this fires back, the JP

Morgans of the world, the ones that have this infrastructure and the ones

that benefit from the innovation that will come over this infrastructure.

It creates a vicious cycle of innovation and adoption.

That I think it's what my alternative prevents or at least tries to,

you know, like, and, and this is like a, a, um, um, a rationale

that comes, of course from latam.

You know, like, how can we avoid like this, uh.

Sort of oligo holistic dynamics that we have in, in the financial sector,

in each country of Latin America, which, which four BA with four banks

having 80% of the market share.

You know, and this is like a reality in each of the countries.

And so we need to drive innovation to smaller financial institu.

You have to create the drivers for them to adopt technology and,

and, and innovation, I dunno,

Latin America versus the US model.

You built first and Latin America, now you're expanding into North America.

Is the Latin American open finance model the one the US should be watching or

is it a completely different problem?

It's a different problem from my perspective.

The thing is.

In the US you already have a, I would call it de facto open banking, meaning

that you already have companies that have built the network and the

interoperability and that are providing this extensively, you know, and you have

already a mature, open banking ecosystem.

Meaning that there are use cases that have, uh, showed that uh, there is

demand for these, uh, products, for these services, uh, that users are interested

in them, that they are willing to pay.

And you have like the ultimate validation, which is large companies

trying to approach this, you know, like MasterCard buying ity, you

know, visa, trying to buy plan.

And this is like years ago from a business perspective.

The ecosystem is solid, is robust in Latin America has been the other way around.

It's been very difficult to create the op, like the interoperability with all

the financial institutions you have.

Still from a regulatory perspective, some countries have regulated open banking.

Brazil, Columbia, it's on track.

Chile has done so and it's implemented the implementing the APIs and then the rest

of the country is, uh, different countries are discussing if yes or no, but it's

like very, very, very early days here.

The problem in the US the problem is we need to address that this is a right

that the user has and we have to somehow.

Regulate how this ecosystem works, you know, because it

has sensitive information.

Yeah.

And so we need to somehow, like, let's clean the house.

It feels like this, you know, in Latin America it's like,

will there be a house here?

Where do we put the walls?

Okay.

Like it's here or there, you know, like do this house should have a ceiling.

And what else?

Can happen over the house once the house is there.

I, I believe that their regulatory conversation is much more mature in

Latin America than the, than the us.

But the market adoption is by far much more mature in the US than in lada.

So

you, you have, you haven't done this on your own.

You, you, PayPal Ventures, Samsung next.

They're both on your cap table.

And so I'm curious.

What does strategic backing from those kinds of names,

what does that make possible?

That just someone writing a check doesn't

First, I would say, uh, there's a positioning layer, you know,

like these brands believing that you are the open banking option, that you

are the, uh, infrastructure option.

They want to back.

That's a signaling, you know, and that builds trust.

And, and that's something that we truly appreciate coming from

Yuba, you know, from South America.

It's a strong sign out to the market.

And I think that that's the first thing that, that you could, could perceive.

The second one is because they backed us following a logic.

What is that they are seeing, you know?

And so I think that large companies as PayPal, as Samsung, thinking

that our infrastructure suits their needs, you know, and that there

are synergies for the companies to interact, you know, and of course

direct access to their business teams.

Of course, which is something that it's also very valuable.

Uh, you know, like it shortcuts you, uh, the way to those

companies, which is great.

And then I think that there's a third layer, which is a lot of proximity

to environments that perhaps were not that near us before them.

And that means like their network.

So both companies, as other investors that we have in our cap table, they have

very valuable networks that they this put at our disposal and that provides

a lot of value as well to the company.

So if you were to wrap all that up into like one statement,

why is it important to have.

Players like that and others on your cap table,

they provide trust.

I like that.

I like that a lot.

Alright, so you are listed in the top 100 women in FinTech from 2024.

You're building in a sector.

That still has a significant representation gap in that.

What does it mean to you to have received that recognition of being

a top woman in FinTech and what do you feel still needs to change?

What needs to change is the investment gap, the funding gap.

That's first thing that needs to change the funding gap to.

Female led startups is huge.

Like 2% of the BC investment goes to 2%.

Last time I checked, perhaps now it's like three.

I don't know.

But it's significant, you know, the funding gap between, uh,

female led and male lab, uh, startups, uh, across the globe.

And I think that that def definitely, uh, is something that shows, uh, that

there is a systemic that is not just.

Women not being able to fundraise or not understanding the codes

or not like it's a systemic issue that should be addressed like that.

We all need to understand that it's systemic and see how we can

approach it and prevent it, and then about being listed in that

ranking, of course, makes me proud.

It's a recognition.

It's not something that I think a lot about.

Appreciate you being very humble about that, what

you've been able to accomplish.

This is almost unbelievable from the approach that you guys have taken and

the way you've brought it to market.

So yeah, I, I would say well deserved.

Um, and I appreciate you being humble about it.

Thank you.

And I have one last question for you, and it's not an

easy one, so just bear with me.

Well, okay.

Okay.

Okay.

If you had to give builders, operators and founders one sentence

of advice that they had to adhere to in the next 12 to 24 months to be

successful, what would it be and why?

You know, the thing about.

The decision is not right or wrong.

You make it right or wrong.

Do you know that?

And why is it important?

Why is it important that you look at a decision as not being right or wrong,

but the way you perceive it to be?

Because I think that most of the time we doubt

ourselves and our thinking path.

Like our, how we are thinking about things frequently.

We do not have the answer, especially if you're an entrepreneur.

You know, there is no right or wrong per se.

It's about how you will act towards the reality that where you

are and what you want to build.

You know, and, and so I think that many times like just.

Thinking about is this or that is this or that creates a sense of uncertainty

that makes it even more prevalent, the feeling of uncertainty, because you

don't know, will this happen or not?

Will this happen or not?

Will this happen or not?

You don't know.

It's like the crystal ball, you know?

You don't know.

You have to make it happen.

And so it's not about how you're thinking about it, it's about what you are doing.

Towards it.

Susana, this conversation is exactly what I was hoping it would be.

Uh, I, I, I can't thank you so much for taking the time out for

building what you're building.

Not only that, but not keeping it to yourself and Latin America

and bringing it up north here.

So I really appreciate the time that you've taken with us today.

Ted, it was a fantastic conversation.

Thank you very much for, for having me, and thank you very much for your time.

Well, folks that does it for an episode of FinTech Confidentials

Leaders, a one-on-one series, and if this discussion about open finance

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