Join host Stephen Sargeant as he explores the dynamic fintech revolution in Latin America with Ximena Aleman, co-founder and co-CEO of Prometeo. a B2B fintech connecting global businesses with LATAM banks via a single API. She champions open banking empowerment across the region, gaining the trust of major financial institutions and investors worldwide. Previously, Ximena held roles in marketing at Dentons Uruguay and as Director of Digital Content at EME.
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Stephen: The Latin America fintech and open banking revolution is here, so we wanted to talk to somebody at the forefront of that. I'm Stephen Sargeant, this is Around The Coin podcast, and we have Ximena Alemen from Prometeo. She's the co founder and co CEO, and they're building one of the largest FinTech API infrastructure in the region of Latin America, but also tapping in to the U.S. Financial market when it comes to things like account verification and all the tardiness and hardness of sending wire transfers, they've plugged everything in.
So we talk a lot about the FinTech market here in Latin America. We talk about the ecosystem when it comes to tech and startups as they just finished raising 13 million and how they plan to spend that capital and We talk a lot about NEO and Challenger Banks and Open Banking Infrastructure and some of the successes, huge successes that have come out from places like Brazil with their picks.
This is a really great information session and podcast for anyone that's into payment, fintechs, and even those in crypto because we're seeing Brazil top the, you know, top 10 list of grassroots adoption of crypto. So definitely Latin America is now leading the forefront when it comes to fintech and crypto.
Feel free to reach out to Ximena, she even provided her personal email address if you wanted to get connected and figure out what's happening in LATAM, especially for your business. Enjoy the show.
Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargeant, the Around The Coin podcast. We're going to go deep into fintech in Latin America. have Ximenaa Aleman from Prometeo. We spent the first half of this pre recording laughing about how we're trying to pronounce different names, so I probably got that a little bit wrong, so we'll let you introduce yourself and give us all the nice pronunciations of your name and your company name so that people remember it.
Ximena: Amazing, amazing. I will do the Spanish version of my name. Hi, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited about the conversation. My name is Ximena Aleman. I am co founder and co CEO of Prometeo. And Prometeo is a single cross border banking API for Latin America.
Stephen: That's awesome. Now your start is, I looked a little bit in the background, you have a communications content marketing just like myself, but you also have a journalist background, which is awesome. I think a few of our guests here have had similar backgrounds, many of them founders, many of them now working with some of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world.
You know, how do you utilize those skills that you think? We always take some of those skills from our past. Is it, was it useful for you to like promote Prometeo and get the messaging out there, find the right brand message? How has your past been, you know, those skills transferred to today for you?
Ximena: Definitely, definitely. You know, like, in, in the startup world, we have like this model of connecting the dots. And definitely when, when I started building fintech solutions in Latin America, 10 years ago I was doing like a, a difficult transition. Now, like 10 years, 10 years afterwards it's something that I think it was almost natural and, and that really, it really played played out for Prometeo, you know?
So yes, I my background is in journalism. I work for the most important media outlets here in Uruguay. I'm based in Uruguay. Uruguay is a small country in the South Cone between Argentina and, and Brazil. It's not Paraguay. It's Uruguay, so it's two different countries in the South Congo with very similar names.
And so, then I transitioned to creating a digital content hub. It was my first experience as an entrepreneur. I really loved it. And I started an MBA with focus in tech businesses. This was 2015. 2013, 2014 the fintech wave was just beginning in, in Latin America, you know, in 2015 David Bailey's came up with with Nubank.
So everything was just at the very, very, very beginning. And and like I met my co founders and we started building fintech solutions. Like the first one was a peer to peer wallet, then a PFM like Mint in the U. S. And then we started Prometeo to bridge the infrastructure gap between different regions, different countries in Latin America, you know, and create open banking infrastructure across LATAM.
But in 2016, 2017, open banking wasn't even a word, you know, like FinTech wasn't even a word or it was just a very niche thing. Open banking was. Just starting, you know, and so I think that my journalist skills, you know, Especially like understanding different audiences and also being able to create a compelling story about what was open banking and the opportunity behind open banking was crucial for the startup at the very beginning, you know, like, because especially when you are initiating, of course that you need go to market skills but I would say that the first go to market skill is being able to communicate And What is it that you are doing and why, why that's so important, you know, and what's the opportunity, what's the value proposition, you know, especially at the beginning.
Sometimes you are, you are starting to discover, discover that, you know, it's not that, it's very clear. It's not like you're selling bread, you know? It is. Okay. I think that this could be useful for this and for that, you know, like I'm trying to understand customers, you know, and I'm, I think that the opportunity is this one, but perhaps is this other one, you know?
And so like understanding your audience. And creating a compelling story for that audience. I think that it's very, very attractive skill, you know, a very necessary skill. And I think that that was something that the journalism did for me. And definitely did for Prometeo. Yeah,
Stephen: I intervene here? You know, take us back. You said like, open banking, fintech wasn't really going on back at the time, 2014. What was the existing, you know, payment rails like? Like, you see now that, you know, a lot of the payment rails are still archaic. We're still struggling. That's why so many fintech and crypto companies are coming into play.
How difficult was it to transfer money from Uruguay to, you know, Paraguay, as you said, or from Colombia to another country, Brazil? How difficult was it? Like, were people really struggling? Was there an issue with remittances if you're working in one country, but your family's living in another? Can you kind of level the playing field for us and give us a little bit snapshot of what you felt the ecosystem was like at that time?
Ximena: Definitely. It was, as you said, very legacy, very archaic. Most of it Swift western Union, you know, like, the incumbents the legacy players that have been around from since the 19th century, 18th, 19th, 20th century, sorry. And so, I think it was very user experience, very outdated.
You know, and especially thinking about digital penetration and internet penetration, smartphone use in Latin America, everything was, in terms of the infrastructure, everything was peaking in Latin America, but financial services access and availability, Was still a, a very poor experience in, in latam, you know, very costly, very, very costly.
You know, something that I always try to stress, especially when, when we talk about Latin America, is that of course, that we are used to thinking about d macros in Latin America, which are really hard, you know, unemployment, poverty, um, inflation, the valuation, like all of the macros that from an entrepreneur perspective, you cannot solve.
You know, it's not your thing, like, that's politicians, that's policymakers, but, with all of those problems, there's also like a user experience problem, which is, money, of course, is hard to earn, but it's also hard to move, hard to keep, you know, hard to invest. So, it's hard to open a savings account, it's hard to get a credit card, it's hard to make digital payments.
It was hard, you know, like 10 years ago, it was very, very hard. And so I think that it came to us, like Latam, FinTech entrepreneurs, to change that reality, you know? We couldn't change the macros, but we could change user experience with money. You know, and that's, I think, what has been changing in LATAM over the last 10 years with new banks, digital wallets, and I think, like, the infrastructure wave that we are witnessing right now.
Stephen: I love it. Tell me a little bit about Prometeo because you're not only servicing the Latin America, you're connecting the Latin American financial ecosystem with the U. S. Now, I know, like, in the Caribbean, like, Miami is their kind of, you know, Financial hub, which is kind of strange, right? A lot of, you know, transactions where every time people have to do something, I hear they're going to Miami.
That's kind of like the hub and the bridge for the Caribbean. Was there that bridge that existed is, you know, kind of Miami still the bridge for you? Or what were some of the issues that you were seeing and why is there a need for a connection to Latin America and to the US? Is it business related? Is it like family members, remittances?
Really kind of draw that out. What gap were you trying to solve when you and your co founders started Prometeo?
Ximena: Yeah, definitely. I think that initially for us, the gap was among Latin American countries, you know, and so, basically, Prometeo, as I mentioned, is a cross border banking API. So, what we are trying to do is to connect financial companies and global corporations to the banking rails in Latin America.
through a single API so that they can do bank account verification, bank account aggregation, and payment initiation with a single integration. For that purpose, what we did was we created the largest token banking network in LATAM. We are aggregating more than a thousand APIs from a thousand financial institutions in 11 countries of Latin America, okay?
And the idea here is to create a single infrastructure across markets because when we think about the U. S., It's a single market. When we think about Europe, it's fragmented, it's different countries, but still, it's a single market. Infrastructure. It's a single market. Latin America can benefit a lot from having this single infrastructure across countries, you know, but the difficulty is that each country works differently, has its own infrastructure, its own rails, its own tech.
You know, and so plugging into Latin American rails it's a headache. It's something that you have to replicate country by country by country. So it's like sort of the Spanish, you know, we think about the Spanish in LATAM is the same. No, it's not the same, you know. And so you have the, the Orale and Aurita from Mexico, and you have the Yapo Weon from Chile, and you have that, the Ta, which is very Uruguayan, and the Chabon Boludo de Argentina, you know.
And so. Each country has its own flavor, you know, its own particularities. And with the financial infrastructure, it happens exactly the same, you know, it's different in each country. But for global corporations and global financial institutions trying to plug to Latin America, so it's a country by country, headache by headache, all over again.
And so that's our job at Prometeo, reaching the infrastructure gap. Across each country, you know, that's what we are trying to solve. And of course that once you, you. Solve that puzzle, you know, which for us was basically last year, beginning of this year, we were able to create like this infrastructure.
And now we are providing a bank account verification in 10 countries in Latin America, in Mexico, and in Brazil. We launched our account to account payments in Mexico in the first queue of the year. We are launching payment initiation in Brazil in the, in this queue. And so, we thought, okay, we are already doing this.
But what we are finding out is that most of the use of our, our infrastructure is cross border right now. So it's customers, financial institutions in the US that are trying to access the banking rails in Latin America. And so here there is something that provides a lot of value, you know? And of course, Miami, it's a natural hub in which to be, because there's, there are natural flows, you know, like money flows.
No. And remittances, it's, it's one, you know, unavoidable, like people sending money from the US to latam. Okay? And we are thinking, we are used to thinking about the, the money flow. No. But the thing is that the money flow also creates a data flow, okay? And that data flow. It's very siloed, it's very close into legacy systems.
How can we improve experience and data understanding if we are able to open those silos and provide access to real time data, an API to have automated flows, you know? And so we are creating efficiencies over the pre existing cross border money flow. Okay, and that's the cross border data flow, and that's something that we are tackling.
We launched a few months ago, our bank account verification service in the U. S., okay? And so now, we are not only providing access to bank account verification in Latin America, but also in the U. S., okay? And, and, well, I think that that's our, the first step of Prometeo outside Latin America, you know?
A very crucial one, but definitely not the only..
Stephen: For people that don't understand, like, what's bank account verification and why is that important, right? Are you, like, maybe walk us through a quick example of, like, why is this an issue? Like, are people not knowing if they set up a Brazil bank account? Like, do the US bank not know exactly who that person is?
Like, what's the verification? And why do you think this is kind of like your linchpin into making sure that, you know, it builds and bridges these ecosystems?
Ximena: Okay. So imagine that you're sending money from the U. S. to bank account in Colombia. Okay. Remittances. And you're using Swift because you already own a bank account in the U. S. and who's receiving the remittance in Colombia already has a bank account.
Stephen: Right.
Ximena: Just you, you put in, in the, in, in the online banking the bank account number and you send it. And there is no way you know, until the transfer gets rejected, that you put a number who was incorrect. Or that that bank account was closed because an issue.
Stephen: Interesting.
Ximena: Or that you missed, the person who sent you the bank account number put it incorrectly. Okay. And so that creates huge inefficiencies because returning them, getting the money back takes, it doubles the time that it took to get the money there and it costs twice as much. Okay. Exactly.
Stephen: And I that everyone's had that phone call with the bank about a wire transfer that was wrong. How many days? Oh no, you have to come into the bank now. What? Like, I did it online. Like, yeah, I think that's why I was laughing. I was like, we've all experienced that, no matter what country, the pain of having a wrong wire transfer.
Ximena: Exactly. And from the perspective of the person who's receiving, you know, like this expectation of will the money arrive or it won't, you know, which it doesn't seem at all 21st century. You know, because we are used to what's up, we are used to things getting done immediately, you know, and receiving messages immediately, and with the money we are not there yet, you know.
And so providing the verification that the bank account receives exists, who's the owner of that bank account, providing certainty that that bank account number is correct, it provides traceability. On that cross border wire, okay? And that's what we are
Stephen: about remittances, the person on the other side in Colombia, they're probably really expecting or needing this money. And then even if you're talking about a business relationship, if you're paying a vendor and you don't know that the funds have been rejected and your vendor now thinks you haven't sent the funds, you know, it creates, as you said, that trust element is huge.
Ximena: huge. And if you're thinking from a more SMEs or corporations perspective, you know, like, if you're sending thousands of payouts and payments to Latin America, It's a headache then, you know, because of course some of them will fail. So of course some of them will be rejected. Of course that there's information that it's updated.
Until now you didn't have a way to verify that. Now we are providing you that efficiency.
Stephen: Now we have big banks in Latin America. We have HSBC, Scotiabank, Bank of Nova Scotia. Why aren't they the ones that are connecting the dots? Are you kind of leveraging, you know, the institutions that they have to kind of help them API into all of the financial? I think I want to ask first, how are the, how was, what were the challenges?
I'm assuming if you come to Canada and try this, it's very difficult. We have five to six main banks. They do not like open banking concepts because they have what we would call a monopoly here. How is it you now going into several different countries? Everyone has their own flavor. Everyone probably has their own, you know, process and politics.
How difficult was it to you to get all of these banks in Latin America on board?
Ximena: Well, it's difficult. Of course that it's difficult. Something that is happening in Latin America is that open banking is evolving. Of course there is Immature in some countries, others like Brazil have a leapfrog the rest of the region. And so the, the reality in each country is different.
What we do is we adapt to that reality, you know? And so, we support different types of connectivity in each country and yeah, sometimes even different types of connectivity within one country. We, what we've been able to do. Right now, thanks to the evolution of open banking, and also because we are positioned as leaders in Latin America, is we are creating bilateral agreements with financial institutions, connecting directly with ACH, with the legacy rails, in order to provide this verification, you know.
But, of course, that it takes time. takes time, you know, like we've been operating in Latin America for almost six years now. And we are providing, we have been providing bank account verification in Latin America since 2021. And so of course that it takes time to move the wheel, you know, and get on board the most important stakeholders in each country.
Stephen: Are there any countries that are like, hey, this sounds great, but no, this is not for us, we don't want you API ing, ACH ing, we're good the way we have it, we don't want access to the US or any other, you know, frameworks, we have our traditional banks here. Is there any countries that you think that, you know, although they may like the technology, this is not for them?
Ximena: I won't say that it's a country thing, but perhaps more of a financial institution to financial institution discussion, you know? So, in some cases you have very upfront, very vanguard ly financial institutions that are willing to try this type of technology, implement this kind of solution. They understand the value for their customers.
And then you have others which will be more reluctant, more conservative. Perhaps more local that don't have cross border flows internally they don't need this kind of verification less tech driven, you know, but I will say that it depends on the strategy and value proposition of each financial institution.
Stephen: Now what's interesting is that, you know, have you thought, and your organization, you've kind of done a great job with Inline America, you've opened up these pathways to the U. S. Is there any other countries you're like, hey, this would be easily implemented due to either remittances or because Latin America is like on the top of everyone's tongue when it comes to innovation, when it comes to workforce, when it comes to cryptocurrency, Latin America keeps on coming up in every conversation along with places like Africa.
Is there any other countries or jurisdictions where you're like, I can see there being a nice nexus similar to what we have with the U. S.?
Ximena: Yeah well, I would say that there is something that is happening across geographies with bank account verification, which is becoming like a sort of a boom in the tech infrastructure, you know. This was something that didn't exist and now all of a sudden it's becoming mandatory in the US, it's becoming mandatory in Europe, you know, like verification of payee, you know, because The legacy Rails are understanding the value of a feature like this, you know?
And so I think that after the U. S. for us, the natural step would be Europe, you know? And so being able to aggregate geographies, not just LATAM, not just the U. S., but also other geographies that could provide value for our customers.
Stephen: Are you just B2B or you also, you know, have product offerings or service offerings directly for the customer? Are you just kind of plugging in the financial entities in these ecosystems?
Ximena: yeah, no, we have a full B2B SaaS. platform company, you know, and so we provide our infrastructure, the tech that we've created to financial players and corporations across the globe. Our solution is very tech driven both in, in the data side and the payment initiation side of the infrastructure.
We are tech players, so we do not process payments we initiate payments, and the same happens with data, you know, yeah we are a tech player.
Stephen: I love it. You know, what's interesting, you've already mentioned the speed. You've already mentioned things like trust and, you know, reliability is what you're affording people. How about the expenses? We've seen so many different, whether it's even fintech solutions, come into regions like this, and people are still complaining that although they're maybe cheaper interest or cheaper fees than the incumbents, they're still high.
Do you think this, you know, your solution, or maybe you can talk about. You know, the underbanked population in Latin America. And if you think overall is NEO and challenger banks, is that the solution to the underbanked population?
Ximena: Well, the underbanked population in Latin America, it's a, it's a hard issue, you know? Latin America has 650 million people. Okay. And I think that we still have 250 underbanked 250 million of people that are still underbanked. I was last week in, in Barisha in a FinTech LATAM event, Hosteller in Colombia, and Les was there.
So he was of course the main keynote speaker. And he mentioned like. We're still in the minute one of the fintech revolution in Latin America, you know, things are just really starting to happen. But the thing is that in this minute one, we were able to, uh, increase the banked population in an almost between 30 and 40 percent.
Okay. In the last five years of LATAM, you know, like, back in 20, well, perhaps a little bit more 2015, 2016 we were, the bank population was around 30, 35 percent across Latin America. And now we are in a 60%. Okay. So a lot has been done in Latin America in terms of Financial inclusion reaching the base of the pyramid with financial services, something that was crucial for the development of the region, you know, and that was the big opportunity everyone was talking about in Latin America.
There's still a huge opportunity, which is the 30 percent remaining, you know, and that's like 34 billion market opportunity. So it's huge. We have a great task ahead. I think that part of what's happening right now in Latin America, which is less consumer centered, but more infrastructure enterprise centered is because we understand that the next wave will be about B2B.
You know, and because this B2B, which is SMEs mostly, is very bank dependent, okay? There's a lot that has to be done in the legacy race, you know? And we've been able to witness what happened in Brazil with PIX, which has been huge, you know, an enormous revolution in, in playing like becoming like, And a benchmark into consumer adoption, you know, like, right now PIX represents in terms of transaction more than Credit and Debit Card combined, you know, when we talk about digital payments in Brazil, that's huge, you know, and it was like for years.
And so I think that we understand from first hand how necessary that infrastructure is and that we need to put that infrastructure in place, not just in Brazil, but also in the rest of the countries. And that's Mexico, that's Colombia, that's Chile, that's Peru, that's Uruguay, that's Ecuador. And a lot is being discussed.
Regarding this, you know, and so we have an infrastructure revolution in Colombia at this moment, in Chile at this moment, in Argentina at this moment both implementing real time payment rails, implementing open banking, implementing new infrastructure systems, you know, like Peru will be implementing the UBI system in two years time Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, they are discussing open banking, and so it's a very effervescent adrenalinic time in Latin America, and I think that this is happening because we understand the need of a new foundation, you know, in terms of financial infrastructure, if we want to reach that other 30 percent of the population, if we want to capture those 34 billion in market opportunity.
Stephen: I love it. And that actually just answered my next question, because, you know, we created a training program and with a FinTech consultant, and they highlighted Brazil as being one of the leaders in open banking. And this is through the pandemic and they kept their word and they executed. And I was going to ask you, do you feel that Latin America has an advantage?
Because of maybe government support across, you know, other nations who seem a little bit slow to the open banking, you know, initiatives, you know, Canada has been fighting tooth and nail. It doesn't feel like we're any further ahead than, you know, maybe where Brazil was back in 2019. Can you talk to me about maybe the regulatory landscape, you know, the government support that maybe gives a Latin American advantage than maybe other larger nations with more capital and resources?
Thank you.
Ximena: Yeah, I think that's something that happened in Brazil, which for me was the key, the key insight about what they did. And that has been different to Europe or open banking adoption in Europe and what we are seeing in the U. S. and in other countries of Latin America. Mexico, for instance, which was the first one to regulate open banking, is that they understood the need of a digital payment method that could cover and work for the entire population of Brazil.
And that was PIX, you know? And that peer to peer digital payment transfer method that then became a payment method Had a huge adoption, very explosive adoption across the country, you know, and I think that that opened our eyes, especially at eo, at understanding that the LATAM reality was very different to the European reality, you know?
And we were trying to implement open banking in countries that. A different type of need, a very, a more basic kind of need, which was not the, the, the understanding of the data, but actually the money flow, you know, and so being able to understand and conceive like the money flow as a money flow, but also as a data flow.
For us was something very interesting and very prolific, but at the same time, understanding that the money flow that we need to solve, we needed to solve the money flow before jumping to the data flow, you know, because the data flow was the second step and what was like the, the, the bottleneck.
was in the money flow. And so payment initiation became a thing for Prometeo, you know? And that's why in 2021, we launched our account to account payment service, you know, first in Uruguay and Peru and Ecuador. And now we have launched it in Mexico and Brazil comes next, you know, trying to solve like the payment flow, especially when it comes to companies and SMEs, you know, that used to have just the credit card rails in order to receive digital payments.
Stephen: Now, have you seen, like, it's funny, I was getting my coffee this morning, I saw somebody pay with cash, and I'm like, I haven't seen somebody use cash in such a long, like I, it, it stands out now more than, you know, somebody using their Apple watch to make payment. What do you see across Latin America?
You're going to several conferences. I know Latin America, traditionally, I think cash was used quite regularly, similar to places in Africa. Do you see this involvement, and obviously the pandemic may have something to play with it, but have you seen, since building up Prometeo, this kind of, you know, are we only getting more digital?
Do you see more digital payments, digital infrastructure, or are you still seeing very hash heavy jurisdictions within, or regions within Latin America?
Ximena: no, Latin America is still very cash dependent. We are, it's a very cash based economy. That's that's the reality. And I think that sometimes we as like experts in, in the FinTech industry, you know, have like this bias of thinking like everyone is using money the same way that we are using money.
But I, I, I get to travel a lot across the town and, you know, when you visit Peru, when you visit Barranquilla, Medellin and you are able to go to buy crafts buy like a local food, you know, not the fancy restaurant where you can pay with Vista, but like the, the, the, the, the people in the streets, you know, selling fruits or selling vegetables you can witness.
Why LATAM is still very cash dependent, you know, and 70 percent of the economy is cash based in LATAM, okay? And that's huge, you know, and that's a bottleneck for development, and that's a bottleneck for credit creation, and that's a bottleneck for growth in Latin America. And I think, like, Every fintech expert in Latin America will probably tell you the same, that we are, we are fighting against, against cash, you know.
That's the reality that we want to change, because we understand that having a more digital economy will create development in that time.
Stephen: I think people could probably listen to you pronounce different regions in the whole episode. The way you pronounce the names are absolutely amazing. But you also had an impressive raise recently. 13 million with backing from PayPal, which is interesting because they're also in the payment space. How difficult was it to raise funds in investors?
And do they see Latin America as like endless potential? Like what, what is the interest from investors? And do you feel like I was speaking to somebody from South Africa in a conversation and they, when they were raising, you know, some of the investors felt like, Hey, you should get the, they should get the African discount because Hey, you're in that region.
You're not in Silicon Valley. What, what are your thoughts? What was your experience like and your team's experience raising funds? In what hasn't been the greatest market in the last two to three years.
Ximena: No definitely. It, it wasn't the greatest market. I know that like last year was, I would say like sort of a bloodbath in, in the FinTech space, in, in, in the startup space in terms of fundraising, you know, and, and how the market was very, a very hard market. I think that on our favor, we have great metrics.
We've been always very consistent in how we deploy resources and also in our growth, you know, in our growth track. We are providing our infrastructure in Latam to two of the five largest banks in the world, you know. Most of our revenue came from the U. S. And I think that despite the market being that bad, the lechon opportunity is still there, you know, like the market is still there.
And, and and yeah, I would say that the business opportunity was still there. At least that was what I was pitching, you know, and of course that you have the LATAM discount. Valuations in Latin America are not valuations in the U. S. And so I think that's part of the reality, you know, but I think that, Because of the consistency and because of the quality in our execution and the quality of the team, we were able to close the round, which was, I would say, like, perhaps the largest round in the last Q of last year.
And happy to onboard terrific partners, PayPal Ventures, Antler, who led the round, Samsung Next, GM Capital, Cometa, of course, that led also our seed round. And yeah, I think that, that, yeah. I think I'm always bullish about execution, you know, I think that's the best way to show what it is that you are doing and why an investor needs to invest in you, you know, and I think that because we have been operating for a couple of years now, we are able to show our track record.
We are able to show as well our efficiency, you know, how we deploy resources and that builds trust.
Stephen: How are you spending that money? Like, when you get a, you know, injection of capital of 13 million, do you, like, where do you, obviously, you're a very big technology stack, is that where you focus a lot of your attention? Do you start thinking of expansion and growth with biz dev people, and Partnerships will probably be a huge portion of your business.
13 million seems like a lot, but when you're building what I think Prometheus is building, I think, I think it runs out pretty quickly. Where do you focus your efforts when you get a cash injection or a capital injection like that?
Ximena: Yeah, definitely, you know, it seems like a lot when you raise it and then when you go back to the business plan, you know, and do that top down, you know, in terms of numbers and how to deploy resources. Yeah, the reality is different, you know, and you realize that, of course, that this is very budget intensive type of solution, you know, you need to deploy a lot of resources before onboarding customers into that tech, you know.
And so, yeah, definitely for us, tech is a priority, has always been is where we deploy more of our budget. But in particular for after this, you say we have been trying to Deploy more resources into the sales side of the operation. We have always run a very lean operation in terms of salespeople.
Like I, I led the sales team. We were four people five, a pre sales engineer an account manager. to people in the marketing team, you know, and so it was time, high time, I would say, to robust that part of the team, you know, scale the sales machine, which I think it has been a priority for us during this year and expand that sales machine into new regions the U.S. More sales team in Mexico and in Brazil. And so I think that perhaps it's the year in which in, in In terms of the ratio, we have spend more in, in sales, you know, but of course that it makes sense because now we have already rolled out a lot of product and despite having to create more and more connections and roll out more product yeah, I think it's high time to, to expand our sales machine. Exactly.
Stephen: infrastructure. So there's actually a product that people can use versus like, Hey, you don't need a tech stack to evolve the product, but not necessarily to build the product as much. I'm assuming there's a lot that goes into making sure it's running smoothly as well.
Talk to me, you're from Uruguay, you pronounce it a lot better than I do. I don't think people, most people don't know about Uruguay until football season comes around. And now everyone knows about Uruguay. And I don't think there's any confusion when it comes to football about who Uruguay is versus Paraguay.
I think Uruguay has I've stolen a lot of people's hearts and probably messed up a lot of their bets when they're betting on soccer. But tell me about it now. You've, you've raised a ton of money in Uruguay. Maybe, you know, in the last couple of years, probably the most amount of money. I think you don't often look at Uruguay as like a startup.
You hear a lot about Brazil and Argentina and Mexico. Tell us a little bit about, you know, Uruguay, like give us the run of the mill of the Uruguay, the tech scene, the entrepreneurial scene, because I don't think a lot of people talk about it, nor do we have a lot of entrepreneurs that we have to talk to in that region.
Ximena: yeah, definitely. And I think that it's often a destination that is perhaps overlooked, but once you double double click on the country, you realize the quality of Uruguay and not just soccer players or football players, not just the quality of its meat, but also the quality of its tech stack, you know?
And so, as I mentioned, Uruguay is a small country between Argentina and Brazil. 3. 5 million of people living in Uruguay not a lot of population and, and, and I think that probably provides a lot of quality life quality to the, the, to the people in the country, you know, it's a very organized stable country.
The economy from, from an economics and political perspective, very stable. Has been so for the last 50 years. I would say that highly educated population. You know, which is, I would say, one of the most important assets of Uruguay. And definitely perhaps less popular, but as important tech hub as perhaps Buenos Aires or Chile.
Okay I think that Uruguay has been perhaps more well known in last years because of its, of its It's FinTech FinTech Landscape. The local of course is Uruguayan Unicorn, okay? Providing cross border payments across the globe. It made the first IP, Uruguayan IPO a couple of years ago.
But definitely not the only startup, not the only Uruguayan FinTech company, okay? And so I would say that most of the FinTech that Uruguay produces is a B2B. FinTech, okay created, created since day one thinking about global expansion. Because the market is narrow here, when you start building something, you start building it from scratch thinking about What will happen once you expand outside Uruguay, okay?
Uruguay is a very, very small market. And so, most of what's being done is being done thinking about exporting software. And as a software exporter, it's it's amazing what Uruguay provides. You know, it definitely has very high quality. GeneXus, which is a tech tool, was created in Uruguay. We have had four.
Core banking systems created in Uruguay, Topaz, Manentia, which was bought from, for Technisis which Technisis bought, and Technisis, which was Argentinian Uruguayan, was bought by SoFi in the U. S. We have Payosha, who was bought by Delivery Hero in Germany. We have national cores as core bankings that, of course, as they sell outside Uruguay.
Bantotal and Infocorp and Bankingly, okay? And so I think that there's a lot in the B2B fintech space. I think that this happens because UI has been able to attract and retain talent, tech talent, you know? We have a very, very good public education. For the last, I think, almost 20 years we have had public policies to create the entrepreneurial hub and a startup sector from Uruguay with grants from the government and many incentives for entrepreneurs.
You know, I think that we, as Prometeo, we are definitely a result of that. of that policy, policymaking regarding the tech scene and, and entrepreneurial ecosystem, you know, we have received grants from the, from, from different institutions and especially at the very beginning when we didn't have, like, the FFF, you know, Friends, Fools, and Family wasn't an option for us and so those grants were key.
In order to kick off Prometeo. And I think that, yeah, they were definitely yeah, substantial for us. So I think that there's a lot happening. I would say that the last part of this entrepreneurial revolution happening in Uruguay is the wave of outsiders that we have received. In the last two years, three years, especially from Argentina, you know, and so David Velez lives in Uruguay, but also Marcos Galperin from Mercado Libre, the founders of Globant, the founder of Ethermax, you know, and so I'm talking about the largest tech companies in Argentina and Brazil, perhaps the founders are living in Uruguay, you know.
And that creates like a networking, you know, a rumor in Uruguay that I think it's very beneficial for the ecosystem.
Stephen: Thank you so much for going through that. It really draws a picture of, you know, These countries that, as you say, people overlook them, but they're building, they're exporting, and, you know, sometimes we don't look under the hood exactly what country this tech stack comes from, but it's great to hear about, you know, what's being built and now what, you know, what countries attracting some of that top talent.
I think that's really the name of the game, right? Attracting and maintaining top talent is extremely hard, especially when the market is hot and, you know, everyone, the bigger companies, the, the more, you know, VC backed companies. Are, are, you know, sucking them all up like a vacuum. Talk to me about, obviously, I'm a compliance by nature professional.
Talk to me about what, you know, your API ing, I'm assuming, for most of this. Is there any regulatory requirements by you, or how do you make sure, I'm sure the first question the banks are saying is like, How do we know this is secure? Even if you're not touching the funds, you're the ones processing.
You're the gateway. Like, what are your conversations around regulatory and consumer protection, or at least customer fund protection?
Ximena: De definitely. And, and I would say that that's part of the key value proposition that we provide at Promeo. At Promeo we're three co-founders. One of them Rodrigo, who is co-founder and co EO with me he is experienced. comes from the cyber security sector. He used to work in AT& T providing cyber security advice to financial institutions.
He used to, and then he's, he opened his consultancy firm with focus in PCI DSS and ISO certifications, and, and, So I think that, lucky for us, he brought this excellent expertise into cybersecurity for financial institutions and PCI DSS compliance, and so he adapted that to open banking. You know, and despite not being a regulatory framework in 2018, when we started regarding open banking, we were customizing, like, those regulatory frameworks from other other verticals, you know, and also adapting best practices from other, like, the payment in payment infrastructure to open banking, you know?
And I think that that was crucial to reassure our customers, especially financial institutions that we were implementing the cybersecurity standards and regulations and compliance that they needed in order to work with us. You know, and I think that that was, at the beginning, very key to providing that reassurance.
Of course, that also, at the beginning, we were checking a lot what was happening in terms of compliance data protection, risk management in Europe. You know, okay, what is that they are doing? And let's try to adapt that. To our infrastructure, despite that not being mandatory, you know, because it's not about if that's mandated or not.
It's because that, that needs to be part of the business solution, you know, because that's what
Stephen: advantage nowadays. Compliance, customer protection is a competitive advantage. It's no longer a cost center that we used to think about now. Because we see the biggest companies, especially even in fintech, even some of the banks in the U. S., when they go belly up, it usually has to do with, you know, not barely meeting the requirements, but not focusing on those requirements as well.
Ximena: Definitely, that's part of what the, of the value that you are creating, you know, like that a compliance layer, that risk management layer, it's part of the value of the solution, especially when it comes to open banking, you know, and so I think that now, of course, when regulations apply, we adapt to the regulations, regulations as well, you know, and so we have like, what I would say is our regional framework.
You know, the things that we do in each country despite the local regulations. And then, if we need to add on or customize to a local regulatory requirement, we do that as well, you know? But we are happy to say that this the, the risk data and compliance layer that we've created, created has been able or has enabled us to onboard The largest financial institutions in Latin America and outside Latin America, you know.
We have yeah, we provide our infrastructure to CDJP, Morgan, Santander, PayU, We work with Banxico in Mexico, with Banco Estado in Chile. And so I think that, yeah, in terms of partners and customers, we are working with the most important financial institutions in Latin America.
Stephen: That's amazing. Talk to me about the API. I don't think we've had a lot of, you know, API seems like, Oh, you just kind of plug it in. It seems like an easy business model, a lot easier than building like your own blockchain. But I know there must be challenges with API as well. Maybe you can walk us through, are there these challenges?
Is it as easy as everyone thinks it is, or is it just really hard to build the infrastructure? And then once you have the infrastructure, it becomes a lot easier to kind of, you know, you know, scale that infrastructure.
Ximena: Well, I would say that it's easy to integrate our API. What happens beneath that API, that's the hard part, you know? And I think that the hard part is not creating those endpoints for our customers to integrate, something that I would say between 10 days and two weeks. The thing is what is that we do locally with each financial institution in each country or of Latin America and outside in order to standardize the information, you know, and provide this standardization layer across geographies, across financial institutions, you know, and so I think that creating the connectivity, the local connectivity, Plus the layer of standardization.
I think that that's where the complexity lies, you know?
Stephen: I'm really interested. You've talked a lot about DADA. DADA is really, you know, a profitable business. You see, hedge funds pay millions of dollars to get, you know, a competitive edge over anything when they're making decisions. Because now you're seeing all of these flows, and maybe legally you might not be able to, but have you thought about, hey, I see a trend that this country is always sending to this, you know, jurisdiction, Even though that's not our business model, this data and information and trends, especially with so many eyes on Latin America from an investment point of view, have you ever thought about, you know, sectioning off your data and your trends to provide to other companies so that they can now leverage their products and services based on some of the trends that you're seeing.
Ximena: No, that's not part of our business model. You know, our business model is creating like the, the, the bridge between information, you know, being able to create that infrastructure. And then of course, how's, how that data is processed, how that data is structure, you know, analyze that. That's on the customer side, you know, and so being that for create loans, being that for whatever it is that's something that the customer has to do, you know, that's the product over the infrastructure.
At this point of Prometeo's rollout that's not something that we provide, you know, because for us, it's been always about creating the infrastructure creating the roads so that you can access that information very easily, very seemingly. And then what happens with that information that's on, on, on the customer side, you know, that that's the product that has to be created, designed over the infrastructure that we provide.
Stephen: I love that. How do you stay focused? I'm sure, you know, once you create the infrastructure, everyone has ideas on how they can either tap into what you're doing, or like, hey, you should do this with AI. How do you stay focused? I'm sure you have a lot of intelligent people with concepts like AI, or the metaverse, or crypto come up.
How do you make sure that you stay on like, hey, we're just the road. Everyone can build what they want on top of the road or on the side of the road. We're just focusing on the road right now.
Ximena: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that for me it's it's very, with EO happens like the same with what will have will happen with, with, with my personal life. You know, like I, I, I think in the same way. Which is like You know, like that phrase, I and, and, and correct me if I'm saying it wrong which is like the, the neighbor grass is always greener or the, the grass is greener on the, on the other, in the neighbor side or on the, in the other fence.
I don't know. It's something like that, you know, like
Stephen: you got it, you got it.
Ximena: it's something like that, you know? And, and I think it, it's the same with startups, you know, like someone always. is doing something way cooler way bigger way more attractive trendier, you know, so it's always pitching better, having a better fan base, you know, it's like, yeah, if you start comparing that will happen, you know, but that's not where, where your, your attention has to be.
It's not on what the, what's the other person doing, but actually what is that you are doing, you know? And I've been very bullish about the open banking opportunity in Latin America and outside the world since day one, you know, since 2016. And, and, and I'm and I think that at this point some of what I think is very, very exciting for me is that many of the things that I thought would happen or I pitched will happen have definitely happened.
You know, like, I'm witnessing that revolution now, and of course, I'm witnessing a lot of other revolutions, you know, but this is mine. This is, yeah, exactly. This is the revolution that I have
Stephen: This is your spaceship, right? This is your spaceship.
Ximena: yeah, exactly. And so I am, I'm naturally focused on, in this and not in other things, despite other things.
It might be very, very cool as artificial intelligence, but I love what is happening in the fintech space right now. I love what has happened with infrastructure. I love what Open Banking is doing for the region, and I'm thrilled to be part of it. To be able to create more and more, you know, and discover new opportunities, opportunities that two years ago were inconceived.
And so I think that that, that keeps me very, very, very excited about what Prometeo is doing.
Stephen: Know, I talk to CEOs of exchanges, some of the biggest companies in the world, and I think What you have is a reason why you're so successful, and I hope some of the listeners that are in tech payments and crypto also see that. Is your focus on helping people, like you want to build out the infrastructure that you thought about years ago that would help the most amount of people.
And, you know, nothing is straight away, but like sometimes you talk to entrepreneurs, like we're going to do this and then we're going to do that. But they haven't even done this yet. And I think that's what you're focused on. Like, let's do this. Let's make this as the best as it possibly can be. And then everyone else can reconceive ideas of what is meant to be.
And it probably looks great when you're going back to some of these banks and said, see, two years ago, we told you we're going to do this. This is what we've done. Do you want to get on board now? It probably makes some of those conversations. A lot easier when, you know, you look like Nostradamus, you know, predicting a lot of the things.
I want to talk to you because you've been rewarded probably not more than once. As a top 100 women in fintech. And there's been, I looked at your LinkedIn, there's been top 50, top 100, top 25. So you're obviously a woman to watch. Talk to me about the diversity in Latin America. You know, we've seen as we get into tech and crypto, you know, people are still thinking of those gatekeepers, you know, the 55 year old white man is who, you know, is stopping us or making it difficult.
What is it like in Latin America? I feel like there's a lot more diversity in Latin America. Yeah. When it comes to fintech, startup communities, payments, what are your thoughts on that?
Ximena: I would say that perhaps if we think about diversity in the startup community, yes, you can see a lot of diversity, but I would say that still is very elitistic the fintech space, you know, and especially when you think about founders creating big fintech startups usually they will come from the elite.
In each country, you know, very well educated like high level families, you know, usually educated in the, in the US, you know, and so I think that there's still a lot of room to improvement in terms of diversity in Latin America and But, of course, I think that perhaps we have naturally more diversity like, I think that the discussion is diversity compared with what, you know, like, of course, like in LATAM, everyone is from LATAM, which in the U.S. that would be diversity, you know, but, but yeah, I think that there's room for improvement, definitely. I think that there are a lot of women working in the fintech space and funding fintech companies in Latin America. And I think that the ratio is like 30 percent of the founders in the time are female.
Okay. And so I think that that's that's amazing. Still the amount of funding going to female led companies. Startups is very disproportionate with the funding that the rest of the tech scene receives. I don't know if you're aware of the statistics, but it's like 1 percent of the funding goes for women, like 1 percent out of 99,
Stephen: not aware. And that's a crazy number compared to how many, as you say, the 30 percent that are actually working in the space. Now you have to get, you know, you're working with some of the biggest banks. Did you find the challenges there? Like, you know, approaching these banks because a lot of the traditional banks are still ruled, as you said, by an elite few.
Was it challenging or did they understand the concepts and they were a little bit more tech driven versus like, you know, posture and ego and status driven?
Ximena: No, I think that you know, part of the thing with like B2B enterprise sales is that it's very relationship driven, you know? And so I think that with fundraising happens the same. It's very relationship driven. And so you have to create relationships. I think that at least on my experience, You are not, also for myself, I'm not able to create relationships with everyone, you know, and I think that it happens to other people, you know, but of course that the relationships that you create, or at least that I create, create value for me, you know, and when it comes to Prometeo, they create value for Prometeo.
And so I usually know what's the kind of in the type of investor that I'm approaching, what is the type of investor that might be inclined towards investing in Prometeo? I, I can understand what's the type of customer, like the other person across the table talking from a, from the bank, you know, and which are his or her aspirations, you know, what's the other person thinking about me, myself, the solution.
And I think that I can work with that. I think
Stephen: I love it. What's the future do you feel of open banking, neo challenger banks in Latin America, and is there anything stopping that future from coming to a reality sooner do you think?
Ximena: I mentioned before, we are going through a very pivotal time of Latin America. Definitely in five years time, we will be having a very different conversation, you know, and I think that we will be able. Hopefully, we will be able to discuss similar results as the one we had with Brazil, with other countries in Latin America.
Hopefully, and this is almost a prayer, we will be able to see a change in landscape in Mexico, you know, a similar reality to the one that we are seeing in Brazil. Definitely, more inflation, more financial services. For SMEs in Latin America. And, and, and yeah, I think that with these new infrastructure reality and, and more financial inclusion, we will be having a conversation on financial services and complexity in financial services.
You know, the LATAM user. It's still very immature in terms of complexity, you know, like we have a savings account and a credit card and that's it, you know, and so I think that, yeah, we're, we're starting to get ready to the next step. Okay, what will that be? What is that financial? Users need in Latin America, you know, and so being able to customize financial services to Latam reality I think that that well, that's a dream for me, you know, like what can we create, customize to Latam reality with this new infrastructure in place, you know, yeah, hopefully in five years time, we will be able to have that discussion.
Stephen: And what have you seen? Because it seems like Latin America has really built up a gig economy similar to the Philippines, right? With like, whether it's video editors or virtual assistants, we're starting to see that transition. A lot of the companies that are offering overseas help in the places like the Philippines and Vietnam, we're also seeing them standing up, you know, kind of a Latin American division.
What are your thoughts on that? Do you see, do you notice that there's more of a gig economy? Great. Especially when you're looking for talent, like, what are your thoughts on that?
Ximena: Yeah, I, I think that. The gig economy was perhaps more of a thing two years ago, you know, like a lot of promise because of Rappi, you know, and similar companies. And I think that somehow like last year, I took a lot of the glow regarding that, you know, and, and put it more perhaps down to earth. I don't know.
I think that we'll still have to see, you know, yeah. I don't think that that picture is that clear yet.
Stephen: Awesome. What are you looking forward to? You know, Prometeo, is there any features that you're excited about? I know you might not be able to give us details, but is there any other countries that you're excited about that maybe you see onboarding more and more financial institutions? What are you excited about at Prometeo? Or even just you personally?
Ximena: yeah, definitely. I think that this has been a very exciting year for us with a lot of rollout in terms of product in key markets. You know, the first step of Prometeo outside Latin America, launching bank account verification or verification of payee in the US, launching our account to account payment service in Mexico.
We are about to launch it in Brazil. And then And so I think that that's a lot of growth. I'm very bullish about what will happen next year, you know, like, with new expansion in new geographies launching more products outside Latin America, you know, and delivering of this promise of closing the, of reaching the infrastructure gap across the Americas.
You know, connecting the Americas with different financial infrastructure services. I think that that's very, very exciting and it's something that I look forward to definitely. I think that the dream for us was always creating this infrastructure in a time, you know, and it was, it was amazing for us to look.
Back and see, okay, we have done that. So now that we have already done that and we want now to, to be this cross border banking API outside LATAM. I think it's a time for us to position as leaders, not in LATAM, but as leaders in the infrastructure space in the world, globally, you know, to become
Stephen: over the world.
Ximena: Exactly of fin of FinTech infrastructure. And that is something that I really look forward to, you know, like thinking other people thinking about promeo in terms of text tech excellence, you know, from latam to the world. Well that's the dream come true.
Stephen: I love it. Ximena, thank you so much. Where can people talk to you, find you? Is LinkedIn the best place? Maybe Twitter? Email? I don't know. What's the best place to reach you as people get excited about what you're doing?
Ximena: LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn or my email xaleman.prometoapi.com.
Stephen: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, educating on everything Uruguay and Latin America and really setting the stage for those that, you know, maybe following in your footsteps about building a little bit more in the open banking space. We really appreciate your time today.
Ximena: Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Stephen: Awesome.