Revolutionizing Fintech in Latin America with Ximena Aleman of Prometeo

Episode Overview

Ximena Aleman is a co-founder of Prometeo, the largest open banking API provider in Latin America, dedicated to advancing financial inclusion and transforming the region’s financial infrastructure. Originally from Uruguay, Ximena started her career as a journalist, covering technology and fintech. This role introduced her to the innovative spirit of entrepreneurs, inspiring her to transition from reporting to building. As a founder, she was determined to bring about impactful change, and in 2018, she co-founded Prometeo with a mission to unify Latin America’s fragmented financial systems. By offering a single API model, Prometeo facilitates seamless account-to-account payments and open banking solutions, empowering both consumers and businesses to access financial services more efficiently.

With over a decade of experience in the tech and fintech industries, Ximena is known for her commitment to financial inclusion and her drive to modernize banking in the region. Prometeo’s technology aggregates connections to over 1,200 financial institutions across 11 countries, allowing for real-time data access and efficient payments. This innovation is especially significant in a region where high credit card fees and cash-based transactions have historically limited digital payment adoption. Ximena’s work focuses on enabling small businesses and consumers to bypass costly intermediaries, thereby fostering a more inclusive and accessible financial environment.

Under Ximena’s leadership, Prometeo is expanding beyond Latin America, bringing its open banking model to new markets. Her impact in fintech has been recognized by several industry accolades, and she continues to be a vocal advocate for the role of technology in driving social change. As she leads Prometeo’s expansion, Ximena remains committed to her vision of a more connected and equitable financial system. Her journey from journalism to entrepreneurship exemplifies her belief in the transformative power of technology and the importance of creating sustainable, impactful solutions for underserved communities.

Episode Transcript

 Kevin Rosenquist: Hey, welcome to pay, pal. Where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist and thanks for listening. Ximena Aleman was a journalist reporting on tech and fintech. She loved meeting entrepreneurs and was blown away by their innovation and desire for change, so much so that she was inspired to leave the journalism field and become a founder herself. Prometeo is her third company, and it is disrupting the financial system in Latin America by focusing on open banking and financial inclusion. Their single API model and ability to facilitate account to account payments are revolutionizing the game across Latin America. Prometeo has big visions of a better future in the region, and they are well on their way to achieving that. So enough about me. Let’s welcome Ximena . Aleman! You started your career as a journalist. What drew you to journalism?

Ximena Aleman: Actually, I started my career working and studying economics. You know, that was the first path of work. And it took me a while to realize that I actually didn’t want to do that. I loved being like witnessing the stories of other people’s doing great things, you know, which is basically what you do as a journalist. Also, you get to meet the that people and, and share their, their backgrounds, their stories, what they are doing, you know, and and for me, that was very transformative in my early 20s, you know, being able to meet so many people, doing great, great, great things and, and building things that were changing the world. And it got to a point for me where I it was like, I want to do that, you know, like I want to be building something that is great and that deserves to be witnessed and told by others, you know. And so for me, when I was like in my 20, 24, 25 seconds, it was like, no, I have to do something else. You know, like, I also want to have that feeling of changing the world, you know? And that for me was, uh, was an insight, you know, something that that’s not what this is not what I want to do, you know, like, I want I want to be operating, you know, that’s how you I would call it right now, I want to be operating. But back then, you know, like 15 years ago, it was more of discovering something new and building it. That was what drove me from journalism to tech, you know? But basically, as a journalist, I love to meet people doing amazing things.

 Kevin Rosenquist: What kind of stuff? Kind of. What was your sort of wheelhouse? Where did you fit in in the journalistic area? What kind of stuff did you report on? I think it was a tech. It was all tech. Yeah, yeah.

Ximena Aleman: Business businesses and then tech. Yeah, that makes sense.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Then that let you see all this cool stuff? And then you’re like, well, this is cool. Reporting on it, but I don’t want to do it.

Ximena Aleman: No. You know, like, I think that there’s something about talking with entrepreneurs, you know, which is very compelling. You know, I was so young, you know, and so everything was marvelous to me. You know, like and like the energy, the charisma, like the adrenaline that what they share with me, you know, was amazing. And I think that at the same time, this idea that there were people like me, you know, they were not like, I don’t know, like someone like they were talking to me. People in Uruguay, people in Argentina, people in South America, you know, there were people like they had an idea and went after it. And so that thing about thinking something and then acting on it, it was very attractive, you know, and it helped me to realize that it was something that I could do. So it was a matter of perhaps making the choice. You know, having like this drive of not just thinking about it but actually operating it. And that for me was fascinating.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I can definitely relate. I mean, I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, and it is inspiring and it is compelling and it is one of my favorite parts about what I do is getting to talk to such amazing people, doing incredible things that I could only feel like I could only dream of doing.

Ximena Aleman: Yes, exactly. I think that somehow the horizons become broadened. You know, it’s like you have this new perspective about the world being so much wider than what you thought it was, you know, and, and also the power that you have to transform that world, you know, and I would say that that insight is very powerful for us at Prometeo, you know, like being able to change like the experience with money in Latin America, being able to change the infrastructure, the financial infrastructure in Latin America, you know, it’s something that if you think of it from not from a closed view, it seems very hard to change, you know? It seems like you almost have to be kind of crazy in order to think that you can change that. But when you have these kind of conversations periodically, you know, you understand that there’s nothing that cannot be changed. You know, everything is out there to be changed and transformed. And so that for me was amazing.

 Kevin Rosenquist: That’s really that’s really cool, I like that. Like nothing can’t be changed. Yeah. No. I like that mindset. It’s really cool. You’re on your third company as a founder, is that correct?

Ximena Aleman: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Do you consider yourself a serial entrepreneur? Have you heard that term before? Has anyone ever. Yes. Before?

Ximena Aleman: Yes, yes, I’ve heard that term before. Yeah. I think that it applies. It’s not the way I usually define myself, but yes, definitely it applies. You know, uh, not.

 Kevin Rosenquist: On your business card.

Ximena Aleman: Not in my business card, not in my LinkedIn profile. Uh, but, yeah, I think that there’s something that once you become an entrepreneur, you really like the spirit, you know, the dynamics. And so it becomes sort of a virtuous cycle. Create a new startup and then another and another. For us, it was a matter of not giving up. You know, like we understand that there’s something here that needs to be transformed, which for us was infrastructure in Latin America, API infrastructure in Latin America. Uh, we understand that this is a bottleneck for fintech disruption. We understand that this is a bottleneck for financial services, for experience, you know, and at the same time, we understand that we have the tools, you know. And so in the first startup that I’ve always created, my startups with the same team, you know, we have three co-founders. We have been working together for ten years now. That’s really cool. Yeah, it’s pretty cool because we’ve sort of grown together, which is amazing. We’ve also learned a lot together about life in general, but a lot of expertise into fintech, fintech, infrastructure, tech and entrepreneurial dynamics. You know how to build a startup and that’s been very powerful for us. But going back to the insight for us, it was okay, we can create a peer to peer wallet, but the bottleneck that we are seeing is how we automate the interoperability with the financial institutions.

Ximena Aleman: We can create PFM like mint, which for us was Abaco, but then the bottleneck is again API infrastructure. And so it was sort of natural, you know, to understand that actually the problem here is the infrastructure is how do we get to build this without having this layer, you know. And that was the kick off. Okay. So let’s start from the foundations. We need to close this infrastructure gap between different countries in Latin America. We need to provide what you think as 21st century features in infrastructure, real time payments, real time access to data and embedded services, embedded financial services. And for that you need an API. Okay, why don’t we just build these APIs, you know, and provide them to other entrepreneurs? And that was the kickoff of Prometeo. And that’s what we are doing. You know, we built the largest API network in Latam. We are aggregating more than a thousand, 1200 financial institutions in 11 countries. And well, now expanding because we launched an account verification service in the US. And now we are also aggregating not just Latam but the Americas. Mhm.

 Kevin Rosenquist: That’s really cool. And you know you’re the first guest I’ve had on this show whose focus is on Latin America. And I honestly didn’t, I didn’t realize how fragmented the financial systems are. But I guess it makes sense to some degree because there’s a lot of countries involved. But like overall about a broader scope. Can can you talk a bit about why Latin America has been so fragmented in a financial in the financial world?

Ximena Aleman: Well, we tend to think about Latin America as this unified region. You know, it’s like, okay, usually you would say Latam is Brazil. And then a lot of Spanish speaking countries, you know. And when you double click, even with the language, you know, you can understand like the Mexican Spanish orale . You know, it’s different from the Chilean Spanish, you know, with the ya po and so on. And for the Rio de la Plata Spanish with the Tao el boss. And because all of these countries have different histories, you know, and of course, that there is a common past and there’s a common inheritance. We all speak Spanish, and we understand each others like, but each country has its own reality. You know, and in the financial services space, it happens exactly the same. Each country has its own rails, its own state of the art infrastructure, you know. Also, each country lacks different things, you know, and different from what happened in Europe, where all those unified countries came together to create a single financial infrastructure. And also like governance. And in Latin America, that hasn’t happened, you know, and that’s a bottleneck for growth, for development, you know, because when you have global corporations trying to plug into the banking system, they approach the region as a whole. But when they double click, they realize that they have to run 11 different integrations. They have to interoperate with 50 banks, 50 financial institutions in general. So it becomes sort of a nightmare. Okay. And so in order to solve that nightmare for us, for them, what we are, what we have done is we have built a single API that automates interoperability to the banking system in the region.

 Kevin Rosenquist: I was actually going to ask you next about that single API model, because it certainly seems like it simplifies access to both payments and banking data. And when Prometea was born, was that a focal point to address the challenge? Was a single API like kind of like, okay, this is what we want to do.

Ximena Aleman: Yes, definitely. Of course, the scope of that single API has changed, you know? And so at the beginning, like this single API was basically accessing banking movements as standardization for accessing banking movements, balances and movements. Okay. And for us, open banking had a very data centered approach. Okay. But then things happen, you know, and picks changed the dynamics of payments in Latin America. How did it change? Yeah. How we thought payments could be done, you know, and also adopted because of its huge adoption and how explosive the growth of adoption was. Pixar is a paper bank system that was implemented by the Brazilian government. Government, which was a huge success, has made Brazil a leading player in payment infrastructure and payment disruption. The thing was that back then, when Pix launched in 2020, we realized, okay, yeah, yes, it’s very natural. We have always understood that open banking will change how we interact with our financial information. But of course that when we interact with our financial information is because we have interacted previously with the flow of money. Okay. And so the banking data, it’s a complement to the banking flow, to the money flow. And of course that there is a bottleneck of when accessing that data. But there’s a much bigger bottleneck when moving the money around in Latin America. Okay. And so the powerful insight for us was like the money flow is the foundation. And then you have the access to the data, you know, but the two things are deeply related, profoundly related, related. And so there are huge synergies in providing the same infrastructure for both of them. Okay. And that’s why our infrastructure has two sides a data side and a payment side with account accounts and payouts, because we believe that those two things are very complementary.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that’s the instant payment thing. Have you ever seen those. I’m sure you have those flowcharts of watching how a payment goes from one place to another. And it’s like there’s like 15 different icons on the chart and you’re just like, it’s jarring even to those people who are in the financial space and understand it because it’s like you see it visually and you’re like, whoa, that’s insane. So you guys have the accounts, account, payment product, and that’s obviously huge for merchants and customers. And we’ve talked about it with other guests on the show too, especially small businesses who may have cash flow struggles. You know, don’t have a ton of cash on hand all the time. You know, instant payments or at least much faster payments are obviously a huge talking point in fintech right now, and we’re seeing more and more of it. Are you are you seeing significant growth there from when you started Prometeo six years ago?

Ximena Aleman: I couldn’t express the growth, you know, in terms it really.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Is gaining moment in your opinion. Yeah.

Ximena Aleman: Yeah, it’s the moment and is this is something that it’s expanding, you know, across different countries in Latam simultaneously. Okay, I’m Latin and I’m talking about Latam, but I will talk about the world. You know instant payments is something that is happening right now. And it’s redefining the way we make payments, you know. And so when you talk about instant payments and then you talk about banking rails, which is basically account to account, this is redefining how we make payments in Brazil. Peixe is now used more than debit and credit cards combined. Okay. Yeah. That’s impressive. That’s it. That’s amazing. Nine out of ten adults are using pigs in Brazil. Wow. Nine out of ten.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Not to that. To that level.

Ximena Aleman: Not to that level. You know, and so it’s mind blowing to understand the power of this infrastructure in Latin America because Latin America, different to the US or to Europe, is a very cash based society. Okay. And different to the US and to Europe. Credit card fees are huge in Latin America. Okay. And so this has been also a bottleneck for digital payments in the region, because most digital payments traditionally over the last ten years have been done over the infrastructure of the credit cards, of credit cards. Okay. And so when it comes to SMEs, you know that they don’t want to cannot pay those fees. What they have decided to do is just keep using cash. You know, like I cannot accept credit cards. You know, like, fees are too high. And so it’s like at the time we’re talking about 6%. 6%.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Oh my gosh. I mean, even the 2.73% that we get here. I mean, I’ve run I’ve worked for small businesses and handled books and stuff like that. And it’s jarring when you get like a big invoice paid with a credit card and you’re just sitting there going, oh my God, that’s just money that I’m just feeding to this credit card company. That could be.

Ximena Aleman: Exactly.

Ximena Aleman: Exactly, exactly. You know, and so that’s a driver for account account adoption in Latin America. That’s a driver. 6%. It’s a lot. No, of course, of course. And so when you think about it from the perspective of an SMEs in Latam, it makes a lot of sense that that infrastructure has hadn’t been hasn’t been adopted. Okay. And it makes sense that there’s a space for a new infrastructure to emerge. And that infrastructure is account to account because you have the banking rails, they are becoming instant. And because most governments in Latin America have applied financial inclusion programs where a lot of people have been able to open a bank account. Okay. And so financial inclusion. Five years ago. Ten. Yes, eight years ago was 40% average rough, you know, 40, 40% in Latam. And now we are reaching 78%.

Ximena Aleman: Awesome.

Ximena Aleman: That’s awesome.

 Kevin Rosenquist: It’s crazy to think that 40% only eight years ago. That’s not that long ago.

Ximena Aleman: No, it’s not that long ago. You know, but a huge part of the fintech revolution in Latin America has been fintech inclusion. You know, like how we get these people into the system and you have these government programs, you know, like opening bank accounts to receive government salaries or to receive. Well, a lot of things. But then you also have like the Neobank way, you know. Yeah. No bank, of course. Voila. And like all the non banks Providing financial inclusion tools. Yeah. And the.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Technology? The technology keep being able to open a lot of doors, especially obviously for the Neobanks.

Ximena Aleman: Exactly, exactly. And so now we have like all these people somehow included in the system. How can we improve how they are using these capabilities? You know, like I think that the question is financial inclusion having a savings account?

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I guess it’s part of it, but it’s certainly not all of it.

Ximena Aleman: Not all of it. And of course, as years go by, the user becomes more and more sophisticated. That’s it’s reasonable, you know, it’s how it should be. And so users should be more and more complex. They should be more and more educated. Yeah. And so how can we get them there. You know. And so we need to provide better financial tools. And providing these financial tools is also financial inclusion.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah yeah yeah that’s a good point. That’s a good point. It’s all part of it’s kind of one big, big ecosystem of inclusion. Collusion. Yeah. So I mean, the credit card companies and intermediaries can’t be huge fans of a to a technology and a to a payment right. How much resistance is there to ATA payments from intermediaries and how impactful is that resistance.

Ximena Aleman: Of course that there is resistance. It exists. You know, it’s like when you have a huge business, important market share is more than logic, that you will try to preserve that business, that market share, you know, and yes, that’s a big part of the transition that we are witnessing. But at the same time, you have, of course, fintech players pushing for innovation, you have regulators pushing for innovation. And I think that, uh, time is on, on our side, you know, like there’s you can delay things up to a point, you know, but this is something that is happening globally, you know, like the way the user is behaving is different, you know? And this is something that governments understand and it’s a tool for them. You know, uh, digital payments help to prevent cash to be used. They help to formalize economies, you know. And so there are other incentives from an impact perspective, from a social development perspective that I think that play in our favor, you know, like helping us to create the incentives as fintechs, you know, like as disruptors are as the companies that are trying to create these new infrastructure. So all of these drivers help us, you know, to create the incentives, uh, so things start moving around, you know, and, and, and yeah, and being able to provide the service to, to financial concerns.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. That’s interesting. It’s interesting what you said. It’s not just about the convenience for the user or the merchant. It also is about. It helps economies thrive and it helps economies grow. And you don’t. I don’t know that people talk about that enough. You know people. It’s more about how you hear more about how it benefits users and merchants. You know specifically. But you’re right. It can change a country’s economy when you can have cash, not indefinitely.

Ximena Aleman: You know, and I think that there’s always especially when it comes to Latam, there’s always an impact perspective into fintech, you know, because you have like this is something that I mentioned, you know, usually is you have the macros. You know, like in Latam you have poverty, you have unemployment, you have inflation, you have like all of the corruption, like you have the things, you know. And as an entrepreneur, you cannot do anything with that. That just happens outside your zone of control, you know. But then what you get to change is people’s experience with money. You know, you get to change how they interact with money, you know? And because of the macros, they my experience with money is always hard. But then if you on top of that, have a hard experience when using your bank, when opening a bank account, when opening a savings account, when getting a credit card, when asking for a loan, you know, like everything becomes so hard, much harder. And so as an entrepreneur in Latin America and most entrepreneurs will tell you, like what we are trying to change is experience with money for everyday people. You know, like taking making decisions every day. And that’s something that is within our zone of control. That’s something that we can definitely change. And that’s why there’s always a perspective on impact in every startup, a fintech startup in Latam.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. It’s interesting because I was curious about political turmoil and political changes. And you have you when you have a lot of different countries, there’s a lot of different governments. So there’s a lot of different focal focal points. I mean, there can be revolutions or complete economic collapses or there’s so many different things. How do you balance all that? Running a company that goes cross-border for so many borders, is it difficult for you to try to I don’t know, do you have to like, keep up with what every country is kind of going through in order to keep the ecosystem you’re trying to create alive and well?

Ximena Aleman: Yes, a little bit. Yes. Yes, you have to do that. And you become sort of not an expert, but you become very aware of what’s happening in each country, you know, and that happens because you need to understand regulatory processes. You need to understand customers’ needs. You need to benchmark you know and understand what other players are doing. Also, you have a recruiting team and you have team like in eight countries of Latin America. And so your team is also impacted. But what’s.

Ximena Aleman: Happening.

Ximena Aleman: From a political, regulatory and economic perspective. And so, yeah, I think that a big part of running the startup in Latam is understanding. Yeah. What’s the reality in each country?

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Because how, you know, trying, you know, dealing with trying to deal with cross border payments and all that and creating this, this unified solution, a single API. I mean, I don’t is it like, do you have situations where you’re like, man, I don’t can we can operate in this country? Can these fintechs operate in this country? Are they going to, you know, because there’s some pretty, you know, rough political situations going on in, in some countries.

Ximena Aleman: Yeah, definitely. That’s something that is part of everyday life at Prometeo. You know, like for us that’s business as usual. How is this regulation going to impact under which conditions we can operate here? Which products can we provide here and which we cannot? How can we deploy or make the rollout of these products in each of these countries? You know, and something that I always mention is that not all the time, there’s no no one size fits all, you know? And, uh, from a tech perspective, that implies that you have to be very flexible. That’s one of the, I would say, things that where we excel, we are very flexible in terms of the tech that we implement in each country to make the rollout of our product okay. And we have been always very tech focused, you know, and at the same time, something that for us has been an advantage or has played in our favor is that we’ve always tried to take state of the art implementations or state of the art practices in terms of cybersecurity or infrastructure, you know, to implement those like that kind of infrastructure into our product. And so, uh, for instance, like one of my co-founders, Rodrigo, his background is cybersecurity. He used to certificate in PCI, DSS and though PCI, DSS is more designed to meet the standards of credit cards, the cybersecurity and risk standards of credit cards we took, like he brought that knowledge, that knowhow into open banking. Okay. And customize that knowledge to open banking when like five years ago, when that was something that no one was sort of thinking about in Latin America, you know, and I think that created for us a differentiation, you know, because many financial institutions in Latin America, like they are very heavy on compliance. They are very heavy on cybersecurity, you know. And so you have to be able to provide certainty, you know, have to provide reassurance that you know what you’re doing and you are meeting international standards. That’s something that we have always tried to do at Prometeo.

 Kevin Rosenquist: That’s really cool. I have one more question. It’s about time for you to found another company. Huh? You falling behind?

Ximena Aleman: Ha Definitely not.

Ximena Aleman: I’m good, I’m good, I’m good. Very happy with what’s happening at Prometeo, you know, and how challenging has been, but at the same time, how rewarding it has been. You know, like five years ago when we started Prometeo seemed like a pro mete and open banking. It seemed like a very crazy idea, you know, and, and we usually would meet with financial institutions and tell them about this huge thing that was happening in the UK and in Europe, you know, and tell them about open banking. And they would be quite reluctant, you know, and something that we have been able to capitalize on was that vision, you know, like five years later, they already know us. You know, like we were the ones that knocked at their door, you know, to tell them about this crazy idea, you know, and we are here, you know. And that vision became something, you know, it was true. Like what we were, we were right. Basically. Yeah. And that’s very rewarding. You know, like for us, of course, as, as entrepreneurs. But I think that it’s also very fulfilling when you see that grow, you know, and emerge and change. Yeah. The landscape in our region.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Well, that’s it.

 Kevin Rosenquist: What you said when you left journalism. That’s what you wanted to do, right? You wanted to create. You wanted to do something, make something cool. You wanted to do something that changed things. And it sounds like you’ve done that. Congratulations.

Ximena Aleman: Thank you. Thank you very much.

 Kevin Rosenquist: Well, Ximena  with Prometeo, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for being here. And good luck with your continued growth.

Ximena Aleman: Thanks, Kevin, for having me. Thanks for the invitation. I really appreciate the conversation here.