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Cross-Border Complexity Remains the Constant
Financial services in Latin America have expanded rapidly in recent years. Digital payment options, mobile banking, and fintech platforms are now widely adopted in several markets. But despite this growth, challenges tied to infrastructure continue to shape how innovation happens across the region.
One of the most consistent issues is fragmentation. Financial systems in the region do not operate under a shared model. Each country enforces its own standards and regulatory frameworks. The result is a regional market that cannot be approached with a single solution or uniform architecture. Integration efforts often run into barriers related to definitions, access, and technology maturity.
For companies operating in multiple countries, these differences affect how quickly they can scale. Technical interoperability is often discussed as a goal, but it’s rarely straightforward to implement. The underlying systems are not always aligned—and that limits what financial technology can deliver.
What Interoperability Demands in Practice
Building open finance in Latin America involves more than opening access to financial data. Access alone does not guarantee usability or adoption. The systems need to connect, and they need to do so in a way that users and institutions can trust.
This includes consistent APIs, yes—but also legal alignment, security guarantees, and transparent relationships with regulators. These components cannot be copied from one country to another without adjustments. They are shaped by the institutional and social frameworks of each market.
The companies leading progress in this space are often required to invest in groundwork that is not immediately visible: building trust, standardizing definitions, and navigating parallel systems that coexist within the same country.
Insight from Ximena Aleman
Ximena Aleman has spent the last several years building infrastructure to address these very issues. As Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Prometeo, a fintech company focused on enabling open finance across Latin America, she has worked directly with banks, regulators, and developers in markets with varying levels of maturity.
In our conversation, Aleman discusses how fragmentation across jurisdictions has changed her view of what open finance requires. For her, the core issue is not just about integrating systems, but creating a structure where systems can operate together with reliability. That includes technical elements, but also standards around transparency, compliance, and regional cooperation.
Aleman’s approach reflects the demands of the region: interoperability as a long-term process that balances innovation with institutional credibility.
Enjoy!
1. You’ve worked across multiple financial ecosystems in Latin America. What infrastructure challenges have consistently surfaced across borders — and how have those shaped your understanding of what “open finance” really requires in practice?
One of the most persistent challenges across Latin American financial ecosystems is fragmentation. While the region is often treated as a single market, the reality is far more complex. Operating across borders means contending with entirely distinct systems, each with its own definitions, standards, and pace of adoption.
Even the concept of a financial API can mean very different things depending on the country. This complexity has reshaped how I understand open finance. It is not simply about providing access to data or services. It is about creating the infrastructure that allows financial systems to interoperate reliably. That includes enabling technical integration, but also ensuring transparency, trust, and regulatory alignment across jurisdictions. Viewed through this lens, open finance becomes more than a policy framework or product feature.
It becomes the foundation for a borderless financial experience, where individuals and institutions can move value and access services without friction. Reaching that level of interoperability takes time, but it is the kind of long-term transformation that can unlock regional scale and resilience.
2. In regions where interoperability is still evolving, how do you think about the tension between speed of innovation and the need for financial resilience or regulatory clarity?
ALT: In regions where interoperability is still evolving, the tension between innovation and regulation is both real and necessary. On one hand, the pace of technological developments creates urgency, especially when financial inclusion is at stake. On the other, stability and trust depend on clear frameworks, and those often take time to materialize. What makes fintech particularly interesting is that regulation often follows innovation, not the other way around.
New technologies tend to surge first, and it’s frequently the companies building them that advocate for clear rules and push regulation forward. In many cases, it’s the ecosystem itself that demands oversight to ensure long-term trust, adoption, and safety. In that sense, innovation doesn’t just challenge the system, it helps shape it.
The most impactful solutions are those built with flexibility, that account for regulatory complexity, and that can evolve as the ecosystem matures. Innovation is only meaningful when it earns trust and endures beyond the early momentum.
3. You’ve operated in environments where informal economies coexist with formal banking systems. What have those settings taught you about building tools that reflect how people actually move money?
Operating in Latin America means understanding that financial behavior often lives in the gray space between formal and informal systems. People might get paid in cash, use WhatsApp to coordinate payments, or rely on informal networks for credit, not because they don’t want to use formal channels, but because those channels haven’t been built around their realities.
That’s taught me that building financial infrastructure isn't just about digitizing banking; it’s about designing for how people actually live and move money. If you want adoption, your tools need to be as intuitive and immediate as the informal practices they’re replacing and ideally, offer more transparency, control, and long-term benefits.
In these environments, the key is to reduce the gap between how people already manage money and how new systems ask them to engage. If a solution doesn’t feel immediate, reliable, and easy to use, it won’t replace existing habits, no matter how sophisticated it is. Adoption depends on building with that reality in mind.
4. In your cross-border experience, what tends to be misunderstood or oversimplified when global observers talk about fintech in Latin America?
There is often this narrative that paints the region in broad strokes, “high unbanked populations”, “rising smartphone usage”, and so on. While some of that is true, it misses the nuance of a region that is incredibly diverse. What works in Mexico might not work in Chile. What gains traction in Brazil may never land in Uruguay.
There is also a misunderstanding of how much innovation is already happening locally. The opportunity is not just to bring in new technological solutions, but to leverage what is already being built. Global players often underestimate the complexity of scaling across Latin America. Cross-border is not just a feature, it is a challenge that requires infrastructure, compliance expertise, and a deep understanding of how financial institutions work on every market.
5. You’ve consistently advocated for women-led innovation. What structural issues do you believe have the most tangible impact on whether female founders can access funding or scale products in the region?
One of the most tangible structural barriers female founders face in Latin America is the lack of representation in capital allocation. Most investment decisions are still made in rooms that don’t reflect the diversity of the region and that gap directly impacts who gets funded and how risk is perceived.
There’s also a trust gap. Women are often expected to "prove it" in ways their male counterparts aren't to show traction earlier, to mitigate more variables, to have the perfect deck and the perfect delivery. That creates an uneven starting line before the conversation even begins.
Finally, we can’t ignore the invisible labor: many women are building companies while also absorbing the majority of caregiving responsibilities. That reality shapes how they approach time, growth, and scale, and yet, most support systems in tech don’t account for it.
If we want more women scaling products and driving innovation, we need to fund differently, mentor with intention, and build ecosystems that aren’t just open to women but designed with their realities in mind.
6. For founders working on financial access in regions with complex regulatory and infrastructure layers, what are the most valuable lessons you’ve learned about building momentum while navigating constraints?
One of the most valuable lessons is that constraints aren’t just obstacles, they're sources of insight. In Latin America, we’ve had to build in environments where regulation evolves slowly, infrastructure is uneven, and trust in financial institutions is inconsistent. But those same conditions push you to be more creative, more localized, and more deliberate in how you grow.
Momentum doesn’t always look like hypergrowth, sometimes it’s about sequencing correctly. We learned to move fast in what we could control like product iteration and partnerships while staying patient and strategic with what we couldn’t, like regulatory timelines. Building credibility with regulators and financial institutions has been as important as writing clean code.
Another key lesson: don’t assume scalability equals uniformity. What works in one market may not translate directly to another. You need flexible infrastructure and a mindset that embraces difference, not erases it.
And finally, surround yourself with people who understand the long game. Building financial access in complex regions isn’t just about speed, it’s about resilience, relationships, and a deep understanding of the ecosystem you’re trying to transform.
