Fintech Confidential
Cross-Border Payments Explained: Why 50 US Jurisdictions Still Can't Agree
Why It Matters
Understanding and fixing the broken cross‑border payment rails is critical as trade and remittance flows between the U.S. and Latin America surge, affecting businesses and diaspora communities. Prometeo’s approach demonstrates a scalable, API‑first solution that could accelerate real‑time payments, reduce costs, and unlock new fintech innovations across the Americas.
Key Takeaways
- •Legacy banking systems cause fragmented cross‑border payments.
- •Prometeo unifies 7,500 LATAM and US institutions via single API.
- •Real‑time expectations now demand millisecond transaction speeds.
- •Standardization reduces noise, enabling faster borderless banking.
- •Agentic banking integrates AI agents for secure, automated transactions.
Pulse Analysis
The global payments landscape is still shackled by legacy banking infrastructure that speaks a different language in each jurisdiction. In Latin America and the United States, fragmented APIs, outdated settlement rails, and varying regulatory rules turn even modest B2B transfers into costly, slow operations. Customers now expect transactions to settle in milliseconds rather than minutes, a shift that forces fintechs to upgrade speed without discarding entrenched systems. This mismatch creates inefficiencies, higher compliance burdens, and a broken cross‑border experience that hampers trade across the world’s largest corridor.
Prometeo tackles that fragmentation with an open‑finance platform that links more than 7,500 banks, credit unions, and payment providers across LATAM and the U.S. through a single, API‑first interface. By normalizing data fields such as account balances, transaction dates, and validation codes, the company strips away noise and delivers a consistent view of every account, regardless of local schema. This standardization not only accelerates onboarding for fintechs and corporates but also reduces compliance risk, enabling real‑time, borderless payments that move money across the Americas as easily as domestic transfers.
The next frontier is agentic banking, where AI‑driven agents act on behalf of users to initiate transfers, reconcile statements, and enforce policy limits. Prometeo’s modular architecture lets developers expose secure agent endpoints while sandboxing liability, so an AI can move funds without exposing the underlying account to risk. As businesses demand faster, automated cash‑flow management, this symbiosis of open banking and artificial intelligence becomes a competitive advantage. For enterprises operating between the U.S. and Latin America, adopting such infrastructure translates into lower transaction costs, improved cash visibility, and the ability to scale globally without rebuilding integrations.
Episode Description
Open finance infrastructure, agentic banking, and cross-border payments converge as Prometeo connects 7,500+ financial institutions across Latin America and the US through a single API. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Ximena Aleman, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Prometeo, to unpack what it takes to standardize fragmented banking systems across 30 countries and bring that playbook to the American market.
Tedd and Ximena cover why US banking infrastructure is more fragmented than most people realize, how Prometeo's account verification now covers 85% of US bank accounts, and what agentic banking looks like when AI agents operate real bank accounts with built-in compliance controls. The conversation also addresses the open banking pricing debate, CFPB 1033 as a US expansion accelerant, the Nacha preferred partner announcement, and why only 2 to 3% of VC funding reaches female-led startups.
Find out more
1️⃣ Disaggregate your payment stack layer by layer; calling it "mature" hides gaps that cost you money.
2️⃣ Build infrastructure for corridors, not single countries, starting with the highest-volume trade routes your customers operate.
3️⃣ Bring non-bankers onto your product team to challenge workflows that insiders have normalized for decades.
4️⃣ Give smaller financial institutions a revenue stream tied to open banking adoption instead of pricing them out.
5️⃣ Pitch the outcomes your infrastructure enables, not the technical specs of what you built.
LINKS
Guest:
Ximena Aleman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ximena-aleman-7913439a/
Company:
Prometeo Website: https://prometeoapi.com
Prometeo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prometeo-openbanking
Fintech Confidential:
Podcast: https://fintechconfidential.com/listen
Notifications: https://fintechconfidential.com/access
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fintechconfidential
X: https://x.com/FTconfidential
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SUPPORTERS
Under.io: Streamlines application and underwriting by digitizing PDFs for e-signature. under.io/FTC
Skyflow: A zero-trust data privacy vault delivered as an API covering PCI, CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2, and beyond. skyflowsecure.com
DFNS: Wallets as a service, API first, multi-chain, secured with MPC across 50+ blockchains. fintechconfidential.com/dfns
Hawk AI: Real-time payment screening, AML transaction monitoring, and dynamic customer risk rating. gethawk.com
ABOUT
Guest: Ximena Aleman is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Prometeo. She started her career in journalism before moving into marketing and tech leadership, completing an MBA at Universidad ORT Uruguay. She was named one of the Top 100 Women in FinTech in 2024 and is a World Economic Forum Agenda Contributor.
Company: Prometeo is an open finance infrastructure company providing a single API for cross-border banking, connecting 7,500+ financial institutions across Latin America and the US. The company is backed by PayPal Ventures, Samsung Next, and Antler.
Host: Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and host of Fintech Confidential. The show is produced by DD3 Media, delivering entertaining and informative content focused on the people, tech, and companies changing how you pay and get paid.
DD3 Media is a multimedia and marketing agency founded by Tedd Huff specializing in content creation and production for the fintech and payments industry. As the production company behind Fintech Confidential, DD3 Media produces podcasts, live streams, video content, and onsite events for global audiences.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Episode Highlights
00:54 Welcome to Fintech Confidential
01:03 Dfns: Wallets as a Service (sponsor)
02:25 Meet ProMateo Founder
04:39 Outsiders Spot the Gap
06:38 Infrastructure Before Open Banking
10:21 Borderless Banking Explained
16:21 Why US Banking Feels Messy
18:56 Standardizing Fragmented Systems
20:42 Agentic Banking Kickoff
23:34 Limiting Agent Liability
24:49 Compliance and B2B Accountability
27:32 Monitoring Agents Like Card Rails
30:07 Sky Flow: Building Fast and Secure (sponsor)
30:30 Skyflow Privacy Vault
31:10 AI Bookends And Middle
32:01 US Credibility Milestones
33:06 Account Verification Playbook
35:56 FDATA Advocacy Meets Sales
39:51 Crystal Ball Agentic Payments
41:39 Open Banking Pricing Debate
48:44 LatAm Vs US Open Finance
51:27 Strategic Investors And Trust
53:42 Women In Fintech Funding Gap
55:36 Founder Advice And Farewell
57:43 Show Wrap And Sponsor Reads
58:29 Hawk AI - Realtime Fraud Monitoring (sponsor)
59:15 Disclaimer
This has been a production of DD3 Media with all rights reserved. This content is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
© DD3 Media. All Rights Reserved.
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