Three years ago I wrote about payments in Latin America with the confidence of someone who had studied the map. Today I have walked most of it, and the view is more nuanced. I bet early on local payment rails over global card networks – that call held up, and working with cross-border clients we have seen local rails lift transaction success rates by up to 40%. The “people first” instinct held up too – users want buttons that work and fees they can see, not clever architecture. My honest regret is timing. I saw the fragmentation across Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia clearly, and I should have made deep localization the center of the strategy from day one instead of growing into it. The plainest thing I ever wrote turned out to be the truest: fintech is about people, tested by real life at 2am. LATAM taught me how to build for real complexity – it was always the starting point for something larger.
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