Inside LATAM’s Fintech Boom: Investing, Wealthtech, and Nearshoring with Agustín Guerra

Foreign. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm Brian Sampson, your host and if you're interested in fintech near shoring how the whole intersection collides, this is going to be the episode for you. We have Augustine Guerra from Vangui, a really interesting company that is in the fintech ecosystem. Before we say hello to Augustine, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, Plugg Tech, a great way to connect talent from all over Latin America with U.S. companies. Augustine, so great to have you.

Thank you very much, Brian. It's a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me today.

Absolutely. Augustine, where are you dialing in from?

Right now I'm back home in Montevideo, Uruguay. Came back for the holidays to visit family. But usually I'm based out of a combination of London at the Netherlands, coming back and forth.

Yeah, that's an interesting place to start in itself. You know, there's not a lot of people that are going back and forth and in those countries. How did that happen for you?

It's a very long story. I first left Uruguay 10 years ago. I was fresh, I was still in college actually, actually. And I started, I landed this job in the local which is a Uruguay based cross border payments platform. And basically what happened is after working there for a year, they were opening an office in China, in Shanghai, China. And they were looking for a couple of young people willing to go and try. And I said yes, why not? That's a bit of my attitude with everything in life. Yes, why not? Ten years ago I moved to China working for the local and there are a couple of years when you live abroad for the first time, that opens your mind, right? The whole world opens for you. I spent a couple of years there in total in the local. I was for about four years covering different areas and then after spending a couple of years in China, I wanted to change the scene a bit and I moved to Germany. I spent in Germany a couple of years, I spent another year in Poland. And then it was when being a digital normal became, started to become trendy. I spent a couple of years traveling around while I was, we were building Vangui and then at some point I needed to settle down. It was too much traveling. I was getting older, so that's, I was looking for a place to do it and London was the first, the place that I chose the first. And then I just started to, to be around London and the Netherlands.

Yeah, well, I have a lot of questions but I think, you know, for those that are familiar with Latin America, you know, familiar especially with countries like Uruguay, Argentina, you know, there's a lot of European influence. So it's one thing to, you know, I think, go. Go back and forth to a country like Germany where there's some German influence or Spain, Italy, but China is a whole other world. Tell us just about, like, the culture clash and maybe also there's similarities that maybe we're not thinking about, you know, and people are people, you know, what was that like? As someone from Uruguay in Shanghai, I.

Still have this very clear memory. The first time I went there, I actually went for a couple of weeks for one project. This was before the decision was made to move there. They have this very clear picture of me leaving the hotel lobby for the first time. I went to Guangzhou, which is in the south, for these first two weeks. I have this very clear memory of where am I? Everything is very, very different. Food, culture, people, how business made. It was the first time not leaving the country, but the first time doing something meaningful outside of the country besides just traveling. So there was a cultural shock with everything. Food, people, transportation, the language as well, especially Chinese. A place where English is not that common. It's a place where you really need to learn at least the basics of Mandarin to get around. So, yes, it was not that easy. But I mean, it's part of the process, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, starting with architecture. You know, Montevideo has these kind of like beautiful, traditional, you know, buildings. From my. My memory, correct me if I'm wrong, but not a lot of like giant skyscrapers, you know. Yeah, yeah. And then you go there. Yeah, yes.

Uruguay has a lot of influence, mainly from Spain and Italy. The people come from Spain and Italy. Italy. And then the architecture is mainly Spanish, so we don't have a single skyscraper in the country. Yeah, we have a couple of what we consider tall buildings, but they are not really. So, yes, the architecture is very European. Imagine Paris or Madrid. Also, Buenos Aires is very similar. So I know that a lot of people have been to Buenos Aires, but not Montevideo. It's a less popular place. So imagine a smaller version of Buenos Aires when it comes to architecture.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And then even Buenos Aires, you know, one of the oldest subway systems and, you know, rail systems. And then you step into a place like China where it seems like everything was built yesterday, you know, like robots and, you know, super high speed and infrastructure.

Were your.

What were some of your first impressions?

So many things coming from a country, Uruguay, where we don't have a subway system, our transportation, it works, but it's not the most modern everything works in China. When it comes to infrastructure, it's very, very well done. It's very well planned as well also when it comes. Now, speaking about fintech, when I went there for the first time, they have been already using digital wallets for a very long time. And back in 2018, when this was happening, it was not popular in the rest of the world. So it was a paradigm change. How they pay, how they move money around, they were already not using cash almost. It was a cashless society, staying with their phones. Yeah, it was a big change.

Yeah, I definitely want to get into the fintech in a second, but, you know, I often think of like Steve Jobs, you know, who, when you think about like topography, like typography and, you know, he took all these interesting classes and they all came together. And for a fintech founder like yourself, you know, who's had exposure to Asia, Europe, how did, how did all that maybe shape your, your perspective and vision as a founder?

Massively. The fact when you expose yourself to different cultures, different people, you learn how they think, you learn how they like to do things, you learn how comfortable they are doing certain things. So then when you're on the other end, when you're trying to approach them, when you're trying to work with them, it changes a lot if you understand them. So that's something I'm very thankful for, actually, that I had the opportunity to go very young across Asia, Europe, South America, North America. And it's a lot of personal growth, but that also is applied to the professional life.

Yeah. You know, and something you said, just like everything works. And a lot of our listeners have been to Argentina, some have been to Uruguay. I was very impressed with Uruguay and it felt like, wow, this is like the Switzerland of Latin America. You know, the banks work, everything works. Meanwhile, you have these two, you know, loud, crazy neighbors in Brazil and Argentina. And there's always like a crisis, you know, every moment. And, you know, I'm curious how, you know, maybe somebody from Argentina where you're just kind of used to stuff being in chaos, it's almost normal. And then you have, you know, obviously Uruguay is, is much more stable. And then you have a place like China where like, it's just the expectation that things work. Can you talk about that a little bit more? And, you know, I'm not picking on Uruguay, but maybe it's, it's, it's neighbors that I'm picking on. No, no, yeah, if you could talk about that.

Absolutely. Actually, most of us will see it as A blessing, not as a curse. We have this joke among Uruguayans that live abroad, whenever you come back home, once a year, once every two years, the joke is, how is everything exactly the same as it was when I left. Because it's true, I've been. I've been living abroad for the last 10 years and not much change every time I come back. I don't have to adapt. Things are in the same place. Everything is in the same place. So we should receive it as a blessing, stability. Especially nowadays where things are changing in not so good ways in a lot of places. We are very happy with where we are. We have very stable governments. They change, but they are all stable. Very stable economy. Maybe it's not the fastest growing one, but it's stable, doesn't go down. And then also you mentioned about banks, complete financial freedom, you can do business from here. That's why a lot of companies like ours and companies from abroad, they come to Uruguay to invest here. Why? Because we have good relationships with everyone. That's part of this being the Switzerland of South America. We are in good stamina with everyone and it's a very fair playing field. If you can, you can do business. And yeah, it's going to be. It's going to go very well.

Yeah, I love that about Uruguay. You know, as someone who started a business in Argentina and you know, my attorney at the time was, his expression was always like, you know, can we, you know, could we do this, Mariano? Can we figure this out? And his response is like, by the grace of God. And the whole time I'm like, man, I should have started in Uruguay. Because it's like predictable black and white. You know, the rules are clear where Argentina was by the grace of God. So. But anyway, you tell us more about the fintech world, the ecosystem that you see in Latin America and abroad.

Yeah, So I believe that right now in Latin America, we already are passed through the stage of early disruption, meaning over the last maybe 10 years, the first players in the market came and they built the rails, they built the core. And nowadays we're actually seeing also a lot of our clients, we are actually seeing fintechs that are building on top of other fintechs. So this second layer of fintechs, where the core plumbing is already done, the rails are there, and now it leaves a lot more space to differentiation and innovation. Why? Because the effort that now you need to launch a new product is slower because you can already use the leverage of the first fintechs that were around. So I do believe that in Latin America now we're on this stage where fintechs are being built on top of fintechs and they are trying to show something different or bring something new.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting point because that first level of fintechs was really disrupting things that traditional banks did. Fairly mediocre. Do you see the second generation of fintechs disrupting what the first generation did or building on top of that? How might you see that?

I see it building on top of that. I see the new fintechs using what the first fintext created, which is very useful, we need it to. But the new fintechs are coming to build on top of that, meaning that both are equally as valid. The rails are needed to do the basic things, but now the new fintechs are bringing new products to the general public.

Interesting. Tell me more about the Latin America consumer of some of these products. You know, what are they expecting? What are they looking for?

That's a very good question. So not so long ago we were cash societies and there has been a lot of disruption with the first layer of fintechs in order to teach the general public how to do things in a more modern way. So nowadays the thing that I'm seeing the most over the last couple of years with fintechs in Latin America is mostly around investments. Why? Banking is already very popular. Most of the countries are already highly bankerized, so almost everyone has a bank account. There are neobanks that are around that make things slightly easier and they are growing. But I think the thing that I've been seeing the most is when it comes to investments and wealth, tech because for a very long time us Latin Americans, we thought that that was reserved for higher income countries. We thought that we just need to survive and save a couple of dollars here and there to then take a massive loan, a massive mortgage on a house and spend the rest of our lives paying a mortgage and that's it. That was our finances. But now I'm seeing that there's a lot of new fintechs making it easier to the general public to invest and teaching the public how to invest. Also when the pension systems of our countries they are not so strong so no one really knows what's going to happen in the future. So I think a lot of this disruption and new things I'm seeing around is mostly around investments.

Interesting. You know I think I read a stat the other day that Americans from the States about 50% 50 owners 1 single share of stock, you know, so, and that's just like the first level of public investing, right? Like investing in Microsoft and mutual funds and relatively safe companies. I don't know if I've ever looked into that in Latin America. Or maybe we could talk about Uruguay specifically. What does that look like today? You know that makes sense about the big investment. Was your house your primary residence? What does that look like today is that you know, 10% own a, own a public company, 50%, you know, what does that look like?

It's even much lower than 10%. There are different reasons. The first reason why it has been inaccessible for so long because the barrier of entry was too high. Meaning in order if you wanted to buy any stock in the US market you need to perform an international swift transfer and imagine that you have save $100 per month which is normal here. A lot of people say that or even less then the swift cost of the transfer is going to be almost what you wanted to invest. So the entry barrier was super high and it's still actually quite high. The fintechs nowadays, what they are trying to do is to bring that barrier lower to make it easier to the general public to access and also to teach the general public because people usually are, are quite risk adverse. That's why they took mortgage mortgages on, on, on houses, right? Um, yeah, yeah.

In a way we're kind of talking about like a Robin Hood for Latin America.

Exactly, yeah, yeah.

Interesting. Well tell us more about Vangui. What are you building, what's your vision and how far along?

Yeah, for sure. We co founded the company five years ago. A bit over five years ago I started my career in the local in payments and then I stayed in the fintech industry. We're a team of four co founders and we all come from very similar backgrounds. We got this opportunity, we saw this gap where in Fintech is actually more important to understand the business than the technical part because engineers, there's a lot of engineers everywhere but engineers that understand fintech, not so many. And if you're a company, a fintech company and you need a team of five engineers to build something across a couple of months and you need to hire a company and train those engineers to understand what they are building that's really not efficient. You're going to waste a lot of money and time from your team as well that they need to train them. So we saw this gap in to provide fintech companies with consulting and engineering and development power. And that's our mission. We are a team of around 40 engineers mostly based off of Montevideo Uruguay, but also in Argentina. We are a small market so we, we need to seek talent somewhere else. And our mission is, is to help fintech companies, mostly payments and wealth tech, to be able to scale in an efficient way with engineers that they know what they are doing in the fintech area.

Yeah. Where do you usually come in? Is it like pre mvp, post MVP after it's, you know, in a scaling stage?

Yeah. So we have two type of clients. The first one is pre MVP is basically a couple, three, four co founders that they have an idea, they're trying to raise their money or they already raised the money and they want to build an mvp. It's usually much easier to go to seek help for that, not to have an internal team because the risks associated are super big. So that's one type of client together with the discovery process for them to understand what we are going to build and then we spend some months building it. And then the other one is companies that are scaling up, let's say from 100 to 500 employees and they are actively hiring, but it's not easy to hire and it's not easy to train the people that you hire because whenever you hire that will take time away from your engineers to do the work to teach these people. So in those cases we also come to help and boost the productivity of the engineering team.

Yeah. Are you usually building, are you providing engineers on like a time and materials basis that just understand fintech or you know, you'll give like a fixed bid price, you know, so maybe if there's other fintech founders that are listening, they kind of understand your pricing model.

Yeah. Usually target materials is the most flexible way to approach. It is the way that we prefer to approach and it's usually also the cheaper one for everyone. Why? Because when you're trying to build something from scratch, you really don't know. Even though you go through a discovery process, things change and the market evolves. And then if we come to a fixed price and things change, of course we need to review the scope and that takes time and energy. So the way that we prefer to work is we still do a rough estimation of how much we think it's going to take. So we understand that a group of founders trying to build something, they are not going to say, yeah, let's go without even knowing if it's going to be the scale, the magnitude of how much you are going to spend. So we still do a ballpark estimation for them to know how much roughly this will cost. But then we prefer to Work in a timeless materials scheme. We can work on a fixed price. If it's very concrete and the requirements are very clear, we are doing that and it works. Sometimes, especially when companies are scaling up, they want this very specific thing built and the requirements are very clear. In that case, we can approach it with a fixed price. But in most cases, Thomas and Materials is the best both for our clients and for us as well.

Yeah. Tell us more about the. The client location. Are they mostly in the us? Are they in Latin America? You know what percentages help help us kind of do that, especially with this hot new fintech world in Latin America.

Yeah, yeah. When we started the company, we thought that because of economy, clients in Latin America were not a good fit for us. Why? Because in our heads we thought, well, they can't hire you locally, so why are you going to come to us? But we had come to the realization that that's not the case. They still use our services still. Nowadays it's mostly 40% US, 40%, 35% US, 35% Europe, and then the rest Latin America. So it's a combination of Europe, US When I say Europe is mostly the uk because in Europe, other countries refer people that speak their own language. It's very strange for a German company to hire someone that doesn't speak German or any country. The rest in Europe, it's mostly the uk, the US and then I would say a fifth of our clients come from Latin America.

Got it. Interesting. With the US Market, are you mostly working with New York and San Francisco companies, which is where there's the highest concentration?

Yeah, yeah. It's mostly San Francisco and New York.

That's correct, yeah, yeah. And then the engineers you said are mostly in Montevideo.

Yes, I would say nowadays 80% of our engineers are in Montevideo and the other 20% spread across Argentina. Argentina is very big, so they are spread across the way. Where we keep it this way, first of all, is these time zones. The time zone that we have in Argentina and Uruguay is very, very good to work with. The US we're just one hour away from Miami, a couple of hours away from New York, a couple more hours from the west coast, but still is very manageable. So, yes, our talent comes mainly from Uruguay, also significant part from Argentina.

Yeah, I mean, hiring is so important, you know, to get that right and, you know, especially to properly support your customers. Tell us what you've learned, you know, about hiring and maybe we'll start there and then we can dive deeper into the talent pocket.

Yeah. It has been a journey a lot of learnings over these last five years. Yes, hiring is a very big part of our business because in order to, to provide a good service, we need good engineers. Of course you can still do training. You can, but it's very important to hire the right person. So it has been a bit of trial and error, to be honest, over the last five, five years. What to ask, what not to ask, when to ask it, when to ask for a technical test, when not to ask for a technical test. So it has been a lot of trial and error. But nowadays we, we have a very good hiring team. We have a constant pipeline, so that's also very important. It's not. We don't go to look for someone when we need it for yesterday. We are constantly updating our pipeline with new candidates. We never stop interviewing. So I think that's also something very important because sometimes the client wants to. You meet with the client, everything goes well in two weeks and they say we want to start tomorrow with a team of five people. And if you don't have the bench of five people hiring five people straight away, if you are at zero, it's super difficult. So it's very important to be constantly updating your pipeline with new, strong candidates.

Yeah. What are some of the common technologies or tech stacks that you'd like the candidates you're talking to to have?

Yeah, I would say in Fintech we have seen two technologies as the main ones. When companies that want to start something a bit quicker and a bit more agile is usually anything around JavaScript, TypeScript node, that's something very, very popular. It's the one that we actually prefer if we can choose the technology. Also, in already more established companies, Java is also quite popular. It's very robust. So I would say we have been working with over 50 clients over the last five years. So we have seen a lot of different platforms and a vast majority is divided between JavaScript and Java.

Yeah. Now Uruguay is certainly a great place for talent, but like you said, it's not nearly as big as Brazil and Argentina. How do you think about that as you recruit, you know, in Montevideo and outside.

Yeah, it's a very small market, a very talented and well educated market. Here education is free. So a lot of people, they go to university, they have degrees, they are very smart, but it's a very small market. We're already 3 million people, Argentina is 44 million people. So imagine the size difference. So I think at least our company, we started in Uruguay, but then at one point we realized we want to keep hiring in Uruguay, but we have to hire as well in Argentina to do it both things in parallel because yes, the Italian pocket here in Uruguay is quite small. We are not a big country. So Argentina also is very similar to us when it comes to culturally. So basically for Argentina and Rugans we can sit in the same room and it's like the same. So that, that helps a lot as well.

Yeah, yeah. There's nothing like passing a mate cup around.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

There's no, no, no replacement. How about hardware? You know, I have memories of trying to smuggle, you know, MacBooks and all sorts of hardware into Argentina. What's that like in Uruguay? Do you. Is it easy to get what you need? And maybe you could talk about, about the customs policies there.

Yeah, well, so first of all it's easy to get what you need because the market here is very open. You can import whatever you want, but it's extremely expensive. Mainly two reasons. One of them is taxes. There is a lot of taxes whenever you import something. And also when you're a smaller market and you're importing shots for your country, of course it's more expensive to import a smaller volume of things. So it makes things more expensive. On one hand you can get almost anything you want, but on the other hand everything is quite expensive, especially technology. But yes, there's no really workaround around that. Maybe if you're starting you can fly to the US and bring a couple of computers. That's good. But once you're an established company and you need to buy 3, 4 computers per month, you need to do it the right way and you just need to buy the bullets. There's no way around it.

Yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of my experience is going to be Argentina driven, but I remember credit wasn't really a thing that existed. You know, I couldn't buy 10 laptops on credit. It's all due, you know, right away. How about Uruguay? Is that. Does credit kind of exist? You know, when business to business transactions. Could you get it now and pay in 30 days?

Well, there's a couple of ways you can do it nowadays here we have had installments with credit cards for a very long time. No interest installments. So almost anything that you buy, if you buy with a Uruguayan credit card in a Uruguayan store, you can pay for up to six installments. So that's very handy. And then yes, there are business credit lines that comes from banks but with not the best interest rates, if I have to be honest. So they are not there. Mostly Used as a last resort in case that you usually need something. But the easiest way and the cheapest way to get credit is just using credit cards with installments, which they are interest free.

Yeah, yeah. As we start to wind the showdown a little bit, what are your predictions for 2026, you know, especially on the fintech ecosystem in Latin America, what do you, what do you see coming down the road?

I expect a lot of growth. It's not slowing down. I remember some years ago people were talking that fintech is slowly dying. Now we see the total opposite. It's growing faster and faster and faster. So I expect a lot of growth, I expect a lot of new Latin American fintechs to come around. And also what I expect the most we have seen with Nubank, for example, Latin American fintechs serving other countries, not doing things just for Latin American countries, but for the rest of the world. So I expect more disruption that way.

Yeah. And then last question, we can have a little fun here. I know you don't permanently live in Montevideo, but for those that are listening that maybe have it on their list to visit, what do they need to see? What do they need to experience best times of the year to go be, be the tour guide here for the listeners?

Yes, yes, definitely in summer, please do not come in winter. It's a very great city in winter. We get a bit of sun, but that's it. And it's cold. Remember that we are quite, quite one of the most southern capitals in the world. So it is a subtropical climate. So you need to come in summer if you want warm weather. And I would say La Rambla. La Rambla is the promenade along the sea. We have a beautiful coastline, beautiful beaches going all the way up to the border with Brazil. So if you want to come to Montevideo, just please come in the summer you can get a car. Everything is very close. Those are the benefits of living in a small country. You can drive from corner to corner of the country in four hours. So there's a lot to see, very nice beaches.

Yeah, yeah. I'll always remember, I think I visited. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and my wife and I walked the Rambla and we saw a lot of couples just walking. And you know, I made. It was a fun, fun observation, you know, where like the guy would have one hand around his girlfriend and the other hand around his mate. Thermos.

Yes, yes. We have these, this habit of carrying our mates everywhere, especially the Rambla. Going to the Rambla to drink some mate and have some pastries is yeah, it's a must do, especially on a very nice Sunday.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Augustine, this has been a really fun conversation. Thanks for educating us so much on the Latin America fintech ecosystem. I learned a lot.

Thank you very much, Brian. It was a pleasure. A very nice conversation and yeah, the best to you.

Excellent. Well, this is the Nearshore Cafe podcast. And a podcast today was sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg Tech. Great way to connect talent all over Latin America with growing US Companies. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.