Company: Vangwe

Founders: Agustín Guerra / Mateo Suburu / Martín Santini / Lucas Suburu

Headquarters: Montevideo, Uruguay

Most Recent Valuation: Undisclosed

Employees: 36

Founded: 2020

In One Sentence: “We help fintech startups and enterprises build and scale secure payment platforms through software development and consulting.”

Top Quote: “We don’t learn payments on our clients’ products: We bring proven knowledge from day one.”

Who are you building your product/service for, and what painful problem are you taking away from their day?

Building payment products is complex and highly regulated, and requires specialized expertise that most teams don’t have in-house. We work with fintech startups, enterprises, and payment platforms to remove that burden. Through a combination of software development and payments consulting, we help teams design, build, and scale payment systems, bringing hands-on experience from having done it before, without the need to hire, train, or divert internal teams.

If a top-tier VC is reading this, what would you want them to understand about your company in 30 seconds?

Vangwe is a fintech-focused software development and payments consulting company built by people who have spent +10 years working inside payment and financial platforms. We specialize in complex, regulated payment systems, an area where experience matters and generalist teams struggle.

With over 100 fintech and payment projects delivered by senior engineers, we help companies build critical financial infrastructure without having to develop that expertise in-house. We’re not a general software vendor, we’re a long-term payments partner trusted by fintechs operating at scale.

What are you doing differently than your competitors?

Many software development firms work with fintech companies, but most are generalist teams. Payments are complex and highly regulated, and real expertise only comes from experience.

What makes us different is our team: senior engineers with over 10 years of hands-on experience working in payments and more than 100 fintech and payment projects successfully delivered that back our experience. We don’t learn payments on our clients’ products: we bring proven knowledge from day one, reducing risk, accelerating delivery and enabling better technical decisions.

How did you meet, and why have you partnered with each other on this business?

We’ve known each other for most of our lives. We went to school together and later followed different professional paths, each gaining experience in fintech, payments, and software development.

After working separately for some years, we came back together with a shared understanding of the industry and a strong trust built over time, which made partnering on this business a natural decision.

What was the “this has to exist” moment that made you start the company?

The moment came from firsthand experience. While working in fintech and payments, the founders repeatedly saw companies struggling to build critical payment products with generalist software vendors who didn’t understand regulation, payment flows or real operational constraints.

Fintech teams were forced to either educate their vendors or compromise on quality and speed. We realized there was a clear gap: fintech companies needed a technology partner that truly understood payments. Vangwe was created to fill that gap, combining deep payments knowledge with strong engineering execution.

How do you make money? Which part of your business model are you most excited about scaling?

We generate revenue through consulting and engineering engagements. Advisory is typically fixed-scope and fixed-price, and delivery is usually time and materials with dedicated teams. What we’re most excited to scale is the end-to-end model: helping teams make the early product and architecture decisions, then executing with the same team through UX and full-stack build. It’s the highest trust, highest impact work, and it leads to longer, healthier client relationships.

Which proof points matter most right now?

Right now, the proof points that matter most are repeatable outcomes: long-term client retention, expansion within existing accounts, and clear delivery performance (speed to go-live, successful migrations, and stable production rollouts). We also care about referenceability: senior stakeholders willing to introduce us internally or to peers. For our next stage, a strong pipeline of US and UK projects in payments and wealthtech is the signal that our positioning is landing.

How does your product/service make the world a better place?

We care about building financial systems that work for real people. When payments or investment platforms fail, the impact is very real: people lose access, trust, or opportunities to manage and grow their money.

By helping fintech and wealth platforms build secure and compliant products (and by sharing the experience behind how these systems should work) we help make financial services more reliable and accessible. Over time, this means more people can safely use digital payments and access investing tools that were previously out of reach.

What’s been your biggest unexpected challenge so far, and what did it force you to learn quickly?

The biggest surprise was how much success depends on communication and changes of scope, not just engineering quality. Fintech projects involve many stakeholders, shifting priorities, and hidden constraints. That forced us to mature quickly on discovery, scope definition, documentation, and stakeholder alignment. We learned to be proactive about assumptions and trade-offs, and to build a delivery process that stays transparent even when timelines or requirements move.

What does success look like in 12 months? What about in 5 years?

In 12 months, success looks like solidifying our fintech advisory offering and growing our presence in the US through a few long-term, high-impact client engagements in payments and wealthtech.

In 5 years, we want Vangwe to be the go to fintech partner for building and upgrading payments and wealth platforms. A team that’s strong and stable, a track record of delivery in production, and most new work coming from referrals and repeat clients.

What type of partner or collaborator would most accelerate your journey right now? (If relevant, which roles are you hiring for?)

Partners who sit close to our buyers: fintech operators, product leaders, and ecosystem partners who see builds coming early. That includes payments infrastructure providers, core banking and wealth platforms, and trusted advisory firms that want an execution partner they can rely on. We also like collaborators who can co-sell into complex programs where strategy and delivery need to stay tightly connected.

Finish this sentence: “We’ll know we’ve really made it when…”

…fintech teams default to Vangwe for their most important payments and wealthtech work, because they trust us to help make the right calls and deliver in production. When our best growth channel is client referrals and inbound, and when we’re consistently brought in not just to build, but to shape the roadmap and guide long-term platform evolution.”

Website: www.vangwe.com

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