Careers in fintech are often defined by what systems allow, rather than what founders set out to build. Work that begins with consumer products can quickly become about payments rails, licensing and the practical limits set by regulation.
In this week’s In Profile, Cumbuca co-founder and CEO Daniel Ruhman talks about his route into fintech, his experience operating in Brazil’s payments market, and how infrastructure and regulation affect day-to-day decisions for fintech companies.
Tell us more about your company and its purpose
Cumbuca helps financial services companies operate in Brazil without spending years obtaining their own payments licence or handing over control to restrictive third-party providers.
Basically, we act as a proxy into Brazil’s regulated ecosystem. Companies use our licence to connect directly to infrastructure such as Pix and open finance, but they still build and own their own systems. We handle the regulatory and compliance side of things; their tech, their data, and their operational decisions stay with them.
We built it because companies shouldn’t have to choose between speed and control. Right now, that trade-off exists, and we’re removing it.
What are some of your recent achievements you’d like to highlight?
One highlight this year was our contribution to the Pix Anniversary Report, launched with W Fintechs to mark five years since Pix started. It was fascinating to step back and look at how something that began as a new payment method has become part of Brazil’s core financial infrastructure.
The report digs into adoption numbers, system design, and why other countries are starting to pay attention to Brazil’s open finance approach. It’s a great reminder of how far the ecosystem has come and how much local expertise has developed around real-time payments and regulatory infrastructure.
For us, a lot of the work this year has been about building quietly but steadily; ensuring the platform is reliable, keeping it aligned with evolving regulations, and helping international teams get up to speed on Pix and open finance. It’s not flashy work, but it’s the kind of foundation that lets everything else run smoothly, and it’s what allows us to support new entrants without them getting stuck on infrastructure or compliance issues.
Beyond those already mentioned, it’s worth noting that we successfully pivoted the business and reached profitability, hitting breakeven within just three months. Furthermore, we successfully brought the operations of India’s largest payment orchestrator to Brazil, and we will be releasing a formal case study on that partnership shortly.
Finally, we recently presented our unique operating model to the Central Bank of Brazil (BACEN), where it was exceptionally well-received.
How did you get into the fintech industry?
I’ve been building things on the internet for as long as I can remember. I released my first iPhone app at fourteen and was pretty much hooked on software from there.
Fintech came later, mostly through the products we were building. Once you start working on anything involving money movement, you quickly realise the end-user experience is shaped far more by infrastructure and regulation than the application itself.
Over time, I became more interested in the underlying layer than in the apps sitting on top, which eventually led to Cumbuca.
What’s the best thing about working in the fintech industry?
The scale of impact.
When infrastructure improves, the effects are immediate and visible. Systems like Pix changed how millions of people and businesses move money in a pretty short timeframe. Being close to that kind of change is rare.
What frustrates you most about the fintech industry?
Probably incentives that reward slowness.
In complex financial systems, the primary reason delays exist is because someone somewhere is benefiting from money being in transit. Once you’ve seen instant settlement work at scale, it’s obvious that most of that friction isn’t technical; it’s structural.
How have your previous roles influenced your career?
Everything we’ve done before feeds directly into how we think about Cumbuca.
We built consumer fintech products and relied heavily on infrastructure providers we didn’t control. When something failed or data wasn’t available, our customers felt it, and there was very little we could do. It’s a frustrating position.
At the same time, we went through the full licensing process ourselves, which showed us how slow, expensive and risky that path is. Cumbuca exists somewhere between those two experiences.
What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made?
Our ‘best mistake’ was definitely launching our first venture, UmHelp. We were a platform for cleaning services – essentially an ‘Uber for cleaners’. While the market opportunity seemed massive on paper, the sector itself was brutal: there was no deep ‘pain point,’ margins were razor-thin, and the model was incredibly capital-intensive.
At the time, our investors warned us it was a tough bet, but they backed us because they believed in us as founders. Had we not started UmHelp, we never would have gone through Y Combinator or eventually built Cumbuca. Those investors stayed with us through numerous pivots, and we felt a deep responsibility to honor their original trust. By maintaining the same cap table, we were able to turn that early struggle into a success, ultimately providing all of them with a profitable exit opportunity.
What has the future got in store for your company?
Cumbuca is focused on continuing to make it easier for companies to operate in Brazil whilst staying fully aligned with regulation. There are still loads of international firms that want to build there but struggle with the time and complexity involved in obtaining a licence.
We’re also expanding our support around Open Finance and payment initiation, because those systems are evolving quickly and keeping up with them requires constant work.
What are the next key talking points or challenges for your industry as a whole?
One of the biggest shifts happening is that fintech markets – particularly in Brazil – are maturing. Regulation is tightening, capital requirements are higher, and operating sustainably is becoming more important than just moving fast. That’ll likely drive consolidation, but it’s also a sign the ecosystem’s becoming more stable.
At the same time, the margins in payments will keep shrinking because instant payment systems change the economics of moving money, and over time, payments will look more like a utility. The real value will increasingly be in what surrounds the transaction, not the transaction itself.
I also think we’re getting to the point where AI and payments start intersecting in a meaningful way. As systems move from assisting users to acting on their behalf, an open and programmable payment infrastructure becomes essential. Markets that already have those foundations will likely move first.
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