open-finance
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Juan Luis Pérez Escobar Is Connecting Latin America’s Payment Islands
A lawyer from Montería spent years learning how rules and businesses fit together. Now he is building the connective tissue that lets money move between banks, businesses, and borders in real time.
Jose Bethancourt
Jose Bethancourt is the co-founder and CEO of Method Financial, an API platform that lets fintechs and lenders connect to and manage consumers' liability accounts - credit cards, student loans, auto loans and mortgages - using only a phone number. Raised near the Texas-Mexico border in one of the poorest counties in the U.S., he studied computer science and business at UT Austin, co-founded the student-loan startup GradJoy through Y Combinator's Summer 2019 batch, then pivoted the team's account-connectivity frustrations into Method in 2021. Method now serves more than 80 fintech clients including SoFi, Robinhood and Credit Karma, has processed over $500 million in payments, and raised a $41.5M Series B in January 2025 led by Emergence Capital. Bethancourt was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Finance list in 2026.
Shmulik Fishman
Shmulik Fishman is the founder and CEO of Argyle, a New York fintech that turns messy workforce and payroll data into a single consumer-permissioned API used by 300+ clients including Mastercard, SoFi, and LendingClub. A Hampshire College philosophy major turned operator, he co-founded the fleet-software company Stratim (acquired by KAR Global) before starting Argyle in 2018. He has raised roughly $100M+ and leads with a transparency-first, inbox-zero, early-morning style.