Payment data you cannot trust
Settlement, funding, and reconciliation issues often look like reporting problems. Usually, they are source-of-truth problems hiding inside the payment lifecycle.
When running payments gets too complex.
I help payments, fintech, hardware, and software-platform teams redesign the operating systems behind delivery — across transaction flow, integrations, settlement, underwriting, and the people across product, engineering, and infrastructure who run them.
Over 30 years building business-critical systems across payments, ERP, mobile field operations, payment hardware, gateways, settlement, underwriting, cloud platforms, partner enablement, and AI-assisted delivery.
I find and fix the root cause.
From fragmented delivery
- Sales-to-delivery handoffs
- Product & engineering
- Integrations, gateways & processors
- Settlement & reporting
- Risk, underwriting & support
- Platform & IT infrastructure
FindFix
To a system you can run and scale
Aligned delivery model
Decisions tied to real constraints
Reporting and data you can trust
Reusable platform capability
Teams operating from the same map
Repeatable execution
CLARITY FIRST. EXECUTION NEXT. CONTINUITY WHEN NEEDED.
Where payment delivery breaks
When complexity starts running the company
Payment delivery rarely breaks in one place. It breaks across the handoffs between product, engineering, sales, implementation, operations, data, integrations, and exceptions.
Integrations that take too long
A payment API only creates value when merchants and partners can adopt it. If product and engineering keep solving every integration as custom work, the platform is not really scaling.
Sales promises becoming delivery risk
In complex payments, delivery risk starts when sales, product, and engineering are not working from the same understanding of what the platform can actually deliver.
Exceptions becoming the process
When underwriting, onboarding, or support depends on queues, spreadsheets, and individual judgment, the company loses consistency, visibility, and control.
How I work
Practical, direct, and working alongside your team.
I work by getting close to how delivery actually happens: where the work moves, where it gets stuck, who owns the next decision, and what the team needs in order to keep moving.
Start with how work actually moves by looking at transactions, handoffs, exceptions, approvals, reporting, and customer impact before assuming the visible problem is the real one.
Separate platform capability from one-off work by helping teams identify what should become reusable capability and what should remain customer-specific.
Make ownership visible because complex delivery breaks when no one can see who owns the next decision, handoff, exception, or escalation.
Deliver tools and implement processes by leaving clear maps, standards, checklists, priorities, and review habits the team can keep using after the work is done.
Stay close to execution because a roadmap only matters if it survives contact with product, engineering, sales, operations, risk, support, and customers.
Services
Outcome-based engagements, not open-ended consulting.
I structure engagements around clear findings, practical fixes, and tools your team can keep using after I leave.
Payments Delivery Diagnostic
I trace how transactions, integrations, processor dependencies, settlement, reporting, and support escalations actually move through the business, then turn the findings into practical outputs your team can use.
Example outputs
- Delivery friction points
- Payment lifecycle map
- Processor and integration dependencies
- Reporting and visibility gaps
Roadmap Execution Support
I help leadership and delivery teams decide what to fix first, who owns it, and how progress will be measured.
Example outputs
- First-priority fixes
- Roadmap sequencing
- Decision and ownership map
- Delivery review cadence
Sales Engineering Enablement
I help sales, product, implementation, and engineering teams understand what a payment solution actually requires before it is promised to a customer.
Example outputs
- Discovery checklist
- Scoping model
- Payment flow training
- Technical objection guide
Operating Model Implementation
I help clarify who owns what, where work gets handed off, and how issues move from sales through implementation, support, risk, operations, product, and engineering.
Example outputs
- Ownership map
- Handoff map
- Escalation path
- Feedback loops between teams
Engagement path
Start with clarity. Stay through execution.
Most engagements begin with a focused diagnostic because payment delivery problems rarely break in only one place. I map the real flow, identify the constraint, and define the practical path forward. From there, I can help your team execute the roadmap, strengthen the operating model, enable the people responsible for delivery, and sustain the change as the business scales.
Diagnose
Map the payment delivery system, surface the hidden handoffs, and identify the real constraint.
Blueprint
Define the roadmap, source-of-truth model, observability gaps, implementation standards, and operating priorities.
Execute
I help your team turn the roadmap into working change, focusing first on the fixes that reduce rework, delays, and recurring escalations.
Enable
Equip sales, product, implementation, support, and engineering teams to scope, communicate, and operate from the same delivery model.
Sustain
Provide advisory continuity, operating reviews, and leadership guidance as the roadmap matures and new constraints appear.
Selected transformations
Built inside real operating environments, not from theory.
These are examples of work done inside real companies, not case studies from outside consulting projects. In each situation, payment flows, data problems, team handoffs, customer needs, and deadlines had to be handled at the same time. The pattern was consistent: understand what was breaking, simplify how the work moved, and leave the team with a system or process that was clearer and easier to run.
Helped build a full-stack payments platform with orchestration capabilities
Helped architect, lead, and build a full-stack payments platform for complex merchants and software partners that needed one integration layer for cards, ACH/eCheck, alternative payment methods, fraud screening, 3DS, tokenization, routing, webhooks, reporting, chargebacks, and settlement visibility. The platform connected global payment capabilities across many countries, currencies, gateways, and processors without forcing each merchant or partner to manage that complexity on their own.
- Payment orchestration
- global payments
- platform strategy
Built the integration and developer experience function behind a complex payments platform
Created and led the integrations team and the developer experience work that helped merchants, software partners, and internal teams turn a complex payments platform into something customers could actually implement. The work replaced ad hoc technical support with a repeatable adoption model: integration documentation, test environments, sample code, certification, production onboarding, and go-live support. It became the bridge between platform capability and real customer usage.
- API adoption
- developer experience
- partner enablement
Rebuilt a fragile settlement and reporting foundation
Led a tightly time-constrained effort to rebuild a settlement and reporting process that the business could no longer rely on. The work went back to the raw funding and settlement data, used processor-file integrity checks, and rebuilt the lifecycle around the actual source of truth. It replaced a large amount of inherited logic and manual repair work with a cleaner process that made reconciliation accurate, repeatable, and easier to operate.
- Settlement
- reporting
- reconciliation
- source of truth
Turned merchant underwriting into structured decisioning
Led the product and engineering work that turned merchant underwriting from a mostly manual review process into the first versions of a structured decisioning system. The work translated bank-specific underwriting rules, exceptions, and risk signals into clearer categories the business could review, explain, and improve. It changed underwriting from a queue of judgment calls into a foundation for faster, more consistent merchant onboarding.
- Underwriting
- risk
- automation
- auditability
Helped mature the operating functions a payments platform needed to scale
Helped create, formalize, or mature key functions around integrations, technology, product management, sales engineering, and data engineering as the platform and company grew. Some functions were new; others already existed but needed clearer ownership, better handoffs, and more consistent ways of working. That work helped the company move away from one-off requests and reactive direction toward a more scalable operating model.
- Operating model
- product discipline
- sales engineering
Promoted AI-assisted engineering with real guardrails
Promoted the use of AI-assisted software engineering inside a payments data engineering environment, pairing modern coding agents, LLMs, and developer tools with clear rules, developer review, and normal pull request discipline. The work helped the data engineering team deliver a volume and complexity of work that would normally require a significantly larger team, while keeping production accountability in place.
- AI delivery
- data engineering
- production discipline
Operating range
Where Guillermo has operated
The systems, teams, and operating functions Guillermo has built and led across complex payments.
30+ years
Building and leading business-critical systems, teams, and operating functions
Payments platforms
Leading platform, integration, routing, orchestration, and settlement-visibility work
Operating functions
Building and maturing integrations, product, technology, enablement, and data teams
Risk and trust
Shaping systems and workflows that improved underwriting, PCI readiness, certification, fraud controls, and auditability
Partner delivery
Working with banks, gateways, processors, software partners, and enterprise customers
AI-assisted delivery
Promoting modern engineering tools with review discipline and production accountability
About
Executive operating experience across payments delivery systems.
Over 30 years of walking into complex, fragile, politically tangled business systems and turning them into working platforms, workflows, teams, data pipelines, integrations, and operating models.
Perspective
Where AI is taking payments delivery — and where it isn't.
AI-assisted development is already changing how product, design, and engineering teams work. The creative judgment still belongs to people — what's changed is speed: teams can iterate faster and turn an idea into something tangible far sooner. In payments, that applies directly to integrations, settlement and reconciliation logic, underwriting rules, and reporting — work that can now be drafted and revised in a fraction of the time.
Engineers feel it most: the job is shifting from writing every line to directing, curating, and validating what AI produces. But throughput cuts both ways — without a real understanding of what the system is supposed to do, AI just generates more code, faster, and most of it is noise. The leverage only pays off when someone genuinely understands the payment flows underneath it. That discipline — speed with ownership and review — is what I bring to AI adoption.
Founder conviction
I fund the same discipline I recommend.
Through Gleaning Capital LLC, I personally fund long-term development and live-environment testing of automated, data-driven systems. The work is a practical proving ground for disciplined automation, risk-aware decision logic, AI-assisted development with modern coding agents and LLM workflows, and continuous learning under real consequences — the same production discipline I introduced in payments data engineering environments.
This is not an investment pitch or a performance claim. It is simply a live example of the discipline I believe in: putting my own capital, engineering practice, and AI-assisted delivery methods to work under real consequences.
Next step
Let's talk about what is getting in the way.
If payment delivery feels harder than it should, get in touch. Share the problem you are seeing, what you have already tried, and where your team needs help next.