One of our cases · regulated payments
From 21 people to 5, on a live regulated payments platform.
Cross-border payments and FX, Europe to Latin America. Several banking rails, identity verification, transaction monitoring, customer support in three languages, reporting to regulated partners in five jurisdictions. Not a demo.
May 2026
Twenty-one people: twelve in technology, four in customer support, one in design, a director, a compliance lead, a board seat and one role in transition. Offices in Barcelona, Buenos Aires and Lima. A vendor stack sized for the team rather than for the work.
Monthly operating cost, comparable categories
| May 2026 · 21 people | Sept 2026 · 5 people + agents | |
|---|---|---|
| Models and agent seats | — | USD 6,723 |
| Banking and technical infrastructure | USD 27,517 | USD 17,621 |
| Identity verification stack | USD 13,051 | USD 0 · replaced |
| Offices in three cities | USD 3,571 | USD 0 |
| People: operating team and licensed roles | USD 52,497 | USD 10,245 |
| Total, comparable categories | USD 96,636 | USD 34,589 |
−64.2% on comparable categories. The full May base, including minor vendors, telephony and a local payment rail, was USD 106,346 (−67.5%). Removing pass-through rail costs from both sides, which the customer pays either way, the reduction is 76%. All figures are internal management figures.
Three things to notice, because they are the honest part.
The people line did not go to zero.
Five people remain, and the licensed roles the law assigns to a named person, directors, compliance officer, legal representatives and accountants in each country, cost more per head than before. That is not overhead to cut; it is the perimeter of what can be automated.
The operator's time is a cost and we count it.
During the rebuild it ran at roughly 18 hours a day for 66 days, about 1,200 hours. Most vendors leave that out of the savings slide. We publish the run-phase hours once we have 90 days of them, and we show them under NDA before you sign.
We are not claiming growth.
Volume did not rise because of the migration. What changed is that the business now covers 92% of its cost instead of 46%, and that gap closed from the cost side.
What was done, in order
Inventory of every recurring task: who did it, how often, what it cost.
DevOps first: databases upgraded and migrated, customer balances migrated between banking providers with reconciliation, automated build and deploy pipelines, monitoring and alerting rebuilt.
Rebuild of the platform's operational layer so agents could execute inside it with logging.
Support, document review, reconciliation and reporting moved to agents, one workflow at a time.
Vendor stack re-sized to the new operation: identity verification replaced, infrastructure re-measured, contracts renegotiated.
The human filter defined and staffed: eight roles, roughly USD 10k a month, up from 6.8k.
What did not change
The rails, the regulators, the obligations, the customers. We walk your team through the architecture, the controls and the failures under NDA. We do not name the institutions involved.
Ask for the walkthrough.
Architecture, controls, failure modes and the operator hours, under NDA.