Joao Del Valle (EBANX) on The Future of Payments and Why Being Global by Default Is EBANX’s Biggest Moat

May 20, 2025

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Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

This week, I sit down with João Del Valle, co-founder and CEO of EBANX—one of Latin America’s most iconic fintech stories and a company that built one of the most expansive cross-border payment platforms in the world.

Founded in Curitiba—well outside Brazil’s traditional tech hub of São Paulo—EBANX was built for scale from day one. Its global-by-design approach quickly became a powerful competitive moat, allowing the company to expand into 29 countries, process billions in cross-border payments, and power transactions for global giants like Spotify and AliExpress.

In this episode, we talk about what it really takes to scale global infrastructure from Latin America, why complexity is a competitive advantage, and how João evolved from founder and CTO to CEO of a company backed by Advent International in one of their largest-ever tech deals.

Here’s what we cover:

• How embracing regulatory and payment complexity became core to EBANX’s GTM playbook

• What 2022–2023 taught João about discipline, cold-blooded decision-making, and founder-mode leadership

• How João leads distributed teams across the U.S., China, and Latin America

• What it means to scale sustainably without blitzscaling—and still attract a firm like Advent International

• How João thinks about long-term planning, investor alignment, and the path to liquidity

• Tactical insight on navigating cross-border regulation, local payment rails, and real-time systems like Pix and UPI

For global operators, fintech builders, and investors looking for real lessons in execution—this episode is packed with insight.