Edgar Valencia

Building Embedded Finance @ BBVA.
Payments × Product × AI.
Exploring how money moves and what comes next.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

I think payments are heading somewhere interesting.

We’ll use them more than ever... and think about them less than ever.

Embedded Finance is already making payments disappear into the experiences where they happen. AI agents could take that much further, discovering, deciding, buying and eventually paying on our behalf.
And that’s where things get really interesting.

Who gives an agent permission to spend?
Who owns the customer relationship?
What happens to cards, bank accounts and payment rails when software starts interacting with money for us?

I work on Embedded Finance, so I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff (probably too much).

Payments, Product, AI and whatever comes next.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@imsaqlain22 @stripe @Meta @Muse Probably both. Set spend limits by default, then ask for approval only if the price, product, or merchant changes. Otherwise, approving every purchase defeats the purpose of an agent.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@stripe and @meta just showed their hand with the new @Muse AI agent, and honestly, every bank PM working in payments needs to pay attention.

Muse can literally browse the web and buy things for you using Stripe Link, generating scoped, single-use virtual cards with strict merchant and budget limits. While big tech is out here building secure VMs so AI agents can shop autonomously, legacy banks are still flagging machine-speed checkouts as basic card-testing fraud.

If banks don't upgrade Open Banking to issue programmable, context-bound tokens natively from the core, they are basically volunteering to become "dumb pipes" in the agentic economy. We have to stop relying on SMS codes or we're going to block our own customers from using the next generation of internet tools.

The future of finance isn't human-to-machine. It is machine-to-machine, and it runs on trusted identity.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@yevloop Exactly. APIs are just the plumbing. The real value is making finance a seamless part of the job rather than a separate destination.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

A lot of traditional players still think "B2B embedded finance" is just a new sales channel for their legacy banking products.

It’s not. It’s a completely different product architecture.

In reality, embedded finance is almost always B2B2B. As a bank, we provide the heavy API infrastructure, compliance, and ledger to a software platform (like an ERP or vertical SaaS). They own the user experience, and they offer the financial tools to their business users directly inside their workflow.

If you try to force the end-user to leave their software and log into a separate bank portal, you've missed the entire point of embedded finance.

The platforms have the daily workflow data. We have the balance sheet and the compliance stack. When you combine them through Open Finance APIs, that's where the magic happens. Payments are cool, but using that open data for instant working capital and embedded lending? That's the actual goldmine right now.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

AI is completely changing how we build products, and honestly, traditional banking needs to take notes.

@sachinrekhi recently pointed out that product teams are ditching multi-year planning for 6-month roadmaps and swapping heavy specs for AI prototypes. In the Open Finance space, this is exactly what we need. Writing a 50-page spec for a new API integration is a massive bottleneck. We should be using AI to rapidly prototype data flows, get them in front of our partners, and iterate on the fly.

We all know those "agile fintechs" out there are already doing this. If we want to truly evolve embedded finance, we have to start shipping like hackers, not bureaucrats.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

The tech industry loves hiring "rockstars" but we suck at filtering out the toxic ones. HBR just suggested the ultimate PM interview question: "Tell me about a time a teammate disagreed with you and they turned out to be right."

If they can't answer this without getting defensive or giving a humble-brag, do not hire them.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

Open banking nerds love to hype up 'Bank on File' and VRPs (myself included). Instant settlement, no card fees, great UX. But let's be real: until traditional banks make it dead simple for consumers to manage and cancel these mandates inside their own banking apps, people will still prefer the safety net of credit card chargebacks. UX is everything.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

The Economist warned that giving AI rights could make humans second-class citizens. But let's take it a step further, imagine the lobbying power of an AI CEO that doesn't sleep, reads every legal code in seconds, and has full corporate personhood. The battle won't be fought with terminators, it’ll be fought in the courts. We need to define "human-only" rights today.

[Shaday @s0padeShaday]

Cuando vean personas en la calle caminando vendiendo plantitas, dulces, pulseritas… y está en sus posibilidades: cómprenles. La situación no está fea, está ulerísima, y ellos tmbn están tratando de sobrevivir a la desigualdad.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@s0padeShaday Que chido tener esos taquitos en casa

[Ben Kim @benkimbuilds]

everyone is talking about this codex micro hardware but you have a $75 option that gives you infinitely more control over your computer + dictation

- x to start / end dictation
- o to send
- triangle to clear
- square to paste

- r1/l1 triggers change tabs (or codex/claude/cursor chats)
- r2/l2 triggers change screen focus on mac
- left dpad changes monitor display focus
- joysticks work as scroll

- i have a bunch more commands for my ghostty config but i rarely use cli anymore

lots of people come up to me asking what i play on ps5 but i don't own a ps5. the controller + dji mic has been unbeatable. video coming soon

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@PawelHuryn From a LATAM infra perspective, “enterprise” is less about models and more about integration, compliance, and reliability.
That’s where the real moat is built.

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@s0padeShaday Es tuya?

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@s0padeShaday Conejo Lunar

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@s0padeShaday Los puestos de papas eran muy buenos

[Salomondrin 🤖 @salomondrin]

@saylor I love you and your small hands

[CFB Memes @CFBMemes]

Kansas City Chiefs MVP:

[Edgar Valencia @edgarvalencia]

@s0padeShaday Ya estamos viejitos