Regulatory counsel for neobanks and BigTech in Mexico

A stalled authorization is not a legal problem. It is a market you are not in yet.

Most counsel reads the law and manages risk by saying no. We helped write the framework, and we build the file that gets through it. Specialized counsel for institutions that cannot afford unauthorized downtime.

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The clientsThe evidenceThe approachThe mandatesAfter authorization
The problem

Why Big Law Fails at Fintech

01
They speak legal jargon. You speak latency.
They misunderstand your tech stack, so you end up paying by the hour to educate your own counsel.
02
To avoid liability, they block innovation.
We helped write the fintech legal framework, so we know exactly where the boundaries are and how to expand them.
03
A junior learns on your license.
Your multi-million dollar authorization should not be the training ground for someone's first fintech matter.

Clients

WiseRevolutVisaUBSBBVAGoogleMicrosoftAnt InternationalCircleCoinbase
Institutional engagements
The World Bank has engaged us as counsel. We also lobbied the Fintech Law, drafted its secondary regulation, and trained CNBV and Banxico staff.
Chambers and Partners ranks the firm and its founding partner in FinTech. Jurídicon®, the firm's legal AI platform, was recognised by the organisers of the LLM x Law Hackathon at Stanford Law School, and the firm was one of four projects out of sixty showcased at the AI Lab of the UK Financial Conduct Authority.

Navigating the 44% Increase in Time to Authorization

Authorization times before the CNBV have lengthened. According to the authorizations published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, average time for Financial Technology Institutions ran at 594 days across 22 authorizations in one period and at 855 across 74 in the next, against 68 in an earlier period built on a single authorization. The queue is the regulator's to manage. What you choose is who builds the file and how fast observations are answered. The queue is the regulator's to manage. What you choose is who builds the file and how fast observations are answered.

In this environment, relying on a firm that reads the law after it is published is a liability. We provide regulatory intelligence built on 520+ fintech projects advised, so your institutional deployment stays on track.

Time to Authorization

IFPE Sector Average
787 Days
Legal Paradox®
416 Days (47% Faster)
Source: authorizations published by the CNBV in the Diario Oficial de la Federación. Sector average for electronic payment institutions.
See full Regulatory Performance Index →
The solution

The "Insider" Advantage

Regulatory DNA

We lobbied the Fintech Law and drafted its secondary regulation. When the rule is ambiguous, we know what it was meant to do, because we were in the room when it was written.

Jurídicon® Assurance

Our proprietary AI reads your operational backbone against the verified regulatory corpus and the playbooks left behind by 520+ projects.

Response speed

When the regulator raises observations, the response is drafted, verified, reviewed and signed within 24 hours. For critical accounts, urgent items are answered in four.

Selected institutional mandates

Google
Whether crypto exchanges, digital asset exchanges and wallets can qualify as well-regulated financial businesses in Mexico, and whether a global advertising policy could be implemented here as drafted. We produced the regulatory reading, the public certification path for advertisers and the internal decision tree their business teams use to apply it.
BBVA
Placing credit cards as a non-banking technology product to capture the advantages of fintech distribution, and the bank's crypto strategy.
Revolut
Market entry strategy for Mexico.
Mercedes-Benz AG
Development of fintech products and services: card issuing, lending and buy now pay later.
Tier 1 bank
Stablecoin operations, from the regulatory perimeter to the operating model.
Tier 1 bank
Novel models and strategic alternatives for asset tokenization.
Tier 1 bank
Legal strategy for the launch of a super app.
Tier 1 bank
Fintech and blockchain technology transformation across the institution.
Asian technology group
Fintech M&A in Mexico.
FEMSA and GIZ
Legal and financial advisory for small retailers financed through crowdfunding, under the German development cooperation's renewable energy access programme.

What the delay actually costs

For a Tier 1 bank or a BigTech entity, a stalled authorization is not a legal cost. It is market share moving to whoever launched first, and a competitive window that does not reopen. Seventy-one players are already licensed.

Authorization is not the finish line.

Your technology transformation runs through your vendors, and every one of them has to be authorized before you can contract it. The filing is yours, not theirs. We prepare and take those authorizations through, so your roadmap is not held up waiting on approval for a supplier you already chose.

We have sat on every side of a vendor authorization.

In Mexico, a regulated institution must obtain CNBV authorization before contracting a technology vendor, and the filing belongs to the institution. Most firms have seen that process from one chair. We have worked all three, which is where the friction shows up.
For the regulated entity
We built the regulatory framework governing third party relationships for regulated financial entities, including Mastercard and Spin by OXXO, one of the largest electronic payment institutions by transaction volume in Mexico, covering cloud, KYC, cybersecurity and blockchain services.
For same-group vendors
We have taken a regulated entity through its CNBV authorization where its main technology provider belonged to the same corporate group. That structure needs specific treatment to satisfy CNBV and avoid the circular authorization loops that generate extra observation rounds.
For the technology provider
We have structured the service agreements of major international technology vendors so they meet CNBV's requirements. Working from that side shows us how vendors describe their services internally, and where the gaps appear when those descriptions have to become regulatory language.
Adviser to the regulated entity, to the same-group vendor and to the external provider. No other firm in Mexico has accumulated this cross-perspective experience exclusively within fintech. These cases are illustrative and do not include comparable work for banks and other regulated financial entities.
Once you are operating, the framework keeps moving. We read the Diario Oficial de la Federación every publication day, and when something lands that reaches you, the affected documentation comes back updated, reviewed and signed.
See how the monitoring works →

The partner you meet is the partner who does the work.

Forty-five minutes with Carlos Valderrama, the partner who will handle your matter from this call onward. No billing surprises. Direct access from the first conversation.

Building the internal case first? Every figure on this page comes from the authorizations published in the Diario Oficial, and you can read the record yourself. No form required.
See the regulatory dashboard →Open the Fintech Map →
Questions

Frequently Asked Questions