In Brazil, a payments license gives you full autonomy but takes years, millions in $$$, and heavy compliance. Existing providers get you live fast but restricts independence and operational control. Cumbuca merges both: you get the same development flexibility with direct access to Open Finance and Pix, with full operational control, reduced risk and flexible price. Build on official APIs, own your infra and data, customize every layer, and if you get your license, just plug your own certificate
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Hey Product Hunt 👋 We’re Daniel, Bruno, and Pedro — founders of Cumbuca, the first proxy for Brazil’s regulated ecosystem. After years of building fintechs in Brazil, we saw how painful it is to obtain a license or depend on PSPs and BaaS providers. Our previous B2C operation scaled to over a million accounts, and we suffered since a lot of our core product relied on partner infra, and it hurt us to not be able to solve the issues affecting our customers. We’ve been deeply involved with Open Finance since its earliest days — we were one of the first players in the ecosystem and became the **fourth ITP/PISP license ever issued in Brazil**, and after closing our B2C operation decided to pivot to B2B and build the financial infrastructure partner we always wished existed for ourselves. We’ve always been obsessed with the technology and the infrastructure behind Open Finance and Pix in Brazil, it's potential to be a transformational benefit to millions of Brazilians and wish to use our license and expertise to partner with amazing companies that will bring those benefits to life. Cumbuca is the result of that journey: a regulatory bridge that enables fintechs to operate with **direct access to Pix and Open Finance** while retaining complete control over their operations. You **build your own infrastructure, own your operational data, resolve issues without middlemen, and enjoy the same development freedom you would have if you held your own license** — all while we carry the regulatory exposure and maintain the highest compliance standards. **We redesigned the delivery layer from the ground up.** Instead of exposing Cumbuca APIs, which would impose our abstractions and limit customer flexibility, we built a **regulatory proxy**. Customers can develop their entire infrastructure end-to-end using the **same APIs available to banks and other regulated players**. They generate their requests, send them to our proxy, and we sign and forward them under our license. The proxy is intentionally a **minimal layer**, giving us only what we need: logging, compliance, visibility, and access control. **There is no Cumbuca API — only the proxy.** We’ve supported global and local companies launching and scaling in Brazil. While we’re excited to share Cumbuca with the PH community, we’re **not a self-serve platform** — we work selectively with high-volume fintechs and infrastructure players where deep customization and autonomy are essential, and which are aligned on a long term plan for the Brazilian payments market. We’d love to hear from you — who’s considering entering the Brazilian market? What’s holding you back? How has your experience been with Brazilian fintech infra providers? 💬 Ask us anything below! — The Cumbuca team 🇧🇷
Comment highlights
Congrats on the launch! Why only Brazil? Will other South American countries be added in the future?
@ruhman Building payments infrastructure in Brazil is exciting! The license based approach gives developers more control than typical payment SDKs.
How customizable is the infrastructure? Are fintech startups able to white label this for their own products?
Curious about compliance and how Cumbuca handles the regulatory complexity in the Brazilian market.
This solves a massive gap in Brazil’s fintech space — autonomy without waiting years for a license.
Hey @ruhman great pivot! I can't imagine a better team to be building this in Brazil other than you guys, so congratulations a lot for the pivot and the launch!
I have been following Cumbuca since its founding. This pivot speeks volumes about their flexibility and competence. They are skillfully navigating a complex regulatory inviroment and were still one of the first 3 companies with an ITP license in Brazil.
Keep up the great work!
Brazil is a huge market, which ingorned by a lot of products because of payment issues. Having a payment gateway is a huge step and makes it easier to get to this big market!
I've been frustrated with the trade-off between quick integrations and true ownership, so this caught my attention immediately. The idea that I can build on official APIs and still maintain full control feels great for someone like me trying to scale responsibly.
Hey Daniel, congrats on the pivot and that line about not being able to solve issues affecting your customers really stands out. When you were running the B2C operation with a million+ accounts, was there a specific incident where you knew exactly how to fix something for your users but couldn’t because you were stuck waiting on a partner?
As someone who's always wanted more control over my payments stack, this really speaks to me. The idea of getting direct access to Pix and Open Finance without drowning in years of licensing is huge. I like hoe flexible and builder-friendly your approach feels.
Excellent launch, Cumbuca team. From a clarity-onboarding lens: when a fintech opens your platform for the first time, what’s the one belief you want them to walk away with in the first 10-15 seconds?
Is it “I can launch payments in Brazil without building full rails myself” or “I’m working with a licensed entity that knows Brazil’s regulation and compliance”?
Because in payments infra, the belief that someone has already taken care of the hard part often drives faster adoption.