Senior Product Manager  ·  Dublin, Ireland

Pablo Montenegro

Payments  ·  Collections  ·  Digital Banking  ·  Open Finance

"Most businesses don't know why their payments fail. I've spent 10 years building the systems — and understanding exactly what breaks."

Pablo Montenegro
10+
Years in payments
8
Case studies
30%
Fewer complaints PAC 2.0
98%
Task success Monevol
Open to contract & permanent roles  ·  Ireland · Europe

About

I make
money
move better

LocationDublin, Ireland
VisaStamp 2 — contract roles (no sponsorship). Permanent with visa support.
Open toIreland · Spain · Europe · Remote
LinkedInmontenegrofp
LanguagesSpanish (native) · English (C1)

I have 10+ years in banking and financial services — 7 of them at Itaú Chile, one of Latin America's largest banks, owning the product roadmap for digital payments and collections. I built PAC 2.0, led QR interoperability programs, delivered ePAC (the digital mandate platform), and managed squads across payment infrastructure and operational tooling. Since then, I've worked as an independent payments consultant for fintech teams across LatAm and Europe.

I moved to Dublin because the same problems I solved in Chile exist in Europe. The SEPA infrastructure is more sophisticated. The regulatory framework is clearer. But the gap between what the data says and what businesses actually do with it? Identical.

I understand the full stack: APIs, payment rails, failure modes, retry logic, mandate management, notification engines, and what the rejection file actually says. I don't just know how payments work — I know why they fail, and what to do about it.

Selected work

8 case studies — built at scale

Itaú Bank Chile & Independent — 2020–2024

07 9:41 Hola Nicole! Saldo total $425.300 CLP Cash 0,00 + Añadir cuenta Saldo promedio Control de gastos Vivienda Transporte Comida Panel Finanzas + Presupuesto Crear tu cuenta Sincronización bancaria Conecta tu cuenta Creación manual Gestiona manualmente

UX/UI · Design Thinking · Personal Finance · 2024

Monevol 360

Personal finance app designed from scratch. Full 5-stage Design Thinking process: 34 user interviews across Chile, Colombia and Argentina, competitive benchmarking, card sorting with 11 participants, four wireframe fidelity levels, full UI Kit, and usability testing. The core finding: users didn't want more data — they wanted fewer decisions.

98%
Tasks completed
34
User interviews
60+
Figma frames
Full case study in Figma →

01

Empathize

34 interviews · 3 countries · validated personas

02

Define

6 competitors benchmarked · MVP scope · POV

03

Ideate

Card sorting 11 participants · IA · user flow

04

Prototype

Crazy 8 · baja/media/alta · UI Kit · 60+ frames

05

Validate

7 users · 6 tasks · 98% success · 5 improvements

01 Fail AM04 Retry ✓ MD01 AC01

Collections Platform · Itaú · 2021–2022

PAC 2.0 — Automated Collections

Full redesign of Itaú's recurring payment and collections system. No retry logic, no failure classification, no notifications — collections failed silently. Led discovery, API design, dashboard delivery and phased rollout.

30%
Fewer complaints
20%
Efficiency gain
15%+
Collection rate
02 QR PAYMENT FLOW Scan Auth Pay Redesigned error states +25% adoption PIX-benchmarked · mobile-first

Payment UX · Itaú · 2022–2023

QR Payment Flow Redesign

Users were abandoning at specific steps. Error states confirmed something failed without explaining what. Mapped every drop-off point, ran usability testing, benchmarked against PIX. Redesigned the language of errors — not just the layout.

25%
Adoption increase
PIX
Benchmarked
03 MANDATE ACTIVATION PAPER 45 days ePAC 24 hours 70% end-user subscription rate Forpay partnership · 3mo delivery

Digital Mandate Platform · Itaú · 2021–2022

ePAC — Digital Direct Debit

A 45-day paper mandate process was killing sales. Companies lost clients who signed up before the first collection ran. Led product definition and Forpay partnership delivery of a fully digital mandate platform — online or max 24 hours.

45d→24h
Activation time
70%
User adoption
3mo
To live
04 MULTI-BANK PAYMENT BUTTON Pay with any bank Banco 1 Banco 2 Banco N CLP 50M+ avg ticket · same-day

B2B Payment Infrastructure · Itaú + Paga en Línea · 2022–2023

Multi-Bank Payment Button

High-value corporate payments from any Chilean bank through one integration. A CLP 70M car purchase shouldn't take 5 days — but it did. Defined dual access models (API + portal), led pilot with 3 companies targeting 40 corporate clients.

CLP 50M+
Avg ticket
5d→1d
Payment time
05 NOTIFICATION ENGINE Collections Event 📱 Push ✉ Email 💬 SMS Plug-and-play · bank-wide architecture

Platform Infrastructure · Itaú · 2020–2021

Bank-Wide Notification Engine

Legacy notification system had hard volume caps, unreliable delivery, and no push support. A direct debit only works if the user knows it's coming. Defined 3-channel engine (SMS, email, push) with intelligent routing and bank-wide plug-and-play architecture.

3
Channels unified
Bank-wide
Architecture
06 COLLECTIONS MONITORING Collection Rate 87.3% ▲ 2.1% this week Failures Today 142 AM04: 68 · MD01: 31 7-day trend · Real-time operational view

Product Analytics · Itaú · 2020–2021

Collections Monitoring Dashboard

Incidents were identified through complaints, not data. Defined three distinct dashboard views — operational (real-time), commercial (client-level) and product (trends) — for different audiences making decisions at different speeds.

40%
Faster detection
3
Audience views

Products

Tools I've built and sell

Practical resources for fintech teams, PMs and founders — built from 10 years of hands-on payments work

Fintech Process Documentation Template

Template · Notion / Document

Fintech Process Documentation Template

Standardise how your team documents product decisions, payment flows, and operational processes. Built for fintech teams who ship fast and need documentation that keeps up. Covers product discovery, technical specs, and incident post-mortems — all in one coherent system.

How Payments Actually Work

Guide · 10 chapters · EN & ES

How Payments Actually Work

The practitioner guide to building payment and collections products. Not theory — what actually happens when you build these systems and they fail in production. Covers payment rails, failure design, retry logic, mandate management, global systems (SEPA, PIX, FedNow), and what the rejection file actually says.

Backlog Prioritisation Matrix

Tool · Excel · EN & ES

Backlog Prioritisation Matrix

Automated weighted scoring model built specifically for fintech teams and banking product areas. 7 prioritisation pillars with MoSCoW as the filter layer — removes subjectivity from backlog decisions. Covers business value, user impact, technical effort, regulatory risk, strategic alignment, dependencies and time sensitivity. Used by PMs at fintechs across LatAm.

Financial Operating System

Tool · Excel macro · Personal finance

Financial Operating System

A personal finance macro Excel built for individuals who want real control over their money — not just a tracker. Covers income, expenses, savings goals, investment tracking and net worth evolution. Designed around one principle: fewer decisions, better defaults. The same thinking behind Monevol 360, in a spreadsheet you actually own.

Experience

Where the work happened

2024 – Present Independent Consultant Dublin, Ireland

Payments & Collections PM Consultant

Strategy, discovery and advisory for fintech teams across LatAm and Europe.

  • Designed full product lifecycle for Monevol 360 — 34 user interviews, validated personas, 60-frame Figma prototype.
  • Advised Chilean fintech on payments strategy: 5-epic roadmap, MVP scope, B2B payment flow redesign and collections process correction.
  • Leading cross-border remittance flow redesign (EU → Bolivia): transaction tracking and process automation.
  • Contributing 500+ annotated data points to an AI model training platform across payment and collections use cases at above 95% accuracy.
2017 – 2024 Itaú Bank Chile Santiago, Chile

Senior PM · Payments & Collections

Owned roadmap and delivery for digital payments and collections at one of Latin America's largest banks. Led 6 major product initiatives across payments infrastructure, recurring collections, mandates and operational tooling.

  • PAC 2.0: reduced customer complaints by 30%, operational efficiency up 20%, collection rate up 15%+.
  • QR Redesign: 25% adoption increase, PIX-benchmarked error state redesign.
  • ePAC: mandate activation from 45 days → 24 hours, 70% end-user subscription rate.
  • Multi-Bank Button: high-value payments (CLP 50M+) from any bank, same-day confirmation.
  • Notification Engine: 3-channel bank-wide infrastructure (push, email, SMS) with plug-and-play architecture.
  • Monitoring Dashboard: 40% faster incident detection across 3 distinct audience views.
2016 – 2017 SURA Group Santiago, Chile

Business Strategy & Client Success

  • Portfolio performance dashboards and client retention monitoring in financial services.
2012 – 2016 Santander Bank Chile Santiago, Chile

Implementation & Process Supervisor

Corporate Cash Management

  • Corporate client onboarding, after-sales services, and KPI monitoring for payment and treasury operations.

Writing

Published on LinkedIn

Industry analysis and perspectives on payments, open finance and digital banking

Beyond work

What keeps me thinking

Fiction Literature

Epic world-building with real consequences — Game of Thrones, Good Omens. I'm drawn to stories where complex systems collide with human nature and nobody fully controls the outcome. Payments, basically.

Films

Interstellar. Watched it more than once. A film about trying to solve an impossible problem with incomplete information, under time pressure, with people depending on you getting it right. I relate to that professionally.

Cycling

Urban cycling in Santiago — through the city, out to Quebrada Macul. In Dublin mostly along the coast. It's how I clear my head between one problem and the next.

Skills

What I bring to a team

Product

Product strategyRoadmap ownershipDiscoveryBacklog prioritisationMVP definitionStakeholder management

Payments domain

SEPA Direct DebitRecurring collectionsQR paymentsMandate managementOpen FinanceR-message codesH2H integrations

Technical

APIsPayment integrationsBackend systemsSQLSTP automationData-driven decisions

Design

Design ThinkingUser researchFigma prototypingInformation architectureUsability testing

Delivery

Agile · ScrumCross-functional squadsRegulated environmentsIncident management

Tools

JiraFigmaPower BITableauMiroConfluence

Education & certifications

MSc Banking & Financial Markets

P. Universidad Católica de Valparaíso & Universidad de Cantabria, Spain

2024

Diploma in Digital Banking & Fintech

Universidad de Cantabria

2023

Certified Scrum Product Owner

CertiProf

2022

Product Designer Certificate

Coderhouse

2024

BSc Civil Engineering

Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra

2005
Pablo Montenegro

Open to the right opportunity

Senior PM roles in payments, collections or digital banking across Europe. Contract roles available immediately. Permanent roles with visa support welcome.

Stamp 2 — eligible to work in Ireland without sponsorship for contract roles. Open to permanent roles with visa support across Ireland, Spain and wider Europe.