ASAllan Silva
Senior Product Manager / Payments & Crypto

Allan
Silva

I turn ambiguous financial systems into products people rely on, today as crypto-native stablecoin payments for emerging markets.

View cases → Resume ↓
Currently leading Payments at Airtm
Allan Silva speaking at Stellar Meridian 2024 in London
São Paulo, Brazil
By the numbers

Products that moved real money for real people, from a regulated bank stack to crypto-native rails.

13
Years across product
& project leadership
$54M+
Processed on
crypto-native rails
100k+
Active customers
served at bank scale
18
Countries live
on a USDC card
The path

From industrial engineering to crypto payments.

Thirteen years compounding one skill: breaking ambiguous systems into parts, then shipping them under real constraints.

2024to now
Airtm
Senior Technical PM / Payments & On/Off-ramps
Leading Airtm's payment products for international expansion through crypto to fiat flows: cards, the P2P marketplace, QR instant payments, and crypto swapping.
$54M+ processed8+ markets
2022to 2024
Avenue Securities
Senior PM / Onboarding, Digital Channels & Platform
Owned product vision, OKRs, and metrics across onboarding, web and app channels, and cross-platform connectivity for a cross-border investment broker.
Web + appCross-platform
2021to 2022
Itaú Unibanco
Product Manager / Digital Channels & Payment Link
Led the Payment Link product vision built 0 to 1 on the bank's payments infrastructure, plus the Onboarding and Checkout squads.
~$40M/mo TPV100k customers
2018to 2021
Itaú Unibanco
Product Owner & Team Leader / Digital Payments & eCommerce
Led product and IT teams across the full transaction lifecycle, from acquisition to settlement. Oversaw the Cloud/AWS migration and API platform.
Cloud / AWSAPI platform
2013to 2018
Navistar
Senior Cost & Project Analyst
The engineering roots. Spearheaded company-wide new projects in purchasing, using hard analytics to define strategic initiatives for business expansion.
Strategic sourcingCost analysis

Selected
cases.

Four products across crypto-native and bank-scale payments. Numbers reflect work I led; partner names stay confidential except Bridge, which is public.

Airtm

Crypto-native rails for emerging markets

Letting users move between digital dollars and local currency across 8+ emerging markets, through two provider integrations spanning Latin America and Asia.

  • ~$42M+ processed
  • ~170,000 transactions
  • 8+ emerging markets
  • 2 provider integrations

Overview

For a digital-dollar wallet, the last mile is local cash-out. Without local off-ramps, balances are stranded: users can hold value but cannot move it into the economy where they live. I led the 0 to 1 build of Airtm's on/off-ramp rails across 8+ countries.

What I built

Local crypto to fiat on/off-ramp capability across 8+ emerging markets in Latin America and Asia. Each market needed its own local payment provider, and I covered all of them through two strategic provider integrations.

How I approached it

End-to-end ownership as Senior PM with a team of ~8: partner discovery and selection, pricing analysis, API due diligence, specification, metrics, user research, rollout, and production monitoring. I prioritized providers for whom the integration was a core product, because the reliability of the rail mattered most.

The hard part

The heterogeneity. Every market meant a different provider and a different API, each with its own due diligence and monitoring, while the end-user experience had to stay consistent across all of them.
Airtm

Stablecoin payments on local rails

Pay any local QR or Pix request straight from a USDC balance, with the currency conversion handled instantly in the background.

Scan-to-pay: storefront, QR code, and LATAM flag coins
  • $12M+ processed
  • ~$3M/mo peak
  • ~150,000 transactions
  • ~200 to 6,500 MAU

Overview

Millions across Latin America hold digital dollars but struggle to spend them where they live. Local merchants accept instant-payment rails like Pix, not stablecoins. I led the 0 to 1 product that closed that gap.

What I built

A local-payments product that lets users pay merchants by scanning a QR code, or in Brazil a Pix key, directly from their USDC balance. The stablecoin converts to local currency in real time. Launched across Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia.

How I approached it

I owned the product end-to-end as Senior PM with a team of ~8. The design principle was simple: a crypto-to-fiat payment had to feel like an ordinary local transaction. The user scans and pays; conversion and settlement happen instantly and invisibly.

The hard part

Every market runs on different instant-payment rails and QR standards, with a real-time conversion in the middle of each transaction. The real problem was keeping all of that complexity invisible.
Airtm x Bridge

Turning digital dollars into global spending

A US-issued Visa prepaid card that draws directly from a USDC balance, built with Bridge, live in 18 countries.

Airtm USDC Visa card
  • 18 countries live
  • US-issued Visa
  • Apple Pay + Google Pay
  • Spot-rate FX

Overview

Airtm users could hold digital dollars, but spending them meant cashing out first, often with local taxes and steep FX markups. I led the 0 to 1 card product that closed the gap between earning and spending.

What I built

A US-issued Visa prepaid card that draws directly from the user's USDC balance, with no transfers and no cash-out. Usable worldwide and addable to Apple Pay and Google Pay, converting at the spot rate. Built with Bridge, live in 18 countries.

How I approached it

The central decision was partner vs build. I chose to partner with a provider that understood both worlds: crypto-native infrastructure and the regulated side of issuing and compliance. From there I owned the product end-to-end.

The hard part

Closing the earn-to-spend gap for users who, in many markets, simply don't have access to USD-denominated cards, while staying inside a compliant card program.

Featured by Bridge
Itau

A two-sided payments product at bank scale

Payment Link, built 0 to 1 on the bank's payments infrastructure. One product serving both the merchant who charges and the payer who pays.

Itau
  • ~$40M/mo TPV
  • 100k active customers
  • 2 squads, ~14 eng
  • Built on bank rails

Overview

Before crypto, I built payments at bank scale. Itau, one of the largest banks in Latin America, needed a way for businesses to request and collect payments through a simple link. I led the 0 to 1 build of Payment Link.

What I built

Payment Link, a two-sided product with two fronts: the merchant experience (creating and managing payment requests) and the payer experience. Built entirely on Itau's own payments infrastructure, across capture, authorization, and settlement.

How I approached it

I led the product from zero, running two squads (~14 engineers) from vision through execution: discovery, KPIs, and roadmap. The work was as much about orchestrating the bank's existing stack as building new surfaces on top of it.

The hard part

Delivering a coherent two-sided product at bank scale, coordinating two squads on opposite sides of the same transaction on top of a large internal payments infrastructure where stability is non-negotiable.

About

Across 13 years of building products and projects, my path has run from industrial engineering to crypto. Today my world is stablecoins.

I build crypto-native payment infrastructure for emerging markets: on/off-ramps, local payment methods, and cards that let people move and spend digital dollars across borders. My work lives where blockchain rails meet local payment systems.

My background is unusual for a payments PM, and I treat that as an advantage. I trained as a mechanical engineer and spent my early career in complex industrial projects, cost analysis, and supply chain. That work taught me to break ambiguous systems into parts, follow the data, and ship under constraint.

For the past 7+ years I've focused on digital financial products, moving from one of Latin America's largest banks to international fintechs. That bridge between traditional finance and crypto is where I do my best work.

Citizenship
Brazilian & EU (authorized to work across the EU)
Based in
São Paulo, Brazil
Languages
English, Portuguese, Spanish
Education
MBA Business Management, BSc Mechanical Engineering
Certifications
Scrum Master (PSM I), Product Owner (PSPO I)
Speaking
Fireside speaker, Stellar Meridian 2024 (London)
Community
Volunteer, TETO Brazil
Contact

Let's talk payments, stablecoins, and emerging markets.

Connect on LinkedIn ↗ linkedin.com/in/allanraul