At Htwenty, we back teams that solve urgent, high-value problems in Latin America with global potential. Fraud prevention is one of those problems, it destroys revenue, increases costs, and undermines trust in digital finance. GatekeeperX (GX) is building the right product, at the right time, with a team that has lived the problem.
The Market: Fraud is Growing Exponentially
Fraud is no longer a marginal operational headache, it is a structural business risk accelerating worldwide, and Latin America is at the epicenter of that change.
The global fraud detection and prevention market was valued at roughly USD 52–53 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at ~21% CAGR over the coming years. That macro tailwind means growing demand for prevention tools, analytics, and real-time decisioning across payments, banking, and e-commerce.
Generative AI has dramatically lowered the cost and complexity for criminals to fabricate synthetic identities, automate social-engineering campaigns, and generate more convincing phishing and social-media scams. This makes traditional, rules-only approaches obsolete and increases demand for AI-driven prevention that can fight AI with AI.
Latin America is disproportionately exposed. Fintech adoption and digital payments in LatAm exploded during 2020–2024 (digital commerce volumes tripled in that period), but acceptance rates and fraud controls lag behind more mature markets, leaving a very large revenue-at-risk pool for merchants and PSPs. Decline/authorization friction is already higher in LatAm versus the U.S., which means better fraud decisioning translates directly into incremental revenue.
Real-time rails increase attack surface and Brazil’s Pix instant-payments system is a powerful example: while it unlocked enormous convenience, it also became a playground for fraudsters. Pix processed tens of billions of transactions and, as adoption scaled, reported cases of scams and large operational incidents grew sharply. Including high-profile breaches and organized criminal schemes that siphoned hundreds of millions of reais in single incidents. Those events underscore two things: (1) instant rails require real-time prevention (post-hoc detection is too late); and (2) scale + speed amplify both impact and the need for resilient, low-latency decision engines.
The Technology: AI-Driven, Real-Time, and Built for LatAm
GatekeeperX is not just another fraud tool. It is a decision engine that consolidates multiple risk use cases into a single API, built by fraud specialists who know the pain points firsthand.
Proactive monitoring: GatekeeperX is designed to detect and block fraud in real time, not just report incidents after the fact.
AI-powered customization: Their proprietary technology uses AI and a built-in feature store to help clients program fraud detection rules adapted to their business context.
Ease of integration: GatekeeperX is “built by engineers, for engineers” with the goal of onboarding clients in under 7 days, compared to months for legacy players.
Local-first approach: With technical and customer success teams based in Latin America, GatekeeperX can offer service levels global incumbents can’t match.
The result is a tool that reduces fraud losses, improves approval rates, and consolidates vendors delivering measurable ROI from day one.
The Team: Founders Who’ve Lived the Problem
What excites us most about GatekeeperX is the founding team. All four co-founders bring deep expertise in fraud prevention, payments, and fintech at scale. They have worked at the companies that built the LatAm digital payments ecosystem — and now they are applying that knowledge to solve fraud at its root.
Carlos Ayalde (CEO): Former General Manager at Stori, where he launched new financial products such as Stori Cuenta+ in Mexico and expanded operations in Colombia as Country Manager. At Rappi, he led fraud tools and risk operations, gaining first-hand exposure to the scale and complexity of fraud in a superapp environment. Earlier at McKinsey, he built a strong foundation in strategy and problem-solving. Carlos brings the rare mix of product execution, strategic discipline, and a powerful network across LatAm’s payments ecosystem.
Martín Moreyra (CDO): An engineer with experience at Mercado Libre, Martín has built and scaled real-time decisioning systems handling massive transaction volumes. His expertise in architecture and AI ensures that GX’s platform is robust, low-latency, and designed to scale from day one.
Renny Hernández (CTO): Formerly at Rappi, Renny faced fraud challenges head-on at one of the fastest-scaling superapps in the region. He specializes in data-driven fraud detection, transforming raw data into actionable insights that reduce false positives and increase approval rates.
Diego Nieto (CPO): With experience at PayU, Rappi, Idemia, and Valid, Diego has built and launched multiple fraud and security products. He has a strong focus on balancing security and user experience, ensuring GX’s solutions are both effective and easy to adopt for clients.
Together, the founding team combines over 20 years of cumulative experience in fraud and payments in LatAm, hands-on exposure to building and scaling in high-volume platforms like Mercado Pago, Rappi, PayU, and Stori, and a regional network across banks, fintechs, PSPs, and merchants, critical for credibility and adoption.
To conclude, fraud in LatAm is a $1.5B+ problem today and growing fast. Merchants, PSPs, and financial institutions urgently need solutions that are real-time, AI-powered, and tailored to local realities. GatekeeperX is building exactly that, with a team that has lived the problem from every angle.
We are proud to back GatekeeperX in their mission to make digital transactions in Latin America more secure, trusted, and scalable and we’re excited to see how their journey unfolds.
