Plata Gains New Banking Licence Approval
Plata, a Mexican fintech, has obtained a banking licence in Mexico and offers a suite of financial products, including credit cards, debit cards, and cashback schemes. The company’s mission is to make financial services simple and accessible across Latin America, with ambitions to expand beyond Mexico into further countries in the region.
Expansion Plans
The company’s Head of Data Warehouse, Ivan Shchukin, joined Plata three and a half years ago, when the company had no data warehouse. Today, the department has more than 50 people, near-real-time data processing, and an ambition to render traditional business intelligence software obsolete.
Ivan’s background as an electrical engineer, with experience in project management, software development, and data analysis, made him the right person for the role, according to Plata’s Chief Technology Officer.
Data Warehouse Development
Ivan established two governing principles for the data warehouse: complete data collection and speed. The team captures all company data with full version history, and the system updates within one hour, giving Plata a measurable competitive advantage.
The data warehouse now underpins approximately 80-90% of the company’s data processes, all running with automated quality checks and alerts. This level of automation has allowed Plata to keep its headquarters lean, even as the business has grown substantially.
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The department has grown from a team of eight to more than 50 people, organised across roughly 10 specialist teams. Ivan has learned to manage this expansion, and they have made an early structural decision to hire analysts into a discipline called analytics engineering.
Partnerships and AI Adoption
Central to Plata’s infrastructure is its relationship with Snowflake, a cloud-based data storage and analytics platform. Ivan notes that Snowflake has removed a lot of pain for the company, allowing it to scale to a new country or domain in minutes, not months.
Ivan frames partnerships in terms of shared values and long-term direction. A good technology partner should share the same core values and goals as the company it serves.
As they move forward, they will continue to develop their approach to growth targets and long-term strategies.
