SPEI wasn't designed for business flows

Mexico’s Electronic Interbank Payment System (SPEI) is a cornerstone of the country’s financial infrastructure. It’s fast, secure, and available 24/7, powering millions of transfers between individuals and businesses every day.

But while it works great for simple use cases — like person-to-person (P2P) transfers or customer-to-business (C2B) payments — it falls short when it comes to handling the operational complexity of modern business models, like marketplaces, fintech platforms, or companies running large-scale automated operations.

This doesn’t mean SPEI is “bad for business.” It just means it can’t, on its own, solve the more sophisticated challenges that companies face today.

SPEI was built to modernize and unify Mexico’s banking payments — and it succeeded. It made instant bank-to-bank transfers possible, without middlemen or long wait times.

But today’s companies need more than just A-to-B transfers. They need:

• Automated flows
• Smart reconciliation
• Seamless user experiences
• Scalable systems with full traceability

And for that, "out-of-the-box" SPEI simply doesn’t cut it.

Using raw SPEI — with no added layers, APIs, or tech support — may seem fine at first. But as your business scales, friction and inefficiencies pile up. Here's what that looks like:

• No way to identify who paid: All payments land in the same account. If a user forgets or mistypes the reference, you have no structured way to match that payment to a customer. This kills your ability to scale accurately.
• Manual reconciliation slows everything down: Every payment needs to be manually cross-checked against an order or customer. You’re downloading bank reports, matching data by hand, and logging everything one by one. Not only is this slow — it’s risky.
• Zero control over the payment experience: Users have to leave your platform to make a transfer from their bank. That breaks the flow, reduces conversion, and leaves you blind to what happens in between.
• No automation, no logic: SPEI is a pipeline, not a smart platform. You can’t schedule, condition, split, or customize payments without building the logic yourself.
• Scaling becomes a tech burden: Processing hundreds or thousands of payments a day introduces new risks — from reconciliation failures to user confusion. Without an added layer of infrastructure to manage logs, traceability, error control, and more, operations can quickly become unmanageable.

When companies don’t have the tools to extend SPEI, their operations end up looking like this:

• A finance team member logs into the bank portal to copy-paste account info and payment details manually.
• Another team monitors incoming payments, manually matching them to customers and confirming with calls or emails.
• Reports are tracked in Excel, with no alerts, traceability, or real-time updates.
• Users are left in the dark, with delayed confirmations or failed payments due to reference errors.

It works — until it doesn’t.

SPEI works. The problem isn’t the infrastructure — it’s how it’s used. What’s needed is a smart middle layer: a modular infrastructure that lets businesses:

• Automate payments and collections with custom logic
• Assign unique CLABEs per user, for instance, accurate reconciliation
• Handle high-volume transactions securely, with full traceability
• Integrate SPEI directly into internal systems — without relying on an external digital ban,k you can’t control

At Prometeo, we’ve built exactly that: a solution that removes all the friction and lets companies tap into SPEI without the operational headaches.

What is it?

It’s a tech layer built for businesses that need to collect from consumers and send bulk payments — automatically, and at scale. It also enables international companies to operate locally in Mexico without needing a legal entity.

What can you do with it?

• Collect, pay, and disperse funds using your business logic
• Assign unique CLABE sub-accounts per user for clean, automatic reconciliation
• Get real-time payment notifications — no more PDFs, calls, or guesswork
• Validate banking info before sending funds to reduce errors and losses
• Skip the paperwork — no local entity required
• Integrate via API for full control over UX and workflows
• Or use our white-label widget for a zero-friction, go-to-market-in-days solution

With Prometeo, you unlock SPEI’s full potential — building smarter flows, scaling faster, and staying in control.

SPEI changed the game for banking in Mexico. But like any foundational infrastructure, it needs the right context — and the right tools — to meet modern demands.

Empowering businesses through open banking isn’t just about “enabling payments.” It’s about giving them full control over how, when, and under what rules money moves.

And that’s exactly what we do at Prometeo.