Digital wallet: from discovery to an in-house payments ecosystem

I contributed as a Technical Product Manager to the end-to-end development of a government digital wallet, from discovery and competitive analysis through production as a multi-tenant platform for different public-sector organizations.

My role: Technical Product Manager, Casa de Moneda Argentina

The problem

Casa de Moneda launched a strategic initiative to build its own digital wallet. The challenge went beyond developing a payments application: we needed to define the product, its value proposition, user onboarding, regulatory and compliance processes, integrations with the financial ecosystem, and an architecture capable of supporting different public-sector organizations.

Discovery

The work began with market research and competitive benchmarking of digital wallets to understand features, onboarding models and user experience. Based on that analysis, we defined the product's main flows, including registration and onboarding, identity validation, KYC, income information, Politically Exposed Person (PEP) status and compliance requirements. Discovery also helped identify the integrations required across the financial ecosystem and define how the platform could evolve into a reusable model for different organizations.

Decisions and trade-offs

Design a multi-tenant architecture
We defined a model with central administration at Casa de Moneda and independent tenants for each organization. Each tenant could have its own environments, database, frontend and mobile application while sharing a common product foundation. This allowed capabilities to be reused and the solution to scale without building a separate wallet from scratch for every organization.
Ruled out: Building an independent solution for every organization. Although it allowed greater initial customization, it increased maintenance costs, duplicated capabilities and made product evolution more difficult.
Integrate the wallet with the financial ecosystem through APIs
I coordinated API integrations with organizations such as RENAPER, COELSA and Banco Hipotecario, aligning functional requirements, technical teams, business stakeholders and external providers. These integrations supported processes such as identity validation and the financial operations required by the wallet.
Build in-house capabilities within the payments ecosystem
During development, Casa de Moneda progressed toward certification as a Payment Service Provider (PSP). This was part of a strategy to reduce reliance on external providers and keep a greater share of the operation within its own ecosystem.
Validate the product through a production pilot
Before expanding the solution to other organizations, Casa de Moneda's internal cafeteria was used as the first production use case. Users could use funds available in the wallet to pay for lunch, allowing the complete flow to be validated in a real environment.
Ruled out: Expanding externally before validating the complete flow. The internal pilot reduced risk and allowed adjustments to be identified before offering the platform to other organizations.

Results

The initiative evolved from discovery into an operational, multi-tenant payments platform. A production pilot was conducted within Casa de Moneda, and the solution was subsequently offered to other government organizations, municipalities and provincial governments. Following a later change in government strategy, the product and its functional and technical knowledge were transferred to ARSAT to support continuity.

Key learnings

The project strengthened my experience managing products where technology, business, regulation and multiple external stakeholders must evolve in coordination. One of the main product decisions was to approach the wallet not as a one-off implementation, but as a reusable platform. The multi-tenant architecture allowed each organization's needs to remain separated while preserving a common core, while the production pilot enabled validation before expanding the product's reach.