dLocal hires CTO, CFO following $200m funding round

By Sunniva Kolostyak

dLocal, a cross-border payments platform for emerging markets, has made two executive appointments, hiring Hernán Di Chello as Chief Technology Officer and Diego Cabrera Canay as Chief Financial Officer from Mercado Libre.

The appointments follow a landmark funding round in September, where the Uruguayan FinTech raised $200 million. It is one of the highest-valued Latin American-based financial technology companies, valued at $1.2 billion.

Hernán Di Chello, the new CTO, joins dLocal, which is Uruguay’s first unicorn, following two decades at e-commerce system Mercado Libre, where he served as VP of Product Development of Mercado Pago for the last five years. He was part of the engineering team that helped build Mercado Libre and Mercado Pago from scratch, participating in several key projects and leading many different teams such as architecture, cloud and platform, Mercado Pago, and Fraud Prevention, totalling 1,200 engineers.

At dLocal, Di Chello will help drive global expansion. He commented: “The opportunity in front of us is limitless, and I look forward to building and leading a world-class engineering team that will strive to take the dLocal platform to the next level through the relentless pursuit of better performance and scalability.”

Diego Cabrera Canay, the new CFO, also joins from Mercado Libre, where he served as VP of Strategy and Business Finance. In his role, he built and led teams handling all aspects of the firm’s finance department, including financial planning and control, strategy, business assurance, management systems, and internal audit. He has also spent 12 years at PwC as a senior manager, providing audit and consulting services in Buenos Aires and New York.

As part of the management team, Cabrera Canay will contribute to dLocal’s sustainable growth from a financial and strategic perspective by professionalising the finance team and developing new key functions within the finance department.

“I look forward to building an outstanding finance team and playing a key role in ensuring that dLocal’s exponential growth is accompanied by solid policies and processes, as well as analysing short- and long-term growth opportunities alongside the management team,” Cabrera Canay said.

Sebastián Kanovich, CEO of dLocal, also commented: “We are incredibly excited to be adding such deep expertise in emerging markets and payments to the team here at dLocal, which aligns with our greater mission to invest our resources into optimising our already industry-leading platform for the benefit of our clients.”