Before the First Line of Code: Jared Esguerra and the Business Decisions Behind Better Fintech

A business decides it needs a new financial platform. The feature list grows quickly: automated reporting, international payments, AI assistance and a dashboard connecting everything.

Development could begin immediately. But several questions remain unanswered.

Which problem matters most? Who will use the system? What information must be available before a transaction can proceed? How will the business know whether the investment worked?

These decisions shape the project before anyone writes code. They also provide context for the work of Jared Esguerra, a fintech consultant and software developer whose announced services include evaluating payment infrastructure, financial automation and software integration. His October 2026 announcement describes understanding the existing environment before determining appropriate technical changes.

Define the Problem Precisely

“Improve payments” is an ambition. “Reduce the time employees spend investigating unidentified customer payments” is a problem a project team can examine.

The difference affects every later decision.

A hypothetical business might initially request a new payment dashboard because employees struggle to reconcile transactions. Investigation could reveal that the missing information originates in the checkout process, where customers are not assigned consistent references.

A dashboard might display the confusion more attractively without resolving its cause. Defining the problem helps the team identify where a change could make a measurable difference.

Understand the People Completing the Work

Financial processes involve people with different responsibilities.

A customer support employee may need to confirm whether a payment arrived. An accountant may need to determine how it should be recorded. A manager may need an overview of unresolved items.

Those users do not necessarily need the same screen or the same access.

A useful discovery discussion asks each group what it needs to accomplish, which information it currently lacks and what causes delays. Their answers can reveal requirements that a general feature list would miss.

The resulting specification becomes more practical because it reflects identifiable tasks.

Decide What Success Will Look Like

A project needs acceptance criteria that connect the technical delivery to the original business problem.

For the hypothetical reconciliation project, those criteria might include a defined proportion of payments carrying usable references, a reduction in investigation time and a clear queue for unresolved transactions.

The business should establish a baseline before making changes. Otherwise, employees may feel that the process improved without having enough information to explain by how much.

Measurement also helps prioritize later work. A team can assess whether another feature addresses a remaining constraint or simply adds complexity.

Give AI a Specific Responsibility

A request to “add AI” leaves important design decisions unresolved.

An AI-assisted tool could potentially summarize payment discrepancies or gather supporting information from connected systems. Whether that is useful depends on the records available and the review process surrounding the output.

Esguerra’s consulting announcement identifies information retrieval, record comparison and preparation for human review among potential financial workflow applications.

For a project team, the next step is to specify the assignment. What should the tool produce? Which sources should it use? What happens when information conflicts? Who checks the result before further action?

Choose the Smallest Useful First Release

A focused first release gives employees something concrete to evaluate.

Instead of attempting to automate an entire finance function, the business could begin with one transaction type, one connected system or one recurring exception.

That boundary makes it easier to inspect results and understand failures. It also creates an opportunity to adjust requirements using actual experience before expanding the implementation.

A limited scope should still complete a useful task. The objective is a working improvement that can be assessed, rather than a collection of unfinished features.

Turn the Proposal Into a Shared Understanding

For businesses considering Jared Esguerra’s services, an early project discussion can establish the problem, users, deliverables and acceptance criteria.

Those details make responsibilities clearer for both the consultant and the client. They also create a basis for reviewing the finished work.

The most consequential fintech decision may happen before development begins: agreeing on what the system needs to achieve. Once that is clear, technology choices become easier to evaluate against a practical business purpose.