CEMI

Why it matters

Virtual Financial Ecosystem Simulation - CEMI Financial Innovation Lab
An initiative of CEMI’s Financial Innovation Lab
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Why it matters

A simulated financial ecosystem in which a whole process runs end to end against every counterpart it must talk to, under the Reglamento’s rules executed as checks, with an instrumented report at the end. Published and open.

The proposition, in one screen

Every financial application in this country has to talk to things it does not control: banks, the LBTR, the instant-payments system, card networks, acquirers and sub-acquirers, electronic-payment entities, credit bureaus, identity, the supervisors and the financial-intelligence unit. Until one of them says yes, nothing can be tested end to end — and until something has been tested end to end, none of them says yes. That loop is where most work in this sector stops.

This is the other side of the loop. Each of those counterparts is simulated here: they speak the real message formats, they keep state, they refuse for reasons of their own, and the rules of the Reglamento de Sistemas de Pago run against them as executable checks, each rule naming the article it comes from. A run is deterministic from its seed and ends in a report that says what was exercised, what was cited and never reached, and what every rule decided.

It is open. The manual, the map, the roadmap and a public simulation you can run in a browser are all here, with no key and nothing to install, in English, Spanish and French. A key — a world of your own — is one form away.

Ready for 2027, today.

40+ simulated counterpartsBanks, the Central Bank with its current accounts and the LBTR, the SGPI and its alias directory, card networks, acquiring and sub-acquiring, electronic-payment entities, the direct-debit and direct-credit administrator, the ATM and ITM switch, identity, a credit bureau, the three supervisors and the financial-intelligence unit.
190+ executable rules, each citing its articleA rule that cannot cite an article is not a rule here: it fails to load. Each one carries its article, its resolution and that resolution’s date, and the values the Junta Monetaria adjusts are marked with the year they belong to. Rule catalogue 2026.09.08.
60+ published scenariosEach declares what it cites, and the report lists anything cited but never exercised — so a scenario that claims a rule and never reaches it is a failing scenario, not a passing one.

What you gain

Twelve groups, and what the ecosystem is worth to each. Written from your side of the table: what you gain, what you can do today, and where to start.

Banks

What you gain
A place to rehearse what your own counterparts will do to you before a customer is on the other side: onboarding, internal transfers, direct credit, instant payments, high-value settlement in the LBTR, and the reconciliation that has to survive all of it — including the days an administrator goes down mid-cycle and the LBTR queue stalls.
What you can do today
Run a whole process end to end against a simulated Central Bank, a simulated SGPI and other banks at once, and read the instrumented report. Then ask the vendors and fintechs who bring you proposals to arrive already tested, through a private lane on a node carrying your own formats and your own rules.
Where to start
Request a key

Electronic-payment entities, fintechs and sub-acquirers

What you gain
The test environment you cannot get. You cannot get a bank without a working flow and cannot get a working flow without a bank; here the counterpart is simulated and answers today, so the loop is broken from your side without anybody’s permission.
What you can do today
Take readiness runs against the simulated SGPI — the system in which electronic-payment entities, acquirers and sub-acquirers will be mandatory participants — and walk into a bank’s meeting with the instrumented report of each run in hand rather than a slide about your intentions.
Where to start
Try it live

Card schemes and acquirers

What you gain
Authorization, clearing, settlement and chargeback exercised against card processors and banks at the same time, instead of one integration after another. A decline is a response carrying its own ISO 8583 code rather than an error, which is what makes a card-testing pattern detectable at all.
What you can do today
Follow the card rails on the map and then run them: card-present and cardless paths at the machine, the cycle settled net in the LBTR, and the disputes that come after. Sponsor the acquiring node if you want it carrying your formats and your rules.
Where to start
The ecosystem map

Telcos

What you gain
The financial side of your own network, simulated: the payment rails your subscribers reach through it and the fintechs building on it, both testable before either one meets a customer.
What you can do today
See where a telecommunications node sits in the ecosystem and what it talks to. Then sponsor it — carrying your formats and your rules, under a Lab name as every node here does — with a private lane where the teams pitching you and the fintechs on your network arrive already tested.
Where to start
The guided tour

Insurers and brokers

What you gain
Quote, bind, premium and claim wired to real payment rails rather than to a mock — and embedded insurance tested where it actually sits, on a loan or a transfer, with the identity and anti-money-laundering checks firing exactly as they would. The payments half of that lane executes articles; the insurance half runs Lab controls and a declared product catalogue, and says so.
What you can do today
Read the message contracts and the rule catalogue, then run the flows your product depends on: a premium collected by direct debit, a payout made by direct credit, and the returns and reconciliation on both.
Where to start
Technical manual

Regulators and supervisors

What you gain
A seat, and it is already built: read access to every world’s traces, run reports, rule verdicts and the vigilancia views, with no ability to operate anything — enforced above every lane rather than lane by lane. Your instructivos, your reading of the rules, your scenarios.
What you can do today
Read what the rules were read to mean and tell us where we read them wrong. Every executable rule names its article, its resolution and that resolution’s date, and what the instructivos did not settle is published as an open question rather than filled in with a guess.
Where to start
Ask for a regulator seat The open questions

Universities and students

What you gain
A floor of practice and research that already exists: reproducible runs, published message contracts and rule catalogues, and a synthetic population with nothing personal in it to protect or to get permission for.
What you can do today
Take an academic seat — a world of your own, operated by you and readable by nobody else — and set a cohort to work on a real financial process, with findings that can be published. A person who wants to work on the Lab’s problems rather than integrate against them starts at Fellows.
Where to start
Ask for an academic seat The Fellows programme

Development banks and cooperation

What you gain
Financial-inclusion work that can be measured before it is funded, and an architecture that travels: the Lab moves to another country by changing two catalogues — the actors and the rules — and the local regulator fixes the taxonomy, so fidelity travels with the country rather than with us.
What you can do today
Read the one-page summary, then look at what a run actually reports: which rules were exercised, which were cited and never reached, and what the synthetic population did on the way.
Where to start
The one-page summary

Technology companies

What you gain
A country’s financial ecosystem as something you can build against on a Tuesday: real message formats, counterparts that keep state, a published REST contract with webhooks, and a machine lane for hardware that cannot hold a session.
What you can do today
Build against the contract, drive the ATM and ITM lane with a team key, and keep the run deterministic — the same seed gives the same ledger digest, which is what makes a regression a regression rather than an argument.
Where to start
Technical manual

Investors and the country brand

What you gain
Diligence you can run yourself, and a piece of public infrastructure this country can be known for. The whole thing is published: the roadmap says what is finished and what is waiting and on what, and every figure stated is computed from the repository rather than typed into a slide.
What you can do today
Read the deck, then check it against the platform it describes. The counts it states and the counts on this page come from the same computed floors, which is why they cannot disagree.
Where to start
The pitch deck

Chambers and technology parks

What you gain
An infrastructure your members can use that does not exist anywhere else in the country, and that you did not have to build or maintain.
What you can do today
Open readiness runs to the companies you host and, if you want one, a sponsored node with a private lane for them. Start by seeing what is standing and what is still open.
Where to start
The roadmap

Consumers and the public

What you gain
The right to look. The rules a payment system runs under are public; here they are executable and readable at the same time, so you can watch a payment refused for a reason and read the article the refusal cites.
What you can do today
Run the public simulation in your browser — no key, nothing to install, narrated in your own language. Nothing in it is real: no providers, no users, no money, and no personal data belonging to anybody.
Where to start
Try it live

How participation works

Five shapes, and they are the only ones. Each is described here exactly as it is offered.

A seatOffered to the regulators and the supervisors: your instructivos, your reading of the rules, your scenarios, and read access to every world’s traces, reports and rule verdicts, with nothing to operate. It was built before anybody was asked, because a seat offered without being built is a sentence rather than an offer.
A nodeAn institution sponsors its own kind of node — a bank a simulated bank, an acquirer the acquiring node, an insurer the insurance node, a telco the telecommunications node — carrying its own formats and rules, with a private lane where its vendors and the startups working with it arrive already tested.
A keyA world of its own: seed, clock, ledgers, alias directory and reports, deterministic from that seed and resettable, shared with no other team. It opens the whole lane, the machine lane included, and it is one form away.
A certification packA run, or a pack of scenarios, against the simulated SGPI, with the instrumented report of each one. A bank or an acquirer can ask the teams who bring it proposals to arrive with that report in hand — which is what turns a private lane into a filter rather than a courtesy.
A scenario of your ownA course that is not published yet. The scenario format is public and a scenario declares what it cites, so an institution can bring the case it actually worries about and have the report say what was exercised and what was not.

Nothing to fund

We are not asking anybody to sustain this. The platform is published and open — the manual, the map, the roadmap, the documents and a public simulation anybody runs in a browser with no key and nothing to install. Open programmes, interns and the Championship are free. Cost recovery applies only to extended private use: a sponsored node, a private vendor lane, a certification pack, and custom actors, rule packs and scenarios built to order.

And what it is not

Where to start

The shortest honest answer is to run it yourself. It takes no key, no installation and about a minute.

Try it live The guided tour Request a key Talk to us

A conversation of thirty minutes, and a demonstration on the live platform, is available to any of the twelve groups above. partners@cemi.ai