Tenui connects Fortune 500 companies with elite freelance developers across Latin America. When traditional payment providers started costing them their best talent, they turned to Noah.
The problem
Tenui places senior developers from Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Brazil at companies like Coca-Cola, FedEx, BBVA, and Aston Martin. Their business depends on attracting and retaining the best freelance talent in the region.
By mid-2024, their payment infrastructure was actively undermining that business model.
Freelancers were losing 5-10% of every payment to fees. A developer invoicing $8,500 was receiving $7,820. That $680 gap – repeated across hundreds of payments – meant Tenui’s contracts were collectively losing over $200,000 a year to processing costs alone.
Account freezes were disrupting operations. One lead developer in Argentina had her Payoneer account frozen after receiving her third consecutive payment. It took 47 days to release $12,000 in earnings. These weren’t edge use cases – they were a pattern that made payment day unpredictable for Tenui’s entire network.
Top talent was leaving for competitors who offered USDC payouts. In a single week in Q2 2024, Tenui lost three senior developers – not to better job offers, but because a smaller competitor paid in stablecoins. The cumulative business impact: $340,000 in lost project revenue from developers who switched to platforms with modern payment options.
When Tenui asked their existing providers about stablecoin support, they were told to explore FX options or upgrade to premium tiers that still didn't solve the core problem. The established providers were protecting the fee structure, not solving freelancer problems.
The solution
Noah gave Tenui a simple three-step payment flow that required no changes to how their enterprise clients operate:
- Business client pays Tenui’s USD virtual account via standard bank transfer. Requires zero changes to enterprise client workflows."
- Noah converts USD to USDC and settles instantly.
- Freelancers receive USDC directly in their wallets – no intermediaries, no delays, no surprise deductions
The key: enterprise clients keep paying in USD the way they always have. The freelancer gets paid in digital dollars within minutes instead of days. Tenui controls the entire process from their own platform, with no dependency on third-party payment services that can freeze accounts or change terms.
“Our freelancers asked for USDC. With Noah, we were able to deliver quickly - without the high commissions or unpredictable accounts we had before.” – Fernando Vazquez, Co-Founder, Tenui
What changed
“I used to lose a big chunk of my pay to commissions. Now, I get my full payment in USDC, almost instantly.” – Fernando Ivan Lopez, Freelancer Developer, Coderio LLC
The business impact for Tenui
The payment problem was never just about fees. It was a business performance problem. Tenui’s ability to recruit and retain elite talent is their core competitive advantage, and broken payments were eroding it.
Since integrating Noah:
- **Talent retention improved immediately. **Freelancers who were actively exploring competitors stayed. The developers Tenui lost to platforms offering USDC payouts are now recruiting disadvantages Tenui no longer faces.
- **Recruitment became easier. **Offering USDC payouts is now a differentiator when competing for top LATAM talent against other staffing firms. Tenui went from losing bvids over payment terms to winning them.
- Payment operations simplified. No more support tickets for frozen accounts. No more explaining unexpected fees. No more scrambling when a provider’s algorithm flags legitimate payments as suspicious.
- **Revenue protection. **The $340,000+ in project revenue previously lost to talent attrition is now protected. Every developer retained is a contract preserved.
“With Noah, we can scale confidently. Our clients get flexibility, our freelancers get privacy and speed, and we finally own the process.” – Mariana Vazquez Puentes, CCO, Tenui S.A.
Who Tenui serves
Freelancer network: Senior developers and digital professionals across Latin America – Argentina (23%), Chile (26%), Colombia (20%), Peru (20%), Brazil (5%), and other LATAM markets (6%).
Enterprise clients: International companies hiring through Tenui and the Coderio group, including Coca-Cola, Aston Martin, BBVA, Banco do Brasil, FedEx, and Swiss Medical. 90% US-based, with EU and other international clients making up the remainder.
This is the exact payment challenge Noah was built to solve: global businesses that pay in USD, connected to a distributed workforce that needs fast, low-cost settlement in digital dollars.
Why Tenui chose Noah
- Lower costs: commissions dropped from 5-10% to under 1%. More of every dollar reaches the freelancer
- No account freezes: Tenui’s freelancers no longer risk having earnings trapped by a provider’s fraud algorithm
- Instant settlement: payments arrive in minutes, not days. In high-inflation markets like Argentina, that speed has real financial value
- **Full control: **Tenui runs payouts from their own platform. No middleman, no dependency on a third party’s terms or timeline
If your business pays freelancers or contractors across borders, the infrastructure exists to do it faster, cheaper, and without the operational risk of legacy providers.
Noah powers the payment layer. You keep the relationship.
Contact us at business@noah.com