Alternative payment methods (APMs) are no longer a competitive edge but a baseline expectation. Buyers across every major growth market expect to pay however they want, and they expect the experience to be seamless. When it is not, they don’t complain…they just leave.
The problem, however, is that most teams set up APMs and then move on until something goes horribly wrong. And since APMs, by nature, involve multi-step processes, complex integrations, and market-specific customer behavior, something eventually does. As a result, quiet drop-offs and incomplete purchases start to stack up, hurting conversion rates, revenue, and, most importantly, customer trust.
It’s why dLocal emphasizes continuous APM optimization as non-negotiable for the global merchants and PSPs (payment service providers) they work with. By pairing real-time transaction signals with user research and scalable in-market testing, they've helped several brands close the gap between APM setup and reliable long-term performance.Â
On May 20, 2026, Testlio's VP of EMEA & APAC, Tom Chmielewski, will join dLocal's Lead Product Manager, Renato Pereira, to discuss how his team optimizes APMs in markets where payment infrastructure is complex, buyer behavior varies dramatically, and the standard playbook does not apply.
Meet our Experts
Renato Pereira
Renato Pereira is Lead Product Manager at dLocal, focused on optimizing the performance of alternative payment methods across emerging markets. He owns conversion rate, completion rate, and reliability across the full APM lifecycle, working across the UX, technical, provider, and merchant layers that determine whether a payment actually succeeds. Before dLocal, Renato spent over a decade building consumer financial products at banks and fintechs in Brazil. His work has always centered on the user side of the equation: identifying where friction kills completion, testing new approaches, and bringing design, engineering, and data together to move the numbers. That's the same lens he applies to APM optimization at dLocal. At dLocal, he works with a multidisciplinary team - spanning engineering, design, data, and operations - to drive payment optimization for merchants operating across high-growth, complexity-heavy markets.
Tom Chmielewski
Tom Chmielewski is Testlio's VP of EMEA & APAC, where he leads the company's go-to-market expansion across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. He has a proven track record of helping clients, such as Arsenal, Tabby, Sky, and more, surface friction points that dashboards miss, optimize alternative payment method flows, and convert more buyers in regions where local context makes or breaks performance. Through Testlio's AI-powered crowdsourced testing platform, Tom helps global merchants and payment service providers ensure seamless transactions across 150+ countries, 600K devices, and 800+ payment methods. His career spans three decades, including prior leadership roles at New Relic, Comcast, and Rackspace, where he helped scale enterprise software and digital services across global markets. Tom holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in History from Yale University.
Trusted by Top Technology Leaders
