The people you’ll need before you write a line of code

The people you’ll need before you write a line of code

In my last I made the case that launching a fintech product isn’t one project, it’s a chain of projects, each depending on the one before it.

This time I want to show you who’s actually in that chain. Because the thing that surprises founders most isn’t how many integrations they need, it’s how many different companies they’ll need to partner with before a customer can make their first payment.

Meet them in the right order and you save months. Meet them in the wrong order and you’ll spend those months repeating the same conversations.

Start with the sponsor

If you only remember one thing from this article, make it this: your sponsoring EMI is the most important relationship in your programme.

If you don’t hold your own e-money licence, you’re operating under theirs. That means their permissions determine what you can build. Their risk appetite determines who you can onboard. Their compliance team determines whether you launch at all.

People often ask which card processor they should use first.

It’s the wrong first question.

Until you know what your sponsor is prepared to support, every other conversation is hypothetical.

Then understand where the money actually lives

Founders often assume the money sits “in the app.” It doesn’t. It sits in a safeguarding account at a regulated bank, completely separate from operational funds.

Most EMI sponsors already have banking relationships they’ll onboard you to, but don’t stop asking questions there. Which payment rails do they support? What currencies can they support? Can they open named accounts for your customers? Can they handle Faster Payments, SEPA Instant or TARGET2? What happens if they suffer an outage?

You’re building on top of this infrastructure so you should understand it.

Banking isn’t just banking

Depending on your product, safeguarding may only be one piece of the picture.

You might need multi-currency accounts. Virtual IBANs. FX. International payouts.

You’ll probably come across names like ClearBank, Banking Circle, Currencycloud, Griffin or LHV. Which one is right depends entirely on how money moves through your product.

The answer isn’t “the best provider.” It’s “the right provider for your flow of funds.”

Everyone wants to speak to Mastercard & Visa

Almost every founder says the same thing: “we’d like to speak to Mastercard and Visa”, but it’s probably not worth it, at least not at the beginning.

Most new card programmes access Visa or Mastercard through a BIN sponsor, because becoming a direct scheme member is expensive, slow and unnecessary for almost every early-stage fintech.

Your BIN sponsor is usually the organisation you’ll actually deal with. They’re the ones whose requirements shape your card programme and they’ll manage the relationship with your chosen crd scheme.

Everyone obsesses over KYC

In my experience, they’re usually worrying about the wrong thing. People spend weeks comparing vendors and, honestly, most of them solve broadly the same problem.

What matters is how the platform is configured: onboarding steps; review thresholds; screening rules; escalation workflows.

That’s what your sponsor is actually reviewing. The tech matters, but the configuration matters more.

Then comes everything after onboarding

Getting someone through KYC is only the start. Now you need transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, PEP monitoring, alert management, the list goes on.

And you need someone in your business to review the drop-outs and alerts. That’s an investment in a team, not a feature, and it’s one many founders fail to consider early on.

The people founders forget

Two groups catch people by surprise almost every time.

The first is specialist legal counsel, not the startup lawyer who formed your company, but someone who understands payments and e-money regulation. Your sponsor agreement will probably be the most one-sided contract you’ve ever signed. There’s usually a good reason for that. You should still understand exactly what you’re signing.

The second is your own compliance team. Everyone budgets for engineers; very few budget properly for compliance. Eventually someone has to own monitoring, reviews, reporting and governance and most founders plan for how to launch the product, not how to operate it once it’s live.

The mistake isn’t who you speak to first

It’s thinking any of these conversations happen in isolation. They don’t. Every one feeds the next.

Your sponsor wants to understand your operating model and your flow of funds. Your processor wants to know who’s sponsoring the programme. Your KYC provider wants to understand how onboarding should be configured.

Nobody is blocking you. They’re waiting for information that sits with someone else.

That’s why founders often feel like they’re making progress while somehow standing still: “I’ve had a hundred conversations but I’m still no closer to finalising my partner stack.”

The fastest launches aren’t the ones where every conversation happens in the right order. They’re the ones where someone understands how all of those conversations connect.

What does all this cost?

Everyone asks at the end of the first call.

The honest answer is that anyone giving you an exact number before they’ve seen your product is guessing.

What I can tell you is where founders underestimate the investment: sponsor onboarding, compliance, operational headcount. Those are the three that surprise people every time.

Technology is rarely the thing that delays a launch. People, governance and approvals usually are.

The takeaway

The good news is none of this is a mystery. Every successful fintech ends up talking to the same people. The difference is timing.

The best founders understand the map before they start the journey, and they know which conversations unlock the next ones. They arrive with the right questions instead of discovering them halfway through the project.

That’s why two companies building almost identical products can launch months apart.

And if you’re putting this ecosystem together now and want a second opinion on where to start, drop me a message. Even if we never work together, you’ll leave with a clearer map than you started with.

Next week I’ll walk through the one document almost every one of these counterparties will ask for before they commit: your flow of funds.