Payments platform
A payments platform for a founder with a pilot already agreed
A founder-led payments business had merchants ready to run a pilot, but no platform to run it on. We are building that platform to a production standard, against a fixed launch date.
- A founder-led payments business
- Software engineering, Cybersecurity, Founder advisory
- 15 July 2026
- 4 min read
Client anonymised at their request. The engagement is in delivery, and commercial terms and named merchants are withheld.
The challenge
The client had a clear commercial idea and a national franchise willing to pilot it. What they did not have was the technology. There was no platform, no engineering team, and a number of early decisions to make that would be expensive to change later.
Because merchants had already agreed to take part, the platform could not be a prototype. It had to be secure, reliable and ready for real payments from the first day of the pilot.
The goals
- Make the foundational decisions early and correctly, so nothing would need to be rebuilt later
- Build a platform that merchants find simple to use
- Meet a production standard for security and reliability before the pilot
- Deliver to a fixed date, with progress the founder can see and check
- Leave the founder owning everything that is built
How we helped
We started with the decisions that shape everything else, and agreed them with the founder before any significant code was written. We then planned the work in phases, each ending with a clear outcome that the founder could hold us to.
Our team is designing and building the whole platform, from the part merchants use to the systems behind it. Security is part of the team rather than a review at the end, with our own application security engineer testing the platform throughout.
- Clear progress
- We work in two-week sprints, give a demonstration every month, and the founder can see the project board at all times.
- Honest about constraints
- Where the project depends on third parties, we raise it early and give the founder options rather than surprises.
- Full ownership
- The code has been in the founder’s own repository from the first day, along with the documentation needed to run it.
Where it stands
The foundations are agreed and in place, and the work is progressing towards the pilot launch. The founder has a clear view of what is being built, what comes next and what each stage has to prove.
The most valuable work at the start was not writing code. It was getting the few decisions that everything else depends on right the first time.
Read the full account
The printed case study
The same engagement at full length, with the detail that does not fit on a page. Written to be read by a board or forwarded to a colleague who was not in the room.
- The four decisions that had to be made before building started
- The three phases, and what each milestone has to prove
- What the merchant sees, and what sits behind it
No form, no email required.
More delivered work
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If this sounds like your situation, start with an assessment
An assessment takes two to three weeks, and gives you a written view of where you are today and a costed plan. It does not have to lead to a build, and that is a perfectly good outcome.