Building Fipto’s Core Banking System: What It Really Takes to Launch Regulated Fintech

Building Fipto’s Core Banking System: What It Really Takes to Launch Regulated Fintech

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Patrick Mollard, CEO and Co-Founder of Fipto, a blockchain payments platform that’s raised $16 million, shared a reality that most fintech founders underestimate: the time between starting to build and generating first revenue. When asked how long it took to land their first paying customer, Patrick’s answer was telling: “Actually quite a bit of time.”

For Fipto, that timeline stretched roughly two years from founding in 2022 to first revenue in Q1 of this year. That’s not slow execution—it’s the unavoidable reality of building regulated financial infrastructure from scratch.

The Complexity Stack Nobody Warns You About

Most SaaS founders think about product development in terms of features, user experience, and technical architecture. Regulated fintech adds multiple layers of complexity that can’t be shortcut or parallelized away.

“Building the platform required us to build a whole core banking system,” Patrick explains. This wasn’t hyperbole. Fipto couldn’t rely on existing infrastructure or plug into third-party banking APIs to handle the foundational elements. They needed to build the entire stack themselves—account management, transaction processing, balance tracking, reconciliation, audit trails, security controls.

This technical complexity directly shapes team composition. “We’re 30 people today at FPTO. Two thirds of the company is product and tech,” Patrick notes. That’s a radically different ratio than typical SaaS companies, where sales and marketing often match or exceed engineering headcount relatively early. But when you’re building core banking infrastructure, there’s no alternative to deep technical investment.

The Regulatory Layer That Determines Timeline

Technical complexity is only half the equation. The regulatory requirements add an entirely separate timeline that founders can’t control through better execution or more resources.

“We are licensed, we are a regulated industry, so we needed to obtain the licenses required to operate,” Patrick explains. For Fipto, that meant becoming a virtual asset service provider—a relatively new regulatory category that didn’t exist a decade ago. “That’s what we’ve done in March 2023, when we got registered as a virtual asset service provider with the AMF in France, we also recently obtained our registration as a wasp in Luxembourg.”

Notice the timeline: founded in 2022, obtained first regulatory approval in March 2023, launched “a real first version of the platform and the solution early this year. And we got our first paying customers in Q one of this year.”

The regulatory approval isn’t something you can ship an MVP without. It’s not a feature you can add later. It’s a prerequisite to operating. And it operates on bureaucratic timelines, not startup velocity.

Why Multi-Jurisdiction Matters

Fipto didn’t stop at French registration. They pursued Luxembourg as well. This multi-jurisdiction approach reflects a fundamental reality of regulated fintech: where you’re licensed determines where you can operate and who you can serve.

For a company targeting international B2B payments—particularly focused on corridors between Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as Patrick described elsewhere—single-country licensing creates immediate constraints. Each jurisdiction requires separate applications, different documentation, unique compliance requirements, and independent timelines.

This creates a sequencing challenge. Do you delay launch until you have multiple jurisdictions covered? Or do you launch in one market, generate revenue and traction, then expand? Fipto chose the latter, but “recently obtained” suggests they’re still actively pursuing additional regulatory approvals even after achieving first revenue.

The Resource Allocation Reality

Building a core banking system while navigating multi-jurisdiction regulatory approval requires specific resource allocation that differs dramatically from typical startup advice.

Two-thirds of the team on product and tech isn’t a temporary phase. It’s the steady-state requirement for this type of infrastructure. You need engineers building and maintaining the core banking system. You need security specialists ensuring the platform meets financial infrastructure standards. You need compliance-focused developers implementing audit trails, transaction monitoring, and reporting capabilities that regulators require.

This heavy technical investment delays other functions. Sales and marketing typically represent a smaller proportion of early-stage headcount because you can’t scale go-to-market until the product is actually launchable—which means both technically complete and regulatory approved.

What “Launch” Actually Means in Regulated Fintech

Patrick’s phrasing is precise: “We were able to launch a real first version of the platform and the solution early this year.” The word “real” carries weight. Many startups launch beta versions, friends-and-family releases, or limited pilots. In regulated fintech, you can’t really launch until you have regulatory approval. Everything before that is building toward launch, not iterating post-launch.

This fundamentally changes how founders should think about MVPs. The minimum viable product in regulated fintech isn’t the smallest feature set that provides user value—it’s the smallest feature set that satisfies regulatory requirements while providing user value. Those are very different bars.

You can’t launch a payment platform without proper KYC/AML controls, even if early users would accept the limitation. You can’t process transactions without proper audit trails, even if that slows initial development. You can’t handle customer funds without proper segregation and security measures, even if it adds architectural complexity.

Investor Expectations and Patient Capital

This timeline reality requires different investor expectations. Patrick raised $16 million before generating revenue—a significant amount of capital that needed to sustain the company through two years of building and regulatory approval.

This isn’t a seed round that gets you to initial traction so you can raise a Series A. It’s pre-revenue capital that needs to fund complete product development plus regulatory approval plus enough runway to actually achieve meaningful revenue traction after launch. The burn rate requirements and timeline expectations differ substantially from typical SaaS fundraising.

Investors in regulated fintech need to understand that they’re funding infrastructure development with regulatory gates, not iterative product development with continuous feedback loops. The capital intensity is higher, the time to first revenue is longer, and the first revenue milestone happens much later in the company’s development than typical software businesses.

The Strategic Upside of High Barriers

While Patrick frames this complexity honestly—it’s difficult and time-consuming—there’s an implicit strategic advantage. High barriers to entry mean fewer competitors can execute. The companies that do build core banking systems and obtain multi-jurisdiction regulatory approval have created substantial moats.

A competitor can’t ship a competing product in six months. They face the same timeline: build the core banking infrastructure, obtain regulatory approval, launch, then start competing for customers. That multi-year head start becomes defensible advantage for companies that successfully navigate the complexity.

The Framework for Regulated Fintech Founders

Patrick’s experience reveals a clear framework for founders considering regulated fintech:

First, recognize that you’re building two things simultaneously: technical infrastructure and regulatory compliance. Both are prerequisites to launch, and neither can be shortcut.

Second, team composition should reflect this reality. Heavy technical investment isn’t a phase—it’s the nature of the business. Plan for two-thirds of your team in product and tech, not temporarily but sustainably.

Third, fundraising needs to account for extended time to revenue. Two years from founding to first customer requires patient capital and investors who understand regulated industry timelines.

Fourth, “launch” means something specific in regulated contexts. You can’t iterate your way to compliance—you need to build compliance in from the start.

Fipto’s journey from founding to first revenue isn’t a cautionary tale about slow execution. It’s a realistic timeline for building legitimate financial infrastructure in regulated markets. For founders who understand this complexity upfront, it’s a feature not a bug—the difficulty of building properly regulated fintech infrastructure creates durable competitive advantages for companies that successfully navigate it.