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Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Identify Core Pain Points:
Understand and address the specific pain points of your target market to create a compelling value proposition.
API Integration:
Building API-first solutions can enhance flexibility and scalability. Ensure you also have a platform to demonstrate the value of these APIs to potential clients.
Regulatory Navigation:
For blockchain companies, navigating regulatory landscapes and securing necessary licenses is essential. Plan for this in your product development timeline.
Focus on Lead Investors:
When fundraising, prioritize securing a lead investor to streamline the process and attract additional investors.
Global Perspective:
Analyze geographic markets to identify where your solution can have the most impact. Tailor your go-to-market strategy to focus on these regions.
Conversation
Highlights
Building a B2B Blockchain Payments Platform: Lessons from Fipto’s Journey to First Revenue
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Patrick Mollard, CEO and Co-Founder of Fipto, a blockchain payments platform that’s raised $16 million in funding, shared the tactical realities of building payment infrastructure in an emerging technology category. His journey from identifying market gaps to landing first customers reveals critical insights about timing, product development, and go-to-market strategy in regulated fintech.
The Problem That Started It All
Patrick’s path to founding Fipto began with three distinct observations from his previous fintech experience. The first was straightforward: international B2B payments were failing corporate clients. “I saw that international payments were still not up to the level of expectations of service of the corporate clients that do international payments in terms of speed, transparency, cost, predictability,” Patrick explains. He attributed these shortcomings directly to legacy technology: “that, to me, is linked to the technologies that are being used today, which is voice messaging broadly, and correspondent banking networks.”
The second observation was more intriguing. Blockchain-based tools existed that could structurally solve these payment problems, but they created entirely new challenges for corporate adoption. “How do I open a wallet? How do I make sure it’s done in a secure and safe manner? How do I make sure also that the flows I receive and send out are done in full compliance?” These weren’t theoretical concerns—they were blockers preventing corporates from accessing superior payment technology.
The Long Road to First Revenue
What stands out about Fipto’s story is the timeline. Patrick doesn’t sugarcoat it: “Actually quite a bit of time” passed between launch and first paying customer. The reason? Building in regulated fintech requires solving multiple complex problems simultaneously. “Building the platform required us to build a whole core banking system,” Patrick notes, explaining why two-thirds of their 30-person team focuses on product and tech.
The regulatory component added another layer of complexity. Fipto obtained registration as a virtual asset service provider with the AMF in France in March 2023, and later secured registration as a VASP in Luxembourg. Only after clearing these hurdles could they “launch 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.”
This represents roughly two years from founding to revenue—a reality check for founders building in similarly complex, regulated spaces.
The API-First Pivot
Fipto’s go-to-market evolution offers a masterclass in product-led strategy adjustment. They started with conviction: build API-first. “We started by building the solution as an API first solution,” Patrick explains, describing their three core APIs for wallet management, currency conversion, and fund transfers.
But conviction met reality. “We realized that actually selling an API is very difficult,” Patrick admits candidly. The solution? Build a platform as the first client of their own APIs. This wasn’t abandoning the API strategy—it was enabling it. “We are convinced that in the end, our ideal go to market strategy is to be able to integrate our APIs into third party systems and softwares that are actually used by corporate clients.”
The platform serves dual purposes: it generates revenue while proving integration value to larger partners. Patrick cites their work with Kyriba, a treasury management system, as validation of this approach. “We are actually working today with Kiriba to integrate our solutions in their solutions.”
Navigating Market Volatility
Building on blockchain technology means contending with perception challenges around market volatility. Patrick’s response reveals sophisticated positioning: “For us, the volatility, when it’s a bear market, we say we’re not too impacted because we’re building on the technology behind it.” Fipto remains “totally agnostic of the tokens that our clients want to use to perform their payments.”
This agnostic stance allows them to benefit from bull markets without being crushed by bear markets. Patrick acknowledges that institutional adoption—citing BlackRock’s ETF investments—creates favorable conditions, but the core value proposition remains independent of token prices.
Geographic Learning: Where ICP Really Matters
One of Patrick’s most actionable insights concerns geographic focus. “I think from our experience, we didn’t focus enough on our ICPS and defining our ICPS quickly enough,” he reflects. Being based in France created assumptions about focusing on Europe, but the data told a different story.
“The corridors where blockchain payments make the most sense are corridors where the existing technology are maybe less relevant,” Patrick explains. “So it’s on countries in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, and also between those geographies. So performing payments between Latin America and Asia.” This realization fundamentally shifted their market approach—a lesson that only comes from building and measuring actual usage patterns.
The Adoption Curve Reality
Patrick segments the market into clear adoption categories that any B2B blockchain founder should understand. First are “clients that are actually exposed to web three and the blockchain from the activity they are actually doing”—natural early adopters who need no convincing. Second are payment service providers who immediately grasp the technical advantages.
The third segment—larger corporates—proves most interesting. “The discussions we have today are quite different from the ones we had two years ago,” Patrick notes. “They are all convinced of what blockchain can bring to them and they also see very specific use cases.” The remaining challenge isn’t technical conviction but organizational readiness: convincing legal and compliance departments. Regulatory clarity and institutional legitimization are gradually removing these barriers.
Content and Events: The Marketing Reality
Fipto’s marketing strategy reflects resource constraints and audience sophistication. “We are convinced that we need to be seen as reference actor in our field,” Patrick states. Their focus? Content creation and LinkedIn ads. “We also see that a lot of our business is done through events, so a lot of marketing efforts around these type of things.”
This isn’t a massive marketing budget spread across multiple channels—it’s concentrated focus on demonstrating expertise where prospects already gather.
The Three-to-Five Year Vision
Patrick’s long-term vision extends beyond payments. “We want to be at payments what Internet was at email. So really facilitating almost point to point payments,” he explains. But payments are just the entry point: “We are convinced that there is a whole world of new financial services that will be used by corporate clients based on blockchain technology in the future.”
Fipto aims to become the infrastructure layer that “facilitates access to those financial services for our corporate clients”—a platform play that starts with solving one acute problem then expands as the market matures.
For B2B founders building on emerging technology in regulated industries, Patrick’s journey offers clear takeaways: expect long development cycles, be prepared to pivot on distribution while maintaining product conviction, and let actual usage patterns—not assumptions—dictate geographic focus. Most importantly, success in complex markets comes from solving the hard infrastructure problems that enable broader adoption, even when that means two years to first revenue.
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