The five stages
Scope
Products, markets, customer segments, fee model and the commercial case. We write the specification and you keep it. Deliverable: platform specification and launch plan.
Comply
Licensing route, verification tiers, restricted products and reporting duties, mapped with your counsel because these change the architecture. Deliverable: jurisdiction and product restriction matrix.
Build
Engines, contracts and applications, written with tests as they go rather than tested at the end. You get staging access throughout. Deliverable: staging platform for your review.
Audit
Independent third-party review of every value-holding path, plus penetration testing, remediation and retest. Deliverable: signed audit report with findings resolved.
Hand over
Deployment, liquidity arrangements, treasury and incident runbooks, team training and full source transfer. Deliverable: a platform you own and can operate.
Why compliance comes second, not last
Most development processes put compliance near the end, as a feature to add before launch. That ordering causes rework, because licensing decides which products you may offer and to whom — and that changes the architecture, not the interface.
A platform that can serve one jurisdiction is a different system from one that must restrict products per region, apply tiered verification and produce regulator reports. Discovering that in month four means rebuilding.
We scope compliance with your counsel before writing code. If your licensing route is undecided, we design for the most restrictive plausible case rather than the most convenient one.
What you get during the build
Weekly written update
What moved, what is blocked and what is next, in writing rather than a call you have to attend.
Staging access throughout
You can open and use the platform as it is built, not at the end.
Stage-close demo
A working demonstration at the end of each stage, run against the real staging environment.
Named team
The same architect and engineers from kickoff to handover rather than rotating resources.
Direct access
You talk to the people building it, not exclusively through an account manager.
Change log
Scope changes recorded with their timeline and cost impact stated at the time.
How we handle change
Scope changes on nearly every project, usually for good reasons. What causes disputes is not the change itself but discovering its cost after the fact.
- Any change request gets a written timeline and cost impact before work starts on it.
- Changes that affect audited contracts are flagged explicitly, because they may require re-audit.
- Changes that affect compliance scope go back to your counsel before implementation.
- We will tell you when a change is not worth its cost, even when we would be paid for it.
Exactly what each stage hands you
A deliverable you cannot open is a status update. These are files and environments, listed so you can hold us to them.
What communication actually looks like
Written down so there is no ambiguity about what you can expect, or what we expect from you.
Weekly written update
Every Friday: what moved, what is blocked, what is next. In writing, so you can forward it.
Staging access from week one
You can open and use the platform as it is built rather than seeing it at the end.
Stage-close demo
A working demonstration against the real staging environment at the end of each stage.
Direct engineer access
You talk to the people building it, not exclusively through an account manager.
What we need from you
Decisions within X business days, plus timely access and credentials. Delays here move dates.
Escalation path
Name the person and route for when something is going wrong.
Where projects actually slip
From our own delivery history rather than a generic risk register. Naming these early is how they get managed.
Waiting on a licence
The most common cause. Scoped in stage two precisely so it does not surface in month four.
Banking and processor onboarding
Runs on their timeline, not ours. Started as early as possible, tracked separately.
Client-side decisions
A decision waiting two weeks moves the date two weeks. Tracked in the weekly update.
Audit remediation
Findings take time to close properly. Never compressed on contracts holding funds.
Scope added mid-build
Handled with a written impact statement before work starts, not absorbed silently.
Third-party API changes
Exchanges, chains and stores change things. Monitored, with buffer in the plan.