Fractional CTO for FinTech and Payment Services

Building secure, compliant, and scalable financial technologies. Expert guidance on payments, lending, banking infrastructure, fraud detection, and regulatory compliance.

Challenge

FinTech challenges

  • Security and fraud: protection from sophisticated attacks, fraud prevention
  • Regulatory compliance: PCI-DSS, SOC2, KYC/AML, GDPR, regional regulations
  • Reliability requirements: 99.99%+ uptime, zero data loss, disaster recovery
  • Payment processing: integration with payment gateways, reconciliation and failed transaction handling
  • Real-time operations: instant payments, real-time balance updates, fraud detection
  • Data security: encryption, tokenization, secure key management
  • Audit trails: immutable transaction logs, compliance reporting
  • Scale and performance: handling peak loads (paydays, tax season, market events)
  • Security and fraud: protection from sophisticated attacks, fraud prevention
  • Regulatory compliance: PCI-DSS, SOC2, KYC/AML, GDPR, regional regulations
  • Reliability requirements: 99.99%+ uptime, zero data loss, disaster recovery
  • Payment processing: integration with payment gateways, reconciliation and failed transaction handling
  • Real-time operations: instant payments, real-time balance updates, fraud detection
  • Data security: encryption, tokenization, secure key management
  • Audit trails: immutable transaction logs, compliance reporting
  • Scale and performance: handling peak loads (paydays, tax season, market events)

How I help

Secure architecture and infrastructure
Security-first design for financial systems
  • Secure design: defense in depth, least privilege, zero trust
  • Data encryption: at rest and in transit, key management, tokenization
  • Payment infrastructure: reliable payment processing and transaction reconciliation
  • High availability: multi-region, failover, disaster recovery (RPO/RTO)
  • API security: OAuth2, API gateways, rate limits, DDoS protection
  • Database design: ACID compliance, transaction integrity, audit logs
Compliance and regulations
Navigating complex regulatory requirements
  • PCI-DSS compliance: Level 1-4 requirements, SAQ completion
  • SOC2 Type II: control implementation, audit preparation
  • KYC/AML implementation: identity verification, sanctions screening
  • GDPR/CCPA: data privacy, consent management, right to deletion
  • Banking regulations: FFIEC guidelines, OCC, state requirements
  • Audit trails: immutable logs, automated compliance reporting
Fraud detection and prevention
Multi-layered protection against financial fraud
  • Real-time fraud detection: ML models for transaction monitoring
  • Risk scoring: user behavior analysis, anomaly detection
  • Identity verification: document verification, biometrics, fake detection
  • Transaction monitoring: suspicious activity detection and reporting
  • Multi-factor security: 2FA/MFA, device fingerprinting, behavioral biometrics
  • Investigation tools: internal tools for fraud team
Payment processing and operations
Reliable payment systems and operations
  • Payment gateway integration: Stripe, Adyen, Plaid, Dwolla, etc.
  • Transaction reconciliation systems: automated matching, discrepancy resolution
  • Failed payment handling: retry logic, dunning management
  • Multi-currency: currency conversion, international payments
  • Settlement: bank reconciliation, ledger systems
  • Payment methods: cards, ACH, wire transfers, digital wallets
Financial calculations and ledgers
Accurate financial systems and accounting
  • Double-entry bookkeeping: proper ledger design, transaction integrity
  • Interest calculations: compound interest, APR, payment schedules
  • Credit scoring: ML models for creditworthiness assessment
  • Portfolio management: asset allocation, rebalancing, performance tracking
  • Tax calculations: tax withholding, tax reporting generation, international taxation
  • Reporting: financial statements, regulatory reports, customer statements
Scale and performance
Handling high loads with reliability
  • High transaction volume: processing millions of transactions per day
  • Real-time processing: transaction confirmation in milliseconds
  • Database optimization: sharding, read replicas, caching strategies
  • Queue management: asynchronous processing of non-critical operations
  • Load testing: ensuring the system handles peak loads
  • Monitoring and alerts: real-time system health, transaction monitoring

Common use cases

Specialized solutions for different FinTech sectors

Digital banking and neobanks
  • Banking system architecture
  • Account management and KYC
  • Card issuance and management
  • Real-time transaction processing
  • Mobile banking applications
Lending
  • Loan origination systems (LOS)
  • Credit decision algorithms
  • Payment processing and collections
  • Risk assessment
  • Loan servicing platforms
Payment processing
  • Payment gateway integration
  • Merchant onboarding and KYC
  • Transaction routing and optimization
  • Transaction reconciliation
  • Fraud detection and prevention
Wealth management and investments
  • Portfolio management systems
  • Trading platform architecture
  • Market data integration
  • Risk analytics and reporting
  • Robo-advisory algorithms
Personal finance management
  • Account aggregation (Plaid, Yodlee)
  • Budgeting and expense analysis
  • Bill payment automation
  • Financial insights and recommendations
  • Credit score monitoring

Technology stack and architecture

Proven technologies for financial systems

Backend
  • Node.js, Python, Java
  • .NET/C# for complex calculations
  • PostgreSQL (ACID-compliant)
  • MongoDB, Redis
Databases and queues
  • PostgreSQL for transactions
  • Redis for caching
  • RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS
  • Asynchronous processing
Payment APIs
  • Stripe, Plaid, Dwolla
  • Marqeta, Unit, Synapse
  • Banking API partners
  • Cryptocurrency gateways
Infrastructure
  • AWS, GCP, Azure
  • Hybrid solutions for compliance
  • Vault for secrets
  • AWS KMS, HSM
Monitoring and security
  • DataDog, New Relic
  • PagerDuty, Splunk
  • Intrusion detection systems
  • SIEM solutions

How it works

1

Month 1: Security and compliance audit

4 weeks

Security assessment and penetration testing, compliance gap analysis, architecture review for financial integrity, critical risk identification, quick security fixes.

2

Month 2-3: Infrastructure and core systems

8 weeks

Security control implementation, payment processing optimization, fraud detection systems, audit logging and monitoring, disaster recovery process setup.

3

Month 4-6: Compliance and optimization

12 weeks

SOC2/PCI-DSS certification process, performance optimization, automated compliance reporting, team training on security practices, documentation and guides.

Results you can expect

Security and compliance
  • SOC2 Type II or PCI-DSS certification
  • Zero security incidents
  • Comprehensive audit trails
  • Automated compliance reporting
  • Secure development practices
Reliability and performance
  • 99.99%+ uptime
  • Transaction processing in milliseconds
  • Zero financial discrepancies
  • Automated transaction reconciliation
  • Disaster recovery algorithm tested and ready
Business impact
  • Passing banking partner due diligence
  • 60-80% reduction in fraud losses
  • Faster payment processing
  • Reduced compliance costs (automation)
  • Customer trust and confidence

Who this is for

Pre-Seed/Seed stage
Building first version of FinTech product. Security and compliance from day one. Integration with banks/payment partners.
Series A
Scaling transaction volume. SOC2/PCI-DSS certification. Fraud prevention at scale.
Series A+ and scaling
Expanding multi-product line. International expansion (new regulations). Building compliance team.
Enterprise and established companies
Complex security and compliance requirements. Multi-regional operations. Integration with legacy systems.

Pricing

Suitable packages for FinTech companies

Contract Length:

Growth CTO

Most popular

$6,000per month

10 hours per week, 40 hours per month

Post-Seed to Series A startups actively building product and team (3 to 10 engineers).

  • Weekly call with founders (1 hour)
  • Bi-weekly sprint reviews with the team
  • Active hiring involvement: sourcing, interviews, offers, onboarding
  • Product architecture and technical roadmap ownership
  • Emergency availability for critical situations
  • Slack support (24-hour response time)

What's included:

  • Quarterly OKRs for the technical team
  • Hiring playbook for first 5-10 engineers
  • Architecture Decision Records (ADR)

Outcome:A solid technical foundation and team ready for rapid growth and product scaling without chaos.

Contract term:from 3 months

Scale CTO

$12,000per month

≈3 days per week, 80 hours per month

Series A+ startups with 15-20+ engineers preparing for the next funding round.

  • Everything from Growth CTO package
  • Participation in executive meetings and investor discussions
  • Building engineering management team (leads, engineering managers)
  • Due diligence support for fundraising
  • Organizational design: team structure, processes, rituals
  • Technical debt strategy and refactoring roadmap
  • Vendor and partner negotiations (AWS, third-party services, contractors)

What's included:

  • Engineering handbook and team culture code
  • Leveling and compensation framework
  • Engineering metrics dashboards (DORA, velocity, code quality, etc.)
  • Incident management and on-call rotation

Outcome:A mature engineering organization with clear processes, metrics, and a culture of product ownership.

Contract term:from 6 months

Related services

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Frequently asked questions

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Fractional CTO for FinTech and Financial Services - Anton Golosnichenko - Fractional CTO