Banking & payments · Fraud & risk · Data & AI
We help fintech founders make the calls that are expensive to undo — banks, payments, fraud, and data. Senior operators, seed to Series C+. No junior teams, no slide decks.
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Get these right early and they compound. Get them wrong and they're expensive to unwind. We go deep on all four — plus the AI now reshaping them.
The right banks, rails, and partners — on economics that hold up as you scale. We structure sponsor-bank programs (the bank that lets you issue cards or move money) and pick your processors and payment paths.
How money moves between businesses — and whether each flow makes or leaks money. We pick the right rail per flow and build card and embedded-payment programs that pay for themselves.
Most firms treat fraud as compliance. We run it as performance — lower losses, more good customers approved, fewer disputes. It moves your bottom line and still passes diligence.
Turn the transaction data your flows generate into a new revenue line. Because it runs on the same models that power your fraud defense, the two compound instead of competing — built with privacy and consent from the start.
AI now touches all four decisions above. We put it into production — with the guardrails and governance sponsor banks and regulators expect — and tell you where it earns its place versus where it quietly adds risk.
We work alongside your team on the calls that matter — close enough to course-correct and lock in the gains.
A focused assessment of where growth is stuck and where the upside is.
A clear, prioritized plan. Sequenced moves, not a 200-page deck.
We work alongside your team to ship the moves that matter.
We stay close enough to course-correct and lock in the gains.
Every engagement is scoped to a number — loss rate, approval rate, revenue line — that we name with you before we start. Specific, verifiable proof points will land here as client results clear confidentiality.
Banking programs, payment stacks, and sponsor-bank deals chosen right the first time.
Fraud run as a P&L lever — loss-rate and approval-rate targets hit, disputes managed — with controls that still pass diligence.
Risk controls and operating models that survive 10× volume.
Payment economics that hold up as you scale.
Payment data packaged into a new, compliant revenue product — off the same feature store that powers fraud.
AI is moving into the core of finance — fraud scoring, payment routing, case triage, agents that act on policy. We help you separate the genuine edge from the hype, then build it so it survives diligence and scale.
A clear read on where AI and agentic systems genuinely improve a payments, fraud, or risk decision — and where they quietly add risk. No hype, no science projects.
The human-in-the-loop controls, model governance, and audit trail that sponsor banks and regulators expect — designed in from the start, not bolted on after an incident.
A path to put AI and agents into production in the right order — grounded in hands-on experience building risk, fraud, and decisioning systems inside the institutions that run the rails.
A running read on the regulation, diligence, and AI shifts that move payments and fraud decisions. Updated July 2026.
On June 9, 2026 Judge Brian Cogan granted preliminary approval to Visa and Mastercard’s revised $38B settlement with roughly 12 million merchants — a ~10 bp average credit-interchange cut for five years, a 1.25% cap on standard consumer credit for eight years, and weakened Honor-All-Cards rules. Walmart and the NRF are already objecting, and the separate Linney’s Pizza challenge to the Fed’s Reg II debit cap is live again at the Sixth Circuit — so interchange economics stay unsettled into 2027.
Visa/Mastercard $38B settlement details — Optimized PaymentsEffective June 9, 2026, the OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve finalized the removal of “reputation risk” from their supervisory guidance, ending the catch-all that fueled debanking debates. For sponsor-bank and BaaS diligence the read is practical: partners can’t lean on vague “reputational” comfort — examiners want documented third-party risk management, BSA/AML results, and settlement and reconciliation controls that stand on their own.
Reputation risk removed from bank supervision — Spencer FaneThe Financial Stability Board’s June 10, 2026 consultation on responsible AI adoption — comments close July 22, final report due October — recommends “human-in-command” boundaries and, for agents moving customer funds, dual authorization above a threshold and per-transaction audit trails. Days later, on June 30, Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden signaled bespoke agentic-AI regulation may be needed in payments and trading, floating “kill switches” and circuit breakers. The direction of travel for agentic-payments controls is now on the record.
Sound practices for AI adoption — Financial Stability BoardWatching one of these closely? Book a working call — we’ll tell you what we’d do.
fi-nex is a boutique banking and payments advisory for fintech. We're operators — we built and scaled banking, payment, fraud, risk, and data products inside the institutions that run the rails, with backgrounds spanning Fiserv, FICO, Oracle, Citi, and Wells Fargo.
We know how these decisions actually get made — not in theory, but from having built and run them at scale. You work directly with senior people on a few clients at a time. No junior teams, no boilerplate.
Funds partner with banks, cap-table platforms, and tools for their portfolios. Nobody has partnered with a domain-expert payments, fraud, and data advisory — the one that helps founders make the sponsor-bank, fraud, and economics calls those other partners are trying to sell into. We're building that program, and we intend to be the first.
Priority senior-operator access for your seed to Series C+ founders — not a junior team.
Covers the four decisions that make or break a fintech: sponsor banks, fraud economics, payment stacks, diligence-ready AI.
Independent advisor, not a vendor — we sit on the founder's side of the table, on terms you negotiate once.
Bring us the hard one — the processor, the sponsor bank, the fraud model. We'll tell you straight what we'd do and why.
Straight answers on what fi-nex does and how we work.
fi-nex is a boutique advisory for fintech founders, seed to Series C+. We go deep on four decisions: your banking and payments stack, B2B payments, fraud (run as performance, not just compliance), and turning payment data into revenue — plus the AI reshaping all four. You work with senior operators only, a few clients at a time.
A BIN sponsor (or sponsor bank) is the regulated bank that lets a fintech issue cards or move money on the card networks. Choosing the wrong one creates cost, compliance, and scaling problems that are expensive to unwind. We help you shortlist and select sponsor banks, structure and negotiate the deal, and prepare the risk and compliance posture sponsor banks actually scrutinize during diligence.
We bring deep, hands-on expertise in payment fraud and identity. We design fraud strategy and detection models, build identity, KYC/KYB and onboarding risk controls, and shape the overall risk and compliance posture that sponsor banks and investors examine. The goal: defenses that pass diligence and still perform as transaction volume grows 10×.
Payment data commercialization is turning the data your payment and transaction flows generate into a revenue line — through new data products, partnerships, insights, and pricing power. Drawing on deep data-commercialization experience from the institutions that run the rails, we help you identify what data is valuable, package it into products and partnerships, build the revenue and pricing model, and do it compliantly with the right privacy, consent, and governance in place.
AI and agentic decisioning are now moving into the core of payments, fraud, and risk — from real-time fraud scoring to agents that route payments, triage cases, and act on policy. We help fintechs apply this credibly: where AI and agentic systems genuinely improve a payments or fraud decision versus where they add risk, how to design the guardrails, human-in-the-loop controls, and model governance that sponsor banks and regulators expect, and how to sequence adoption so it survives diligence and scale. We draw on hands-on experience building risk, fraud, and decisioning systems inside the institutions that run the rails — so the advice is grounded in what actually works in production, not hype.
Fintech and payments companies from seed to Series C+. The highest-stakes banking and fraud decisions get made early, so we engage early and stay through scale. We're a fit for founders and their risk, payments, and product leaders facing a board-visible call who want senior operator judgment — not a junior team and a 200-page deck.
We're operators who built and scaled payment, fraud, risk, and data products inside the institutions that run the rails — backgrounds spanning Fiserv, FICO, Oracle, Citi, and Wells Fargo. You work directly with senior people, not junior analysts. We take a small number of clients, go deep, and deliver sequenced moves you can execute — not boilerplate slideware.
Book a 30-minute working call. Bring the payments or fraud decision you're stuck on and we'll spend the time on it. If we're the right fit, we move into a focused engagement: diagnose where growth is stuck, decide on a prioritized plan, execute alongside your team, and stay close enough to course-correct and lock in the gains.
Send a few lines below and a senior operator replies within one business day — usually with a first read on your situation, not a calendar link. Bring the payments or fraud decision you're facing and we'll spend the call on it, not on small talk.