Strategic finance for payments and fintech
I work with payments and fintech businesses and platforms, and the PE funds that invest in them, to expand margins and build defensible positions. I also advise early-stage fintechs and VCs across the UK and Spain.
If you're weighing up a deal, a new market, an AI investment or a replatforming, happy to talk it through.
When I set up ScalePoint in 2024, fintech valuations were still well below their 2021 highs, but AI looked like the start of the next wave. It was already clear that it would change how payments and fintech businesses make money and how buyers value them.
Before ScalePoint I spent ten years in payments at Citi, Mastercard and Luup, then nearly a decade at Edgar, Dunn & Company, latterly as a Principal, on more than 75 engagements for banks, fintechs, card networks, private equity firms and merchants.
I work with two groups:
01Payments, fintech and PE-backed businesses→ 02Fintech start-ups, founders and connections→Payments, fintech and PE-backed businesses
I advise leadership teams and investors across the payments ecosystem, including acquirers, PSPs, FX providers, open banking platforms and clearing banks. I also work directly with private equity funds and corporate finance advisers on due diligence, exit readiness and the value creation plan.
Strategy and the story
Where the business is going, and how to explain it.
- The overall goal: where the business should be in three to five years, and what that's worth.
- In detail: the goal broken down into targets for each product, market and team.
- The narrative: the story for the board, investors or a buyer, with the numbers behind it.
From plan to delivery
Keeping the plan and the delivery in step.
- Big decisions: the business case for a replatforming, build or buy, or a carve-out or integration after a deal.
- Priorities: which projects to fund first, and what a delay costs when dates slip.
- AI at full volume: what it costs to run once it scales, and which model does the job at that price.
Product and commercial
Where the margin comes from, client by client.
- Unit economics: revenue, cost to serve and margin by client, segment and product, so you can see which ones carry the rest.
- Pricing: tiers and fees set against gross margin, and the features or clients that cost more to serve than they bring in.
- Growth spend: which segments and markets the next pound of growth budget should go to, and the payback on each.
Fintech start-ups, founders and connections
I also work with early-stage fintechs, their founders and the VC funds that back them, with a focus on Spain and the UK.
Introductions and business development
- Partners and customers: introductions in my network, from acquirers, PSPs and banks to merchants and software platforms.
- Investors: VC funds and angels for an early round, and corporate venture teams at banks and payments companies later on. Happy to look at the pitch before the first meeting too.
- Where: mostly the UK and Spain, and also across EMEA and the US.
Market entry: Spain and the UK
- Into the UK: market entry for Spanish fintechs and payments companies, from post-Brexit licensing and which route to take, through to the first partners and customers.
- Into Spain: the same for UK fintechs and payments companies expanding into Spain, and for UK investors looking at Spanish companies, including who to talk to locally.
Reviews before it goes out
- Business cases, investment narratives and pitch decks, before they go to investors, customers or partners such as banks and card schemes.
- After years inside Mastercard and Citi, I can usually tell you how a bank or a card scheme will read it.
Recent work, projects and writing
Client names withheldThe case for pivoting from broker to payments
For a PE-backed FX and payments group: the valuation case for a pivot and replatforming, and the value creation plan behind it.Case note coming soonWho to build for, and where the growth spend should go
For a listed cross-border payments provider: segmenting B2B customers across 13 markets to decide where the growth budget should go.Case note coming soonFinancial intelligence product taken to production
An AI financial intelligence product I took to production myself, with integrations into FreeAgent, Xero and WhatsApp.Case note coming soonPipeline to cash
When the deals you expect to win turn into cash, with VAT and corporation tax included. AI reads your deals; code does the sums.Try it → Labs toolCard fee check
One acquirer statement in, your effective rate out, split into what the card schemes set and what your acquirer adds.Try it → Labs toolFX cost check
Paste the international payments from a bank statement and see what the exchange rate cost against the ECB reference rate.Try it → ArticleFintech and Venture Capital in Spain: A View from Barcelona
How big Spain's fintech and payments scene is, what Barcelona adds to it, and where Spanish companies tend to get stuck.Read → ArticleThe Plan You Inherited
A signed-off plan leaves most of the commercial decisions unmade. Two lenses on what happens next.Read → ArticleFintech Moats in an AI World
Why the next decade of fintech will be defined by infrastructure and operational embeddedness.Read →How to start
Drop me an email and we can talk it through. Every piece of work is agreed in a fixed-price statement of work, signed by both of us before anything starts, and I do the work myself.
martin@scalepointpartners.com
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