Strategic finance for payments and fintech
I work with payments and fintech businesses, merchants 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 what you pay for payments, 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, clearing banks, high-volume merchants, software platforms and marketplaces. I also work directly with private equity funds and corporate finance advisers on due diligence, deals and the value creation plan that follows.
Deals and transactions
Before, during and after a transaction.
- Before: commercial due diligence for buyers and investors, and exit readiness for sellers, pinning down the valuation drivers and the equity story.
- Carve-outs: what sits on each P&L once the business is split.
- After a merger: the integration plan to capture cost synergies, rationalise product stacks and align go-to-market teams.
AI strategy and economics
The AI you already have, and what to do next.
- Own or partner: where to build it yourself and where to partner, and the lock-in each one brings.
- Cost at full volume: what it will cost to run once it scales, and which model does the job at that price.
- What stays yours: the trade-off between performance, cost and your own IP and data.
Commercial and growth
What drives revenue and margin, and how to lift both.
- Markets and go-to-market: how big a segment or country market is, who is gaining share, and the partner routes and commercial set-up to enter it, including Spain.
- Product and pricing: roadmap, client segments and pricing tiers tied to gross margin, and dropping features nobody pays for.
- Cost to serve: the full run rate from onboarding, KYB and risk to clearing, processing and reconciliation.
Merchants, platforms and marketplaces
What you pay for payments, and what you could earn from them.
- Card acceptance costs: for merchants taking over £1m a year in cards, what you pay, what's negotiable, and the numbers for a renegotiation.
- PSPs and payment operations: choosing the PSP or acquirer that fits your business model and markets, with price as one factor, and help running payments day to day.
- Embedded payments: for platforms and marketplaces, whether to become a payfac or partner with a PSP, and what each one is worth in revenue.
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 soonFintech 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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