TRUST ISN'T MARKETED. IT'S BUILT.
Wrong partner. Wrong license. Wrong model.
I've fixed all three.
Find the right opportunity.- Work with the right partner.
- Win the customer on day one.
I've built digital banks from scratch. I know exactly where these decisions could go wrong
The first call is free. If I am not the right person for this, I will say so on the call.
Where I did the work
Product & growth leadership · Digital banking · Market entry
insha
Europe's first interest free digital bank. Proposition, BaaS partners, experience and growth, built from zero.
RUUT
An İşbank company. A money transfer app turned into a digital bank, and taken into the UK.
Turkcell
Paycell and Financell, international market expansion.
Albaraka
Digital strategy and competitive research.
insha
Europe's first interest free digital bank. Proposition, BaaS partners, experience and growth, built from zero.
RUUT
An İşbank company. A money transfer app turned into a digital bank, and taken into the UK.
Turkcell
Paycell and Financell, international market expansion.
Albaraka
Digital strategy and competitive research.
Any of this sound familiar?
The launch date moves out by a month, every month.
The business case is a spreadsheet somebody filled with assumptions, and the one assumption that decides whether this makes money has never been tested.
There are three product ideas on the table and no honest way, from the inside, to tell which one earns at your real volume.
Three providers sent proposals. On paper they look identical, the prices are far apart, nobody explains why, and you still cannot tell which one will hurt you in year two.
The board has asked which country is next, and proving it takes someone who has run this playbook before.
You took the product that works here into the new market. In month four somebody worked out it cannot legally operate in the shape it was built.
The app looks good and people still start opening an account and never finish.
The designer's flow came back from legal with changes nobody understands. It got redrawn. It came back again.
The strategy deck was excellent, and turning it into a live product takes hands on experience, not another deck.
None of this means the idea is wrong. It usually means one early decision was wrong, and nobody caught it in time.
If this sounds like you, you are in the right place.
The side that builds it.
Four kinds of supplier sit around this problem. Here is what each one actually hands you.
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What I do differently
01
I do not leave a deck on the table
Most people in this market deliver a document and go. The document is not the problem. The problem is the six months after it, when nobody in the building knows how to turn it into a live product. I take the work from the decision through to the launch, and the middle of it does not go to an agency or a subcontractor.
02
Nine is the bridge
Nine is the last step, the point right before something is finished. The gap between a strategy and a live product, between an idea and a customer using it. Most projects stall exactly there, and that gap is where I work. Spark is what gets it moving again.
03
I sit at the partner table, not behind you
Licence conversations, BaaS negotiations, regulator questions, compliance reviews. I have been on both sides of those tables and I go into them with you, not with advice about how to go into them.
04
We ship the end-to-end experience
Experience design, UX and UI, delivered by people who excel at this, run by someone who knows what regulation will and will not allow on a screen. Deliver a production ready experience, not a concept.
Want the banking side taken off your plate?
"He identified new business opportunities and developed creative solutions that moved our objectives forward, inside the limits both sides actually had. He drove the market analysis and the strategic planning, and then he built and held the partnership itself rather than handing it on."
Head of Digital Banking · European BaaS partner
Why I do this
Money can't be sold like chocolate. It's earned through trust.
I learned that building a bank from scratch in a new country. We had no name and no history behind us. So we went to the ground. We met people face to face, we grilled with them, we went to their weddings. Because before anyone hands over their money, they want to know there is a real person on the other side.
Fintechs sometimes underestimate this. Banks do something else. They built their whole system on trust, then let comfort and the regulation trap stop them from developing it any further.
I started fspark9 to take what I learned in the field, the hard way, and turn it into something that saves you the same pain.
That is where the name comes from too. Nine is the last step, the point right before something is finished. Most projects stall exactly there. Spark is what gets it moving again.
Four ways to start
Most people come in through one of these and then hand me the rest.
And when you want the whole build
These four are doors, not the house. Most clients come in through one and then hand me the whole build. Partner, licence route, regulatory structure, the product itself and the launch. I run it until it is live, and I do not hand the middle of it to an agency or a subcontractor. I am in your team while it happens, and I leave when it is finished.
Case studies
One was built from nothing and became a first in Europe. The other was already running, too small, and had to become something else in a market it had never traded in.
How I work
You tell me where things stand. We look at whether I can genuinely add value.
If I cannot, I will say so plainly and point you to whatever will actually help. No deck, no pitch, no follow up sequence.
fspark9 in the media
Where I have talked about this work, and where other people have written about it.
Questions people ask before we talk
"On a cross border project with teams in several countries, he drove the communication and the allocation of work, and he did it with a level of detail on the payments side that you rarely get from one person. That combination is why the project landed."
Programme Director · Cross border payments
In your team until it's live.
Not a report, not a retainer, not a subcontractor in the middle. I come in at the decision and I leave when customers are using it. The first call is free. Tell me where things stand and we will see together whether I can help. If I cannot, you will still leave with two or three things worth doing.
The first call is free. If I am not the right person for this, I will say so on the call.