Operator, not adviser
Payments and fintech,
built by someone who's done it.
I'm Stephen Swan. I've spent 20 years building wallets, cards, mobile money and remittance businesses across the UK, Middle East and Southeast Asia — from licence and partner stack to launch and scale and every hard operational mile in between.
Some of the brands I have built and delivered for
20
Years building and running payments businesses
$4bn+
Annual payment flows managed at Ooredoo
1m+
Wallet customers served at Wave Money
0→1
Licences, products and teams built from a blank page
The situations I get called into.
Some urgent, some simply too expensive to get wrong. From first idea to live programme — if one of these is on your desk, we should talk.
You have an idea — and real money about to follow it
Before you commit a build budget, raise on a plan or sign a partner, I pressure-test the idea like an operator: the economics, the regulatory path, the partner stack and what it genuinely costs to reach revenue. Cheaper to find the flaws now than in production.
You need to launch a payments product from zero
Licence, partners, product, ops, compliance — in the right order, without burning runway on the wrong build. I've taken mobile money and card programmes from blank page to live customers in markets far harder than the UK.
You've raised, but there's no operator in the building
Founders selling and building; nobody owning ops, partners, compliance and the numbers day to day. I step in as a fractional COO — senior enough to own it, flexible enough not to sit on your payroll forever.
Compliance is in the way — or a partner has raised a flag
KYC rejecting good customers, screening rules generating noise or a BIN sponsor and regulator asking hard questions. I've sat on both sides of those conversations — I tune the machine so it satisfies your partners without strangling growth.
A critical programme is off the rails
Slipping dates, a delivery partner who's stopped being straight with you, a launch the board has already announced. I embed, find the real blockers and get it moving — or tell you honestly if it can't be saved as scoped.
You're entering a market everyone else avoids
Frontier and emerging markets where the challenge is 80% regulation, partnerships and trust — and 20% technology. I've built and run payments businesses across the Middle East and Southeast Asia, including some of the hardest corridors there are.
How I work
Four steps. No theatre.
01
Scope
We define the real problem — not the one in the brief — and agree what success looks like before a penny is committed.
02
Shape
I turn it into a plan your team, board and partners can actually execute: sequenced, costed and honest about the risks.
03
Solve
I do the work — embedded with your team or leading the workstream — and I stay accountable for the outcome, not the deliverable.
04
Scale
I hand over something that runs without me: documented, owned by your people and built for the size you're becoming, not the size you are.
Where I can help
Senior hands, not slide decks.
Payments & wallet builds
Cards, wallets, remittances and the partner stack behind them — from concept to live customers.
Compliance & risk that works
KYC, AML, screening and partner oversight, tuned for growth rather than against it.
Fractional COO / MD
Day-to-day operating leadership for funded fintechs that need an operator without a full-time hire.
Fractional CPO
Product leadership that ships: roadmap, backlog and delivery cadence driven by commercial priorities, not feature wish-lists.
Market entry & partnerships
Licensing routes, local partners and go-to-market for new territories — including the ones others won't touch.
Programme rescue
Recovery of critical launches and migrations that have lost dates, trust or direction.
Advisory
Independent advice for payments and fintech operators and investors — board-level counsel without the retainer bloat.
Practical AI adoption
Where AI genuinely saves money or risk in a payments business — and where it's just expensive noise.
Every engagement has transparent, published pricing. See services & pricing →
Thirty minutes. No pitch, no deck.
Tell me what you're facing. I'll tell you honestly whether I can help, what it would take and what it would cost. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so and point you at who is.
