Fintech & Payments · Main area
From business model to licence, and from licence to go-live.
Bizando works alongside fintech, payments and crypto-asset companies in Italy and the EU on the decisions that shape their trajectory: which business model and which authorisation scope, how to secure an EMI, PI or CASP licence, how to choose processors and partners, how to scale the operating structure and keep the regulatory setup aligned.
Twenty minutes, no commitment.
Who Bizando works with
Bizando works with regulated firms, or firms on their way there, almost always at one of four moments. Early-stage fintechs building a licence application, who have to settle scope and jurisdiction before a single line of the dossier is written. EMIs and PIs already authorised and now scaling — volumes, markets, product lines — finding that the setup built to obtain the licence does not carry the phase that follows. CASPs structuring their MiCA arrangements against deadlines that do not move. Payments operators with cross-border exposure in the EU, where the same activity changes character depending on which authority is looking at it.
What they have in common is not size. It is that the next regulatory decision has immediate operational consequences, and that in-house — for now — the seniority to take it without hesitating is missing. It is not a problem of available hours: it is a problem of judgement. My job is to make that judgement available on a predictable cadence, and to produce the documents that put it in writing.
Areas of work
Strategic and operational advisory, not legal or reserved activity: Bizando prepares the decisions and the documents; the client and its professionals sign them.
- Payment services, acquiring and issuing Operating models and requirements for anyone issuing, acquiring or distributing payment instruments.
- Embedded finance and fintech business models Choosing the authorisation scope and the partnership model that best fits the product.
- PI and EMI licence readiness Gap analysis, remediation plan and dossier preparation ahead of filing.
- Product strategy, pricing and go-to-market From the regulatory scope to the offer — what to sell, to whom, on what terms.
- Selection of processors, providers and partners Requirements, shortlist and comparison of the options, with the regulatory reading of each.
- Business planning, governance and operating model Business plan and financial model, governance arrangements and internal controls.
- Project and institutional documentation Preparation and coordination of the dossier, from policies to correspondence with the authority.
- Operational readiness and go-live Processes, delegations and controls in place before launch, not after.
Three engagement models
One domain, three ways of working in it.
In regulated fintech Bizando works in three forms. Which one fits depends on how continuous the need is, not on how large the company is.
Retainer
Ongoing advisory, on a cadence that is not renegotiated every month.
Three scope-based tiers, a three-month minimum term, then rolling with 30 days' notice. It is the right model when regulatory decisions recur and dossiers evolve over time.
Fixed-scope packs
Defined scope, defined price, a delivery date.
A self-contained regulatory deliverable, for when the need is specific and has a deadline: an AML manual, an EMI gap analysis, a MiCA whitepaper.
Document & automation engineering
The documentation toolchain that carries the regulatory work.
Infrastructure and automation for teams producing regulatory documentation at volume: structured templates, consistency checks, versioning, assisted drafting.
Fixed scope
Fixed-scope packs: when the need has a date.
A pack is a self-contained regulatory deliverable: scope defined before the work starts, price defined before the work starts, a delivery date. It is not a retainer in miniature — it is the right model when the need is specific, typically because there is an application to file or an authority request to answer within a deadline.
The scope goes into the proposal before signature: what is in, what is out, how many rounds of revision are included. If the work turns up something else, Bizando says so and quotes it separately. It does not absorb it by widening the scope quietly: that is the fastest route to delivering late and badly.
- AML manual and CFT procedures A full framework, or a review of an existing one, aligned to the EU AML package.
- EMI or PI gap analysis The distance between the current setup and the authorisation requirements of the chosen jurisdiction.
- MiCA whitepaper Drafting and cross-document consistency for crypto-asset service providers.
Document & automation engineering
The infrastructure underneath the documents.
It is the least visible part of the work and the real differentiator. An authorisation dossier is not a document: it is dozens of interconnected documents that start contradicting one another the moment someone changes a line in one of them. Much of the documentation risk originates there, not in the reading of the rule.
What I build — for myself and, where it helps, inside the client's team — is the toolchain that turns that consistency into a control rather than a hope: structured templates for recurring sections, consistency checks across documents, versioning tracked from first draft to delivery, Python automation for the repetitive part of production and checking.
Bizando does not sell software. It sells the fact that the dossier still holds together at the twelfth iteration, and that the reasoning behind every documentation choice can be reconstructed months later, in front of an auditor or an authority.
- Documentation toolchain Templates, repository structure and versioning conventions for a team producing regulatory material.
- Consistency checks Systematic verification across sections and across parallel dossiers, instead of operational memory.
- Python automation The repetitive part of production and checking, taken out of manual work.
How I work, in short
My senior judgement — on strategy, on reading the rules, on the wording addressed to an authority — is amplified by AI systems specialised in fast regulatory research, first drafts, comparison across versions, and the synthesis of extensive bodies of regulation. The human part stays where it counts: the critical decisions, the validation of every section, the regulatory positioning choices.
The gain is not that I write faster. It is that more iterations fit into the same interval, and that consistency across documents becomes a systematic control instead of an act of memory. What reaches the client is always and only finished output: reviewed, validated, signed off by my judgement. The method shortens production time; it does not move responsibility.
Track record
Professional evidence
Bizando supported a fintech group in the authorisation of a payment institution within the group by a central bank of the European Union, from the start of the project to the grant of the licence. It drafted the business plan, the financial model and much of the authorisation file; coordinated the AML/CFT framework, governance and internal controls; led the search for key anti-money laundering roles; and prepared the correspondence with the authority.
Other cases are discussed in a discovery call, in anonymised form.
Declared scope
Where the advisory ends, and who does the rest
Strategic and operational advisory, not legal or reserved activity. I say it here and I repeat it in the discovery call, before it appears in a contract.
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I am not a lawyer.
I do not produce formal legal opinions and I do not represent anyone in court. Where the signature of a professional admitted to the bar is needed, I refer to partner law firms.
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I do not speak to the authority on the client's behalf.
I prepare the documentation and the strategic shape of the responses. The signature and the formal exchange remain the client's or its legal representative's.
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I do not develop software or implement systems.
Advisory defines the what and the why. IT implementation — AML systems, SCA engines, scheme integrations — remains with the client's technical team or with specialised vendors.
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I do not guarantee that a licence will be granted.
The assessment of fitness belongs to the competent authority and cannot be delegated to an advisor. What I answer for is the quality and the defensibility of the dossier.
A first conversation, twenty minutes.
If one of the situations above resembles yours, the quickest way to find out whether it makes sense to work together is to talk. Twenty minutes, no commitment: where you are, where you want to get to, which of the three models fits — or whether none of them does. If it is not the case, I will tell you on the call.
Opens the Cal.com calendar: you pick the date and time.
Prefer to start by email? info@bizando.com — I reply within one working day.