The situation
The business wanted to launch a new unit: let customers use their crypto funds through traditional payment methods. The mandate was to ship it fast and cheap, with as little regulatory and licensing spend as possible.
What I did
- Mapped every service a crypto-collateralized card needs and which ones are licensed activities: BIN sponsoring and payment processing, card issuing, loan provision, pledge administration, crypto exchange, plus the unlicensed frontend and distribution.
- Split those layers across licensed and unlicensed entities so the unlicensed operator could run the product without holding a banking license itself.
- Structured the loan and pledge mechanics so the loan is provided and settled against the customer's crypto collateral: title-transfer pledge, claim against equivalent assets, settlement on default.
- Designed the flow end to end: account opening, card issuing, credit limit, crypto collateral, and the default path where the pledge is exchanged to fiat and paid to the creditor.
The result
- Launched in three months.
- Near-zero licensing and regulatory cost, no banking license acquired.