Build vs Buy Payment Infrastructure: A Decision Framework for Fintechs

Every fintech building global payment capabilities faces a fundamental decision: build the infrastructure yourself or partner with a provider. It's a choice that affects your time to market, operating costs, engineering resources, and ultimately your competitive position.

This guide provides a framework for making the build vs buy decision for cross-border payment infrastructure. We'll cover total cost of ownership, hidden complexity, decision criteria, and when each approach makes sense.

Building your own payment infrastructure is tempting. The arguments are compelling: full control over the user experience, no per-transaction fees to a third party, complete ownership of the technology stack, and differentiation through proprietary capabilities.

Some companies have built legendary payment infrastructure. Stripe built their own acquiring relationships. Wise built a peer-to-peer network. Square built an end-to-end commerce platform. If they can do it, why can't you?

The answer is: you probably can. The question is whether you should. The companies that successfully built payment infrastructure share common traits: payments are their core product (not a feature), they raised hundreds of millions in capital, they spent years building before achieving scale, and they were willing to become regulated financial institutions.

For most fintechs, payments are a means to an end. You need to move money to deliver your actual product, whether that's payroll, marketplace transactions, treasury management, or embedded finance. In these cases, building payment infrastructure from scratch means competing with specialists while trying to build your core product.

Payment infrastructure looks simple from the outside. You send money, it arrives. How hard can it be? The complexity hides in the details.

To move money internationally, you need bank accounts in multiple countries. Banks don't just open accounts for anyone. You'll need to demonstrate regulatory compliance (often requiring licenses you don't have yet), negotiate terms and pricing for each relationship, maintain minimum balances and activity levels, and manage the ongoing relationship as requirements change. Each banking relationship takes 3-12 months to establish. If you want coverage in 20 countries, you're looking at 20+ separate negotiations, each with unique requirements.

Moving money requires licenses. In the US alone, you need money transmitter licenses in 49 states plus territories. Each state has different requirements, fees, bonding amounts, and renewal processes. Internationally, you'll face Payment Institution licenses in Europe, FCA authorization in the UK, MAS licensing in Singapore, and dozens of other regulatory frameworks.

Obtaining and maintaining licenses requires dedicated compliance staff, ongoing reporting, regular audits, and significant legal fees. Most fintechs underestimate this by 5-10x.

Each bank has its own integration method. Some offer modern APIs. Many require SFTP file uploads, proprietary protocols, or even manual processes. You'll build integrations for SWIFT messaging (MT103, MT202), local payment networks like ACH, SEPA, SPEI, PIX, and FPS, real-time payment systems where available, and FX platforms for currency conversion.

Each integration requires development, testing, certification, and ongoing maintenance. When banks change their systems (which happens regularly), you scramble to update.

Cross-border payments require robust compliance systems. You'll need KYC/KYB verification for customers, real-time sanctions screening against OFAC, EU, UK, and UN lists, transaction monitoring for suspicious patterns, SAR/STR filing procedures, and record retention for 5-7 years.

Building this infrastructure means either developing in-house systems or integrating multiple vendors for identity verification, sanctions screening, and case management.

Payments fail. Transactions get stuck. Compliance flags trigger. You need operations teams who understand the nuances of each corridor, can troubleshoot failed payments, manage exception handling, and communicate with banking partners. This requires specialized knowledge that's hard to hire and expensive to retain.

Let's break down the real costs of building versus buying payment infrastructure.

• Engineering team (4-6 engineers): $600K-$1.2M
• Compliance/legal staff (2-3 people): $300K-$500K
• Banking relationship manager: $150K-$250K
• Licensing fees and legal (US MTLs + 2-3 international): $500K-$1M
• Compliance vendor stack (KYC, sanctions, monitoring): $100K-$300K
• Bank account setup and minimum balances: $500K-$2M
• Infrastructure and security: $100K-$200K
• Year One Total: $2.25M-$5.45M

• Engineering maintenance and improvements: $400K-$800K
• Compliance and operations staff: $400K-$600K
• License renewals and audits: $200K-$400K
• Vendor subscriptions: $100K-$300K
• Banking fees and float requirements: $200K-$500K
• Ongoing Annual Total: $1.3M-$2.6M

• Integration engineering (one-time): $50K-$150K (2-4 engineers for 1-3 months)
• Platform fees: Varies by provider (often $0 or minimal)
• Per-transaction fees: $2-$15 per transaction depending on corridor and method
• FX spread: 0.5%-1.5% on currency conversion
• Ongoing maintenance: $20K-$50K annually

When does building make financial sense? Let's model it.

Assume you're paying $8 average per transaction with a provider. Your build costs $3M in year one and $2M annually thereafter. To break even on the build investment, you'd need to process 375,000+ transactions in year one (just to cover fixed costs), then 250,000+ transactions annually to beat ongoing costs. That's over 1,000 transactions per day before building makes economic sense.

And this assumes your in-house system achieves comparable reliability, coverage, and cost efficiency, which takes years to develop.

Financial analysis misses the biggest cost: time.

Building payment infrastructure from scratch takes 12-24 months minimum. That's 12-24 months where you can't serve customers who need the capability, competitors who chose to buy are already in market, your engineering team isn't working on your core product, and market conditions may have changed.

Integrating with a provider takes 4-12 weeks for a typical implementation. That's a 10-20x difference in time to market.

For early-stage companies, this time difference can be existential. For growth-stage companies, it's the difference between capturing a market opportunity and watching competitors take it.

Use this framework to evaluate your specific situation.

• Core product (you're building a payment company): Building may make sense long-term
• Feature (payments enable your actual product): Buy and focus on differentiation elsewhere

• Under 100K transactions/year: Buy (building is not economically rational)
• 100K-500K transactions/year: Buy (you're approaching scale but not there yet)
• 500K-1M transactions/year: Evaluate carefully (you might be at the crossover point)
• Over 1M transactions/year: Building becomes more attractive (but still evaluate total cost)

• 1-5 corridors: Buy (complexity is low, but so is your leverage with banks)
• 5-20 corridors: Buy (complexity is high, providers have established relationships)
• 20+ corridors: Buy unless you have massive volume in each (otherwise you'll never get favorable bank terms)

• No payments experts: Buy (you'll make expensive mistakes learning)
• Some payments experience: Buy initially, evaluate building later
• Deep payments expertise (ex-Stripe, ex-Wise, etc.): Building becomes more feasible

• Bootstrapped or seed stage: Buy (preserve capital for core product)
• Series A/B: Buy (focus resources on growth, not infrastructure)
• Series C+ with $50M+ raised: Building becomes feasible if strategically important

• Urgent (customers waiting, competitive pressure): Buy
• Important but not urgent: Buy to launch, evaluate building later
• Long-term strategic play: Building may be justified if you can afford to wait

• Want to avoid regulatory complexity: Buy (provider holds licenses)
• Willing to obtain licenses in 1-2 markets: Hybrid approach possible
• Ready to become a regulated financial institution: Building is on the table

Build vs buy isn't always binary. Many successful companies use a hybrid approach.

Launch with a provider to validate your business model and reach initial scale. As you grow, identify specific corridors or capabilities where building makes sense. Build incrementally in high-volume corridors where you have negotiating leverage and can achieve better economics. Keep the provider for long-tail corridors where volume doesn't justify the investment.

One hybrid approach is building your own global RTP network using a provider's infrastructure. You open accounts through the provider, maintain your own float, set your own FX rates, and control the customer experience, but you don't build the underlying bank integrations or compliance infrastructure.

This approach gives you more control over economics and user experience while avoiding the heaviest infrastructure investments.

Some companies use multiple providers strategically. Primary provider for most corridors, specialist providers for specific regions or use cases, and direct bank relationships for highest-volume corridors. This provides redundancy and negotiating leverage without the full complexity of building everything yourself.

Despite the costs and complexity, building payment infrastructure is the right choice for some companies.

• Payments are your core product and primary revenue driver
• You have 1M+ transactions annually with clear path to 10M+
• You're focused on a small number of high-volume corridors
• You have deep payments expertise on your founding or leadership team
• You've raised significant capital ($50M+) and can invest for the long term
• You need capabilities that no provider offers
• Your business model requires unit economics that providers can't match

Wise (TransferWise) built their own infrastructure because their entire value proposition was cheaper international transfers. They needed to control every basis point of cost. Stripe built payment infrastructure because processing payments is their product. They needed deep integration with card networks and banks to deliver their developer experience. Square built infrastructure because they were creating an entirely new category (mobile card acceptance) that existing providers couldn't serve.

Notice the pattern: these companies are all payment companies first.

For most fintechs, buying payment infrastructure is the right choice.

• Payments are a feature that enables your core product
• You're processing under 500K transactions annually
• You need broad geographic coverage (10+ countries)
• Speed to market is critical
• Your team doesn't have deep payments expertise
• You want to focus engineering resources on your differentiated product
• You'd rather not deal with regulatory complexity

Payroll platforms use payment providers because their value is in HR software, compliance, and employer services, not moving money. Marketplaces use providers because their value is in connecting buyers and sellers, not payment infrastructure. ERP and accounting software use providers because their value is in financial management tools, not payment rails.

These companies chose to buy infrastructure so they could focus on what makes them unique.

Routefusion provides cross-border payment infrastructure designed for fintechs who want to buy rather than build.

• Single API for 185+ countries: One integration, global coverage
• Multi-rail access: SWIFT, local rails, and real-time payment networks
• Built-in compliance: KYC/KYB, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring
• Flexible models: Use our infrastructure or build your own RTP network on top
• Fast integration: Weeks, not months or years
• Transparent pricing: Know your costs upfront

Our customers chose to buy so they could focus on building payroll platforms that serve global workforces, marketplaces that connect international buyers and sellers, treasury systems that optimize corporate cash management, and embedded finance products that bring payments into software platforms.

They didn't want to become payment infrastructure companies. They wanted to serve their customers.

Typical integrations take 4-12 weeks depending on complexity. A basic integration with a single use case can launch in 2-4 weeks. More complex implementations with multiple payment types, currencies, and custom workflows take 8-12 weeks.

This is common and expected. Start with a provider to validate your business and reach scale. As you grow, you can incrementally build capabilities in specific corridors while maintaining the provider relationship for others. Good providers make this migration path smooth rather than creating lock-in.

You control the customer experience, pricing, and product decisions. The provider handles infrastructure. Think of it like using AWS instead of building your own data centers. You don't control the servers, but you control everything that matters to your customers.

Lock-in risk is real but manageable. Choose providers with standard APIs, maintain your own customer data, and keep the option to add additional providers. The cost of switching providers is typically much lower than the cost of building from scratch.

Yes, most providers including Routefusion offer white-label capabilities. Your customers interact with your brand. The underlying infrastructure is invisible.

The build vs buy decision for payment infrastructure comes down to focus. What is your company uniquely positioned to build? Where should you invest your engineering talent and capital?

For payment companies, building infrastructure is core to the value proposition. For everyone else, buying infrastructure lets you focus on what makes your product unique while leveraging years of specialized development, banking relationships, and regulatory compliance that providers have already built.

The most successful fintechs we work with made a clear-eyed assessment: payments are essential to their product but not their differentiation. They chose to buy infrastructure, launched faster, and put their resources into the features and experiences that set them apart.

Ready to explore what buying looks like? Let's discuss your use case and show you how quickly you can launch global payment capabilities.

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