The Compliance Balancing Act

Financial services teams are under pressure to deliver digital experiences quickly while satisfying regulators, banking partners, and internal risk committees. Waiting until *after* launch to address compliance creates rework, outages, and lost trust.

Why Compliance Frameworks Matter

Working from recognised frameworks gives product, engineering, and finance stakeholders a shared vocabulary. Instead of debating opinions, teams map requirements to specific controls and evidence.

Primary Frameworks We See

**PCI DSS** for cardholder data environments

**SOC 2** for trust, privacy, and operational controls

**Local banking mandates** (CBN, FCA, FDIC, etc.)

**AML/KYC** and sanctions screening obligations

Build Compliance into Discovery

1. **Classify data flows** before a single line of code ships.

2. **Document shared responsibilities** between bank sponsors, payment processors, and internal squads.

3. **Catalogue third-party services** (ID verification, fraud, analytics) and capture their attestations.

Control Implementation Patterns

Technical

Segmented environments with infrastructure-as-code

Automated vulnerability scanning as part of CI/CD

Encryption key management with rotation policies

Operational

Evidence collection embedded in pull request templates

Runbooks for incident response and regulatory notifications

Quarterly control reviews with finance and engineering co-owners

Measuring Compliance Health

Create a scorecard that tracks:

Coverage of required controls per framework

Time to remediate audit findings

Evidence freshness (e.g., configs, policies, runbooks)

External attestation milestones

Bringing It Together

Compliance is not a blocker—it is an enabler for sustainable growth. Teams that invest in shared frameworks early remove friction from bank partnerships, investor diligence, and market expansions.

**Next steps:** run a two-week compliance readiness sprint, map your controls to business objectives, and give every squad member clarity on their role in staying audit-ready.

Building Compliant Fintech Platforms: Regulatory Frameworks That Scale