Does anyone know about business models ? For startups and e-payments

[afrika]

hello
after over 25 years as a seasoned software developer, I resigned last year to pursue my dreams as a startup software company, for now its only me here in the UK

But I have my 2 sisters who would assist or join, once I have regular income to keep them happy. Its a small payment service, which does not hold unto any funds and funds requirements says zero by the FCA


I applied to the FCA, who demand a business model, so I did a google search and seen a bit of advise


Does anyone know about these things and if I alone as an individual can be authorized. My summary business model is have an app in the app store and website, which potentially can go viral. I am not using it to make funds, rahter a part of my suite of software and I repeat, for now its only me

1. What is a successful business model for PAYMENTS ?

2. Are there any templates ?

3. I was also asked of my source of revenue ? I said commissions and transaction fees

Kindly advise
Ehi

 

[ctrlbrk]

@afrika are you looking to compete with the likes of Paypal and Stripe?

If so, as one man band, what resources do you have to be able to make a dent into their market share?

 

[Clinton]

I applied to the FCA...

Which professional assisted you through that application?

Doing the application is not for the faint hearted, nor for someone without prior experience in this. Maybe have a read through this guide to applying first and hire them, or someone like them, to assist you.

 

[Ozzy]

I'm saying this as an ex-director of a payments provider nearly 30 years ago, so although my trenches experience may be a little out of date but I'll tell you now - with the regulations and requirements that will be imposed on you for being a payments provider you categorically will not be able to do this as a one person setup. You will need security, infrastructure and compliance teams. That isn't even including sales and marketing, and finance.
Handling people's finances comes with many regulatory requirements, as it should.

It sounds like you will need some guidance on writing your business plan, as this should include all this and details on how you will be financing the wages to pay for the people you'll need to meet these regulations. You can't run this sort of service on some virtual machine/server with some hosting company.

 

[afrika]

@afrika are you looking to compete with the likes of Paypal and Stripe?

If so, as one man band, what resources do you have to be able to make a dent into their market share?

No, those are electronic money.

My focus is Payments only, which can be a small business. The likes of paypal and stripe, can hold unto people's money, as a payment, we only pass the transaction to the payment processor, of which either of the above could be a backend.

I'm saying this as an ex-director of a payments provider nearly 30 years ago, so although my trenches experience may be a little out of date but I'll tell you now - with the regulations and requirements that will be imposed on you for being a payments provider you categorically will not be able to do this as a one person setup. You will need security, infrastructure and compliance teams. That isn't even including sales and marketing, and finance.
Handling people's finances comes with many regulatory requirements, as it should.

It sounds like you will need some guidance on writing your business plan, as this should include all this and details on how you will be financing the wages to pay for the people you'll need to meet these regulations. You can't run this sort of service on some virtual machine/server with some hosting company.

As mentioned above, there are options for small businesses and allowance to grow and scale. I dont need marketting and finance teams, neither do I need a virtual machine or server. As I said I have more than 25 years as a seasoned software developer and developed all the necessary software myself.


I can host it easily in the cloud and app store, cloud providers give 1 year free hosting.

Which professional assisted you through that application?

Doing the application is not for the faint hearted, nor for someone without prior experience in this. Maybe have a read through this guide to applying first and hire them, or someone like them, to assist you.

I am self taught in programming and have held some top positions in my time. In 2008, I also once built a software alone, to handle millions of customized SMS, which was used by institions and never failed. So faint hearted is not in my dictionary

 

[FreddyG]

I know a man who has been trying to set up a similar company in the US. He has been trying this for the past five years! Despite being a very wealthy man and having hundreds of millions at his disposal from other investors, he gave up recently and decided to just buy an existing bank.

The days of DIY penny start-ups seem to be well and truly over!

 

[Ozzy]

I dont need marketting and finance teams, neither do I need a virtual machine or server. As I said I have more than 25 years as a seasoned software developer and developed all the necessary software myself.

OK, it sounds like you have this in hand. Wishing you well and good luck in your venture!

 

[afrika]

OK, it sounds like you have this in hand. Wishing you well and good luck in your venture!

Far from it. I have my softwares in place. (Still innovating) but seeking advice on the FCA requirements and templates for the business model they are demanding

So if anyone knows. As that's not my area of strength

Please help

 

[fisicx]

There are plenty of financial experts who can help with this. The only person I know who needed FCA approval spent around £5000 on professional advice. I seem to recall the whole process took about a year.

 

[Ozzy]

The only person I know who needed FCA approval spent around £5000 on professional advice.

When I needed to register my company with the FCA for credit broking, that took about 6 months but I had three staff involved in it along with the consultancy firm helping us. Cost a lot more than £5k though, I think not including the staff wages we spent nearer to £25k as needed to get quite a few compliance procedures developed and in place.

 

[fisicx]

Which suggests @afrika is unlikely to get approval using free advice and some templates.

 

[antropy]

after over 25 years as a seasoned software developer, I resigned last year to pursue my dreams as a startup software company, for now its only me here in the UK

I'm going to be the one to call you out: I don't believe you.

Paul.

 

[afrika]

I'm going to be the one to call you out: I don't believe you.

Paul.

lol

Thats just petty, as petty as you can get.

Are you saying there are people in this planet without years/decades of experience ???

If you google my username on previous computing forums e.g.



1, sqlteam the top Microsoft enterprise database forum over 20 years back, you will see me with close to 3,000 posts e.g.

https://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=61801

Dealing with a single quote - SQL Server Forums

www.sqlteam.com

2. Sitepoint which was the top IT forum back in the day, for all areas of IT

Create multiple Dynamic columns in an MSSQL

haha, hi Rudy. I recall you helping me out back in 2003 or 2005 not sure, when I first joined this site. Apologies for my earlier post, maybe some sample data might help. (I have blanked out some names as its live data) In the diagram above, the username column comes 1st and the pivoted...

www.sitepoint.com

afrikaAfrika
Jul 2021

haha,
hi Rudy. I recall you helping me out back in 2003 or 2005 not sure, when I first joined this site.
Apologies for my earlier post, maybe some sample data might help. (I have blanked out some names as its live data)

sitepoint835×251 9.38 KB

In the diagram above, the username column comes 1st and the pivoted columns give you the average stats
What I am trying to achieve is a sub query like this. e.g. for the first username and first column
SELECT Count(distinct jobid) FROM [dbo].[Reports] WHERE USERNAME = ‘xxxxx.daley’ and ClinicID =‘column1’
for the 2nd row
SELECT Count(distinct jobid) FROM [dbo].[Reports] WHERE USERNAME = ‘xxxxx.taylor’ and ClinicID =‘xxxx123’
etc
and for the 2nd column
SELECT Count(distinct jobid) FROM [dbo].[Reports] WHERE USERNAME = ‘xxxxx.daley’ and ClinicID =‘xxxx123’
As each row show how many distinct JOBID a user (e.g. xxxx.daley) did for that clinic etc etc
Hope this is much clear, thanks

3. afrika on www.asp.net/forums Microsoft's forum (now achieved) for its release for full stack computing

Microsoft has taken down the archieves, but you might find one or two


In all these forums I had over 2,000 posts on each. Ideally, I shouldnt reply all comments here, especially petty ones.

I have a dual masters in software and finance and have worked for top secret Uk government, payment industry, top fortune companies etc etc

I have worked with web, phone apps, desktop, enterprise database, foreign governments etc etc. Its time to retire and pursue my own dreams

When I needed to register my company with the FCA for credit broking, that took about 6 months but I had three staff involved in it along with the consultancy firm helping us. Cost a lot more than £5k though, I think not including the staff wages we spent nearer to £25k as needed to get quite a few compliance procedures developed and in place.

I am thinking of doing my own draft, as I know about internet security, e.g. OAuth, Auth0, 2fa, MFA certificates and ssl which all tie into the KYC (Know your customer scheme) while I look for templates

thank you

Which suggests @afrika is unlikely to get approval using free advice and some templates.

I will keep search and asking. It shouldnt be hard. thank you

 

[fisicx]

@afrika, that’s not how it works with the FCA. Get and pay for professional help.

 

[afrika]

I'm going to be the one to call you out: I don't believe you.

Paul.

I also would add, in 2008. I alone built a software for my business, that handles transactions of millions of messages using Microsoft technology, it was able to connect to any system in the world and send/process millions of sms to phone messages. It also could connect to any database, flat file, CSV, RDBMS or any ODBC complaint system and process them

Back in the day there was no AI, internet were mostly cybercafe's and offices and definitely no internet on phones

As I said above, if you google afrika on any of the top computing forums, you will see archives of my posts

 

[afrika]

@afrika, that’s not how it works with the FCA. Get and pay for professional help.

The question now, is who ? which companies offer such services ?

I found one here https://psplab.com/ and booked an appointment for tomorrow for a free initial call, will update on what he says

 

[Mark T Jones]

The question now, is who ? which companies offer such services ?

I found one here https://psplab.com/ and booked an appointment for tomorrow for a free initial call, will update on what he says

A free initial call!?

As opposed to paying them to sell to you?

 

[antropy]

Are you saying there are people in this planet without years/decades of experience ???

Of course there are, I'm one.

I'm glad you've now provided some credibility, you'll find everyone will take you more seriously now

Paul.

 

[afrika]

Of course there are, I'm one.

I'm glad you've now provided some credibility, you'll find everyone will take you more seriously now

Paul.

Still not a nice thing to say, or nice approach.

If I may express my opinion, there should be a way or avenue to validate users on this forum, if its a must and if not, then politely ask them to do so. Your approach to me is far too petty and sounds a bit condescending

@afrika, that’s not how it works with the FCA. Get and pay for professional help.

There are plenty of financial experts who can help with this. The only person I know who needed FCA approval spent around £5000 on professional advice. I seem to recall the whole process took about a year.

When I needed to register my company with the FCA for credit broking, that took about 6 months but I had three staff involved in it along with the consultancy firm helping us. Cost a lot more than £5k though, I think not including the staff wages we spent nearer to £25k as needed to get quite a few compliance procedures developed and in place.

I have done a lot of digging and done some video meetings ( Initial consultations) and @Clinton is right, its not for the fainthearted and @Ozzy 's comments too are helpful. The whole process started to make me quite dizzy. But I have learnt so much and taken a few steps back

Most companies charge around £5,000 mark to put a business plan in place, but they require me to do so much work as well in drafting screenshots of my APP, Website and customer journey.

Finally I got a lot of advise off AI and a template.

The whole process takes months. So good luck to me and thank you to everyone

 

[fisicx]

Do you have an app? Or at least a MVP?

 

[afrika]

Do you have an app? Or at least a MVP?

Very sorry. I didn't not get any notification for this

Yes I built the app myself with .net MAUI v 9. It's still in infantry stage and not deployed and web portal in .net cloud using AWS

The app in question will be put on hold. Until I get an fca license. My junior sis is an MBA grad and said she can do it. I got AI to generate a template as all consultancies I spoke to are saying the same thing which makes it straightforward but quite difficult

MVP ? No, the app in question is an add on (or enhancement) selling point to the suite of the main product

We have targeted customers, it's a rival to shopify and similar experiences commerce sites

So i simply intend to quietly get clients onboard and to migrate away from their existing sites to ours. As we have a winning model