Reviewed by

Payment Solutions Development Company

Custom payment processing platforms, mobile wallets, P2P transfers and payment gateway integrations.

PCI DSS SOC 2 GDPR Compliant ISO 27001
  • 15+ FinTech projects
  • 12+ years in business
  • 96 Clutch reviews
96 reviews 138 reviews 11 reviews 54 reviews 19 reviews 5.0 318+ verified reviews

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SOC 2 Type II GDPR ISO 27001 NDA Protected

Aligned with these frameworks. Audit reports and certifications available on request.

Reviewed and updated
Last reviewed July 7, 2026 by Dmytro Nasyrov, Founder and CTO. Content reflects Pharos Production delivery data as of the review date. Editorial policy.
Dmytro Nasyrov - Founder and CTO of Pharos Production

Reviewed by Dmytro Nasyrov

Founder and CTO

23+ years in custom software development. Led 110+ projects across FinTech, healthcare, Web3 and enterprise, ISO 27001-aligned team.

What is payment solutions development?

Payment solutions development is the engineering of software that processes financial transactions: card payments (Visa, Mastercard, Amex), bank transfers (ACH, SEPA, wire), digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay), Open Banking payment initiation, crypto rails, subscription billing, payouts and multi-currency. Production payment systems require PCI DSS architecture, sponsor-bank or processor integration, idempotent transaction handling, dispute management, reconciliation and regulator-ready audit logs. Pharos has shipped 15+ payment systems handling real money since 2018 including card-present, card-not-present, cross-border and crypto rails.
Authoritative citations 12 sources
  1. PCI DSS v4.0 Standard The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard v4.0 is the binding specification for any system that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data, and we design every payments build against its 12 requirement families from day one of discovery. pcisecuritystandards.org
  2. European Banking Authority PSD2 RTS The PSD2 Regulatory Technical Standards on strong customer authentication and secure communication define the EU rules for payments, account information and dedicated interfaces, which govern every open banking integration we ship in the EEA. eba.europa.eu
  3. FATF Recommendations on AML/CFT The Financial Action Task Force 40 Recommendations are the global AML and counter-terrorism financing baseline that our screening, customer due diligence and transaction monitoring designs implement in every regulated FinTech engagement. fatf-gafi.org
  4. Stripe Engineering Blog The Stripe engineering blog publishes deep-dive posts on idempotency, ledger design, distributed counters and payment lifecycle that inform how we architect money movement systems and idempotency keys across our custom FinTech builds. stripe.com
  5. Plaid Reliability Post-mortems Plaid engineering publishes detailed post-mortems and reliability reports on the infrastructure behind bank connections, which we read closely because our payment and account aggregation flows depend on similar third-party reliability envelopes. plaid.com
  6. Bank for International Settlements CPMI Reports The BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures publishes authoritative reports on cross-border payments, CBDC and fast payment systems, which inform every FinTech engagement touching international money movement or central bank rails. bis.org
  7. NIST Digital Identity Guidelines SP 800-63 NIST SP 800-63 defines authenticator assurance levels and identity proofing that we map to KYC flows, step-up authentication and regulated account opening journeys in FinTech platforms subject to US regulators. pages.nist.gov
  8. ISO 20022 Payments Messages ISO 20022 is the global messaging standard replacing legacy MT and ACH formats across Fedwire, SWIFT, SEPA and instant payment rails, and we design ledger and integration layers for ISO 20022 first with legacy adapters rather than the reverse. iso20022.org
  9. Basel III Framework The Basel III regulatory framework governs capital, leverage and liquidity requirements for banks, which cascades into our build decisions when platforms integrate with regulated institutions needing reporting, stress testing and risk data pipelines. bis.org
  10. SWIFT Customer Security Programme The SWIFT Customer Security Programme mandates security controls for institutions connecting to the SWIFT network, which shape our reference architecture whenever a client integrates FIN, gpi or the ISO 20022 SWIFT rails. swift.com
  11. OWASP Application Security Verification Standard OWASP ASVS provides a ranked control set for application security verification that we map against PCI DSS, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 requirements when building the control baseline for new FinTech platforms. owasp.org
  12. FSB Financial Stability Reports The Financial Stability Board publishes reports on FinTech, crypto-asset regulation and cross-border payments that shape our regulatory risk posture for client platforms operating across multiple jurisdictions. fsb.org
What we do not do
  • Basic card acceptance where Stripe Checkout or Adyen hosted page would ship in 2 days
  • Crypto payment products without legal counsel on jurisdiction analysis
  • Lending products that use "payment" terminology without regulatory review
  • Projects without sponsor-bank or processor relationships (we build software; you hold licenses)

Payment solutions at Pharos Production at a glance

  • Payment systems: 15+ production payment systems handling real money since 2018 (cards, ACH, SEPA, wire, crypto, Open Banking)
  • Compliance: PCI DSS architecture, SOC 2 controls, GDPR, aligned with ISO 27001, PSD2-compliant
  • Stack: Elixir/Phoenix, Java/Spring, Node.js, PostgreSQL ledger, Kafka event bus, AWS with VPC isolation, CloudHSM for PCI-scoped operations
  • Integrations: Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Spreedly, Plaid, TrueLayer, Tink, Circle, Ramp, Sumsub, Onfido
  • Pricing: Payment MVP from $40,000-$120,000; full platform $120,000-$500,000+; retainers from $8,000/month
  • Timeline: Discovery + PCI scope 3-5 weeks; MVP 3-6 months; full platform 6-12 months with sponsor-bank integration
  • Sponsor-bank model: We integrate with your sponsor bank or BaaS (Synapse, Treasury Prime, Column, Unit); Pharos does not hold licenses
  • Honest scope: We recommend Stripe/Adyen for basic acceptance and decline crypto payments without legal counsel

Custom payments platform vs Stripe Connect: which is better?

Custom payments gives you direct sponsor-bank pricing, regulatory ownership and custom orchestration across multiple rails, while Stripe Connect (and Adyen for Platforms, Unit) ships in days at a vendor markup. According to a 2024 a16z FinTech report, 63% of growth-stage FinTech founders eventually move at least one core flow off PaaS to capture margin - typically when monthly processing volume exceeds $5-10M.

Factor Custom payments platform Stripe Connect / PaaS
Unit economics Direct interchange + sponsor-bank rates; margin captured by you Vendor markup of 1-3% + fixed fees; margin capped
Regulatory model You hold (or partner with) the licensed entity; full compliance ownership Vendor holds the license; you operate as a sub-merchant
Rail orchestration Multi-rail (cards + ACH + wire + crypto + Open Banking) with unified reconciliation Limited to vendor-supported rails
Dispute handling Custom dispute workflows, chargeback recovery, merchant protection Vendor handles disputes; you see a dashboard
Data residency Your VPC, your region, your retention rules Vendor regions; subject to vendor data flow
Time to launch 3-6 months for production-grade build 1-5 days for basic acceptance
Cost (year 1) $40,000-$500,000+ build cost amortized over volume 0.3-3% of GMV in perpetuity
Best fit High-volume processors, cross-border, regulated FinTech, proprietary rails Marketplaces, subscription SaaS, early-stage, low-volume

How we build payment systems that pass audits

Payment projects follow Pharos Verified Delivery with payments-specific additions: discovery includes PCI scope modeling and sponsor-bank integration planning; build includes idempotency on every state-change path plus reconciliation tests; production readiness covers dispute handling, reporting and regulator-ready audit logs; support includes 4-hour SLA and monthly reconciliation reviews.

Pharos Verified Delivery 4-phase methodology with typical durations and deliverables
  1. Phase 01 / 04

    Paid Discovery

    2-4 weeks
    • Technical validation
    • Architecture proposal
    • Scope refined estimate
    82% on-schedule with discovery
  2. Phase 02 / 04

    Iterative Build

    2-week sprints
    • Working demos every sprint
    • CTO review at milestones
    • ADRs documented
    Transparent progress tracking
  3. Phase 03 / 04

    Production Readiness

    • Monitoring and alerting
    • Security audit Pen test
    • Runbooks and rollback
    ISO 27001 aligned
  4. Phase 04 / 04

    Support

    Ongoing
    • Security patches
    • Performance tuning
    • 4h SLA response
    Continuous improvement

Pharos Verified Delivery applied to 110+ production applications since 2013

Payment platforms in production

Three payment engagements across card, bank and Open Banking rails with the reconciliation and compliance details that mattered.

Cross-border payments platform Q1 2025 · Cross-border FinTech, EU
Before

Manual reconciliation of 12,000 daily transactions across 4 payment providers. 3 full-time analysts. 18-hour delay between transaction and matched status. Monthly reconciliation errors cost $80K-$140K.

After

Automated reconciliation in under 2 minutes with a provider-agnostic ledger and deterministic matching rules. Zero unreconciled balances in 12 months post-launch. Analysts reassigned to dispute handling and chargeback recovery.

We built a provider-agnostic reconciliation engine with a canonical ledger format, deterministic matching rules and an exceptions queue for the 0.3% of transactions that need human review. The ledger became the system of record for all four providers.

Card tokenization Q3 2024 · Subscription SaaS, US
Before

Card data stored in-app via a custom integration. PCI scope covered 40% of the codebase. Annual SAQ D audit cost $65K and blocked 2 weeks of engineering.

After

Stripe Elements + Spreedly tokenization. PCI scope reduced to 3% of codebase. Annual SAQ A-EP audit cost $12K and takes 2 days of engineering. Engineering team unblocked.

We moved cardholder data capture to Stripe Elements on the client and replaced every in-app card reference with a tokenized pointer. The code that actually sees a PAN is now a thin integration layer, not the entire product.

Open Banking payment initiation Q2 2025 · Marketplace, EU
Before

2.9% + €0.30 per transaction on card rails. $4.2M annual processing fees. High chargeback rate on card-not-present transactions.

After

Open Banking (PSD2 payment initiation) via TrueLayer for domestic EU transactions. Fees down to 0.3% flat on Open Banking paths. Annual processing cost dropped to $1.1M. Chargebacks down 94% (Open Banking is a push payment, not a pull).

We A/B tested Open Banking vs cards at checkout on 10% of traffic for 4 weeks. Conversion was equivalent; fees dropped 90%. We ramped to 100% for eligible merchants over 3 weeks with no conversion regression.

Client names anonymized under NDA. Full case studies at /cases/.

When custom payment solutions are not the answer

We decline roughly 30% of RFPs we receive. Forcing a bad fit costs both sides 3-6 months and damages outcomes. Here is how we think about scope:

Projects we decline
  • Basic card acceptance where Stripe Checkout or Adyen hosted page ships in 2 days
  • Subscription billing where Stripe Billing covers 95% of use cases
  • Crypto payments without jurisdiction analysis from qualified legal counsel
  • Payment products where the client has no sponsor-bank or processor relationships
  • Lending products dressed up as "payments" to avoid licensing
We recommend packaged payments when they fit

Custom payment solutions make sense when you need direct sponsor-bank pricing at scale, jurisdictional compliance, proprietary risk models, multi-rail orchestration or unit economics that packaged products break. For most subscription products and marketplaces, Stripe, Adyen or Checkout.com deliver faster at lower total cost. We have recommended Stripe over custom builds on many engagements.

Pharos payment portfolio

Pharos payment solutions delivery portfolio observations, 2018-2026

Ranges we consistently see across 22+ payment engagements.

  • Card-not-present settles T+1 to T+3 business days standard; real-time rails (FedNow, SEPA Instant) settle sub-60 seconds on 98%+ of transactions[6].

  • False-positive decline rate ranges 1.8-4.5% on mature segments after 6-9 months of ML model tuning with business feedback.

  • 0.02-0.08% typical discrepancy rate on daily reconciliation; above 0.1% triggers root-cause investigation within 24 hours.

  • Tokenization and provider-hosted fields typically cut PCI scope from 60-80% of codebase to 5-15%, saving 4-7 months of annual audit time[1].

  • 10-18 weeks for production payment integration including tokenization, 3DS2, idempotency and reconciliation. Multi-provider routing adds 4-6 weeks.

Observations reflect the Pharos Production payment solutions delivery portfolio 2018-2026. Full case studies in our case studies library.

Payment solutions outlook 2026-2027

Three shifts are reshaping payment infrastructure engineering.

  • PCI DSS v4.0 future-dated requirements became mandatory April 2025. Teams without targeted risk analysis, customized approach documentation and enhanced MFA will fail 2026 audits[1].

  • SWIFT MT-to-MX migration completes November 2025. Domestic payment rails (FedNow, SEPA Instant) follow ISO 20022 by default. Teams still emitting legacy ISO 8583 or proprietary formats face integration cliff[8].

  • FedNow, SEPA Instant and UK FPS settle within seconds, shrinking fraud reversal windows from days to sub-minute. ML-based real-time fraud scoring becomes baseline not premium[6].

Our four-dimension payment delivery evaluation template

Every payment engagement we ship runs against the same four-dimension readiness evaluation before handover.

Eval template refreshes quarterly against latest PCI DSS, PSD2 RTS, FATF, BIS CPMI and SWIFT CSP publications.

Production post-mortem

When idempotency keys collided across retry windows

A merchant processor retried failed card authorizations with a deterministic idempotency key derived from order ID in August 2025. When a legitimate customer retried a stalled checkout 48 hours later, the provider still honored the cached response from the original failed attempt, but the cached response referenced an expired card. 340 legitimate transactions declined before we caught the pattern.

Idempotency key generation now includes retry-window timestamp, not just order ID. Provider-specific idempotency window behavior documented per rail. Replay and cache-hit testing added to QA suite.

How payment metrics are tracked
Payment metrics counted: production systems handling real money with PCI DSS architecture and client compliance sign-off. Cost reductions measured against pre-engagement processing fees on the same volume. Reconciliation improvements measured against pre-engagement error baselines. Last reviewed: July 2026. Editorial policy.
Regulatory and licensing boundaries
Pharos Production builds payment software. We do not hold money transmitter, banking or broker-dealer licenses. Regulatory licensing, compliance program operation and customer-facing financial responsibility belong to the client. Software is operated within applicable financial regulations by the licensed entity.

Published record

Published Pharos research

Technical articles, comparison guides and methodology deep-dives we write from our own delivery experience.

Platforms we work with

Trusted by Coinbase, Consensys, Core Scientific, MicroStrategy, Gate.io and 10+ more Web3 and enterprise platforms

16+ partners

Our 16 technology partners include:

  • Consensys
  • Gate Io
  • Coinbase
  • Ludo
  • Core Scientific
  • Debut Infotech
  • Axoni
  • Alchemy
  • Starkware
  • Mara Holdings
  • MicroStrategy
  • Nubank
  • Okx
  • Uniswap
  • Riot
  • Leeway Hertz
  • Consensys
  • Gate Io
  • Coinbase
  • Core Scientific
  • Debut Infotech
  • Axoni
  • Alchemy
  • Starkware
  • Mara Holdings
  • MicroStrategy
  • Nubank
  • Okx
  • Uniswap
  • Riot
  • Leeway Hertz

Payment solutions we build

  • Payment gateway integration
    Custom payment processing with multi-currency support, PCI DSS compliance and real-time transaction monitoring. Integration with Stripe, Adyen, PayPal and banking APIs.
  • Mobile wallet development
    Digital wallet applications with P2P transfers, NFC payments, biometric authentication and multi-currency balance management.
  • Payment reconciliation systems
    Automated reconciliation platforms that match transactions across multiple sources, detect discrepancies and generate regulatory reports.

About the founder and CTO

Dmytro Nasyrov

Dmytro Nasyrov

Founder and CTO Pharos Production

Ask the founder a question

I design and build reliable software solutions - from lightweight apps to high-load distributed systems and blockchain platforms.

PhD in Artificial Intelligence, MSc in Computer Science (with honors), MSc in Electronics & Precision Mechanics.

  • 13 years in architecture of great software solutions tailored to customer needs for startups and enterprises

  • 23 years of practical enterprise customized software production experience

  • Lecturer at the National Kyiv Polytechnic University

  • Doctor of Philosophy in Artificial Intelligence

  • Master's degree in Computer Science, completed with excellence

  • Master's degree in Electronics and precision mechanics engineering

Choose your cooperation model

Pharos Production offers three project models, MVP, Full-fledged Production and Full-cycle Development, priced from $10,000 to $80,000. An MVP prototype takes about 3 months.

Suitable for the project test
MVP

Core software architecture, initial UI/UX, working prototype in 3 months

$11,000 - $27,000
Popular choice
Suitable in 9 out of 10 cases
Full-fledged Production

Software architecture, UI/UX, customized software development, manual and automated testing, cloud deployment

$24,000 - $50,000
Turnkey development
Full-cycle Development

Comprehensive software architecture and documentation, UI/UX design layouts, UI kit, clickable prototypes, cloud deployment, continuous integration, as well as automated monitoring and notifications.

$50,000 - $75,000

Prices vary based on project scope, complexity, timeline and requirements. Hourly rates range from $35 to $75 depending on role and seniority. Contact us for a personalized estimate.

Interaction models for staff augmentation, dedicated teams and outsourcing

Request staff augmentation

Need extra hands on your software project? Our developers can jump in at any stage - from architecture to auditing - and integrate seamlessly with your team to fill any technical gaps.

Popular choice

Hire dedicated experts

Whether you're building from scratch or scaling fast, our engineers are ready to step in. You stay in control, and we handle the code.

Outsource your project

From first line to final audit, we handle the entire development process. We will deliver secure, production-ready software, while you can focus on your business.

187+ technologies

Technologies, tools and frameworks we use

Our engineers work with 187+ technologies across blockchain, backend, frontend, mobile and DevOps - chosen for production reliability and performance.

Our engineers work with 187+ technologies across 10 categories: Frameworks, AI, Blockchains, DevOps, Clouds, Databases, Brokers, Tests, Programming, UI/UX.

  • Frameworks: Spring Boot, Erlang OTP, NodeJS, Phoenix, NestJS, Django, FastAPI, Express.js, React, Next.JS, Svelte, Angular, Vue.js, Remix, Astro, Nuxt.js, iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, Capacitors, Ionic, Swift, Kotlin, Java, Dart
  • AI: OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Meta Llama, Mistral AI, Cohere, Ollama, xAI Grok, LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, Hugging Face, PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, LlamaIndex, Keras, XGBoost, LightGBM, OpenCV, spaCy, ONNX Runtime, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, Chroma, pgvector, Milvus, FAISS, MLflow, Weights & Biases, DVC, Kubeflow, AWS SageMaker, Azure ML, Google Vertex AI, NVIDIA Triton, Airflow, Ray Serve, vLLM, OpenAI Agents SDK, Claude MCP, Semantic Kernel, Haystack
  • Blockchains: Ethereum, TON, Corda, Tron, Hedera, Stellar, Consensys GoQuorum, Solana, Arbitrum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Sei, Celo, Hyperledger, MultiversX, IOTA, Polkadot, Aptos, Neo, Flow, Algorand, Avalanche, EOS, Optimism, Polygon, Cosmos, Sui, Tezos, Ontology, Fantom, NEAR Protocol, VeChain, Base, IPFS, Amazon Managed Blockchain, Amazon QLDB, IBM Blockchain, Oracle Blockchain
  • DevOps: Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker, Istio, Prometheus, Grafana, Jenkins, ArgoCD, Ansible, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Pulumi, Datadog, New Relic, Vault
  • Clouds: Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Vercel, DigitalOcean
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL MariaDB, Redis, Cassandra, Neo4J, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Solr, Ignite, ClickHouse, TimescaleDB, DynamoDB, Supabase, CockroachDB, ScyllaDB
  • Brokers: Kafka, RabbitMQ, Flink, Apache Pulsar, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS, NATS
  • Tests: Postman, Appium, Cucumber, Selenium, JMeter, Cypress
  • Programming: Solidity, FunC, Rust, GoLang, Elixir, Erlang, C++, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Scala, Python, C#, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Dart, SQL
  • UI/UX: Figma, Zeplin, InVision, Sketch, Miro, Marvel, Balsamiq, Photoshop, Illustrator, XD, After Effects, Corel Draw

Frameworks

Backend Frameworks 8

Spring Boot
Spring Boot
Erlang OTP
Erlang OTP
NodeJS
NodeJS
Phoenix
Phoenix
NestJS
NestJS
Django
FastAPI
Express.js

Front End Frameworks 8

React
React
Next.JS
Next.JS
Svelte
Svelte
Angular
Angular
Vue.js
Remix
Astro
Nuxt.js

Mobile Apps Frameworks 10

iOS
iOS
Android
Android
Flutter
Flutter
React Native
React Native
Capacitors
Capacitors
Ionic
Ionic
Swift
Swift
Kotlin
Kotlin
Java
Java
Dart
Trusted & Certified

Partnerships and awards

Recognized on Clutch, GoodFirms and The Manifest for software engineering excellence

  • Partner1
  • Partner2
  • Partner3
  • Partner4
  • Partner5
13+ industry awards
Related guides: How to Choose a FinTech Company How We Build FinTech

An approach to the development cycle

The Pharos Delivery Framework divides every project into 2-week sprints. After each sprint we hold a retrospective, deliver a progress report and plan the next sprint. This methodology is why agile projects are 3x more likely to succeed than waterfall (Standish Group CHAOS Report, 2024).

  1. Team Assembly

    Our company starts and assembles an entire project specialists with the perfect blend of skills and experience to start the work.

  2. MVP

    We'll design, build and launch your MVP, ensuring it meets the core requirements of your software solution.

  3. Production

    We'll create a complete software solution that is custom-made to meet your exact specifications.

  4. Ongoing

    Continuous Support

    Our company will be right there with you, keeping your software solution running smoothly, fixing issues and rolling out updates.

Proven Results

Kimlic. Blockchain-based KYC

Lifted onboarding completion from 62 to 89 percent and scaled verification volume from 20k to 140k flows per month. Measured…

Pleenk. Secure Payments Platform

Reduced payment authorization p95 latency from 820ms to 180ms and cut KYC decision time from 45s to 4.2s. Measured against…

Nextcheck, the KYC Platform

Automated KYC verification for 5,000+ documents daily with 99.8% accuracy

Payments engineering insights

A stainless steel vault door slightly ajar revealing a stack of translucent compliance certificates with embossed seals.
Engineering

FinTech Compliance Checklist 2026: PCI DSS, SOC 2, GDPR and Beyond

What compliance certifications does a FinTech product need? The required certifications depend on your product type, target market and data handling practices. At minimum, most FinTech products need SOC 2 Type II for data security, PCI DSS if handling payment card data and GDPR compliance for EU users. PCI DSS compliance checklist PCI DSS applies […]

Dmytro Nasyrov 2 min read
Read
Two autonomous software agent terminal dashboards negotiating a purchase in a dim modern workspace
Business

Agentic Commerce: How AI Agents Transact On-Chain

Agentic commerce is AI agents discovering, negotiating and paying for goods and services autonomously. This guide compares the major 2030 forecasts, walks through the machine-to-machine payment flow step by step and explains why on-chain rails fit agent transactions.

Dmytro Nasyrov 7 min read
Read
View all articles
Skip glossary

Payment systems glossary 8

Payment Gateway
A payment gateway is the service that encrypts a customer payment details at the point of entry and routes the transaction to the processor for authorization. It handles tokenization, fraud screening and support for many payment methods and currencies.
Payment Processor
The company that routes a transaction between the merchant, the card networks and the banks to move money and settle funds. The processor handles authorization, clearing and settlement behind the scenes of every card payment.
PCI-DSS
PCI-DSS is the mandatory security standard for any system that stores, processes or transmits card data. For a payment platform it sets the bar for encryption, segmentation, access control and quarterly testing, and defines what falls inside audit scope.
Acquirer
The bank or institution that holds the merchant account and receives card payments on their behalf. The acquirer settles funds to the merchant and carries the risk of chargebacks, and integrating with one is central to a payment build.
Tokenization
Replacing sensitive card numbers with a non-sensitive token that is useless if stolen. It shrinks PCI-DSS scope and lets merchants store a reference for repeat billing without holding the real card data.
Chargeback
A forced reversal of a payment initiated by the cardholder bank, usually over fraud or a dispute. Chargebacks carry fees and penalties, so payment systems build in prevention, evidence handling and monitoring.
Settlement
The process of moving authorized funds from the customer bank to the merchant account, often batched and completed within days. Clear settlement and reconciliation logic is essential so every payout can be traced and balanced.
3-D Secure
An authentication layer that asks the cardholder to confirm a payment with their bank, reducing fraud and shifting liability. Modern 3-D Secure 2 aims to verify risky transactions without adding friction to low-risk ones.

Frequently asked questions about Payment Solutions Development

Last updated:

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    A production payments MVP typically takes 3-6 months: 3-5 weeks discovery and PCI scope modeling, 10-14 weeks build (ledger, rail integration, dispute handling, reporting), 4-8 weeks integration testing with your sponsor bank or processor and regulator-aware UAT. Full platform with multi-rail orchestration, Open Banking and crypto rails runs 6-12 months.

    Pharos has shipped 15+ payment systems handling real money since 2018.

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    No. Pharos Production builds the software; the client (or a sponsor bank partner) holds the regulatory license. We integrate with your sponsor bank or BaaS provider (Synapse, Treasury Prime, Column, Unit, Increase) and design the compliance program with your legal counsel, but we do not hold money transmitter, banking or broker-dealer licenses ourselves.

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    PCI scope minimization is the first conversation. We tokenize cardholder data at capture (Stripe Elements, Spreedly, PCI Proxy) so the primary account number never enters the client backend. This drops most engagements from SAQ D ($50K+ annual audit) to SAQ A or SAQ A-EP ($8-15K annual audit). Pharos infrastructure is PCI DSS architected with CloudHSM for any operations that touch PCI-scoped data.

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    Payment MVP $40,000-$120,000 (single rail, single region, basic reporting). Full platform $120,000-$500,000+ (multi-rail, multi-region, dispute workflows, reconciliation, compliance reporting).

    Ongoing support retainer from $8,000/month for SLA and reconciliation reviews. The crossover point where custom pays for itself vs Stripe is typically around $5-10M/month in processing volume - below that, Stripe is usually cheaper.

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    Yes. We integrate with TrueLayer, Tink, Plaid (UK), Yapily and GoCardless for payment initiation and account information services across EU/UK.

    Open Banking typically drops processing fees 80-95% vs card rails for domestic EU transactions. We A/B test Open Banking vs cards at checkout to validate conversion parity before ramping.

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    Yes, with legal counsel in the loop. We integrate Circle, Ramp, MoonPay, Transak for on/off-ramp; Chainlink and Chainalysis for compliance screening; and build custom smart contract settlement for USDC/USDT flows. We do NOT provide jurisdictional legal advice - clients must engage qualified counsel before launching crypto payments in regulated markets (MiCA in EU, state-level money transmitter in US).

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    Every payment system ships with a canonical ledger (PostgreSQL with event sourcing) that is the system of record. Reconciliation runs as a separate process: pull provider reports, match to ledger entries using deterministic rules, surface exceptions to a review queue.

    Typical target: 99.7%+ auto-match rate with a

  • Copy link Copies a direct link to this answer to your clipboard.

    We decline basic card acceptance where Stripe Checkout would ship in 2 days, subscription billing where Stripe Billing covers 95% of needs, crypto payments without legal counsel, projects without sponsor-bank or processor relationships and "payments" products that are actually lending without licensing review. We walk away from projects where the regulatory foundation is not in place - forcing a payments build without that foundation damages everyone.

The Pharos takeaway on payment solutions

Payment infrastructure rewards teams that treat PCI scope, reconciliation and idempotency as first-principles engineering not afterthoughts[7]. PCI DSS 4.0 readiness, ISO 20022 migration and real-time fraud scoring are the three areas separating payment systems built for 2026 from systems running on 2018 assumptions.

Book a 30-minute payment readiness call
Dmytro Nasyrov, Founder and CTO at Pharos Production
Dmytro Nasyrov Founder & CTO Let's work together!

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Our offices

Headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada. Engineering office in Kyiv, Ukraine.

We also work with clients through dedicated local teams in Las Vegas, New York and San Francisco.

Las Vegas, United States

Headquarters PT
5348 Vegas Dr, Las Vegas, Nevada 89108, United States

Kyiv, Ukraine

Engineering office EET (UTC+2)
44-B Eugene Konovalets Str. Suite 201, Kyiv 01133, Ukraine

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