Case Studies › Apto Payments

FinTech & Payments

Card Infrastructure That Fintechs Actually Ship With

Apto Payments set out to make card issuance as simple as calling an API. Techdots built the platform that made it real — a multi-tenant card program management system, a developer-facing API layer, and an internal compliance dashboard that let Apto's team move fast without breaking regulatory requirements. The result was a product that allowed fintechs to go from onboarding to live card transactions in days, not months.

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Apto Payments

FinTech & Payments

60%

Reduction in card program onboarding time

3.2x

Increase in API throughput after infrastructure overhaul

50+

Fintech clients onboarded within 12 months of launch

6 months

timeline

This engagement is best for

FinTech platforms needing developer-facing API infrastructure

Companies issuing physical or virtual cards as a core product

Startups requiring multi-tenant compliance and operations tooling

Payment infrastructure providers scaling a B2B SaaS model

The Transformation

Before & After

Before

✕ Card program setup required manual back-and-forth between Apto's team and each fintech client, averaging 6–8 weeks per onboarding

✕ No self-service developer portal — API credentials and documentation were distributed manually via email

✕ Compliance and KYC review workflows lived in spreadsheets with no audit trail or status tracking

✕ Transaction monitoring and dispute management required engineers to write ad hoc queries directly against production databases

✕ No unified view of card program health — card spend limits, velocity rules, and program status were configured inconsistently across environments

After

✓ Card program onboarding reduced to under 2 weeks with a guided self-service flow and automated provisioning

✓ Fintech developers can generate API keys, explore sandbox environments, and read live documentation without contacting Apto's team

✓ Compliance reviews follow a structured workflow with role-based approvals, timestamped audit logs, and status visibility for all stakeholders

✓ Operations team monitors transaction volume, disputes, and card status through a purpose-built dashboard — no SQL required

✓ Spend controls, velocity rules, and program configurations are managed through a unified admin interface with environment parity checks

What We Built

Deliverables & Scope

Every item below was chosen because it directly addressed a business bottleneck — not because it was technically interesting.

Multi-tenant card program management API built on Node.js with per-client scoping, role-based access control, and webhook delivery infrastructure

Developer portal with sandbox provisioning, live API key management, interactive API reference (OpenAPI 3.0), and usage analytics

Internal operations dashboard (React.js + PostgreSQL) covering transaction monitoring, dispute queues, card lifecycle management, and spend rule configuration

KYC and compliance workflow engine with configurable approval chains, document upload, and integration into Persona for identity verification

Event-driven transaction pipeline using AWS SQS and Lambda to process card authorization events, apply velocity checks, and trigger real-time alerts

Automated card program onboarding flow with environment setup, BIN assignment, and configuration validation reducing manual provisioning steps by 80%

ROI Logic

Why This Generated
Real Business Value

Every week shaved off client onboarding translated directly to earlier revenue recognition for Apto — at their average contract size, compressing onboarding from 6 weeks to under 2 weeks across 50+ clients represented millions in accelerated ARR. Beyond onboarding speed, removing manual operations work from engineers and compliance staff freed internal capacity that Apto reinvested into product development rather than support overhead. The self-serve developer portal also reduced inbound support volume significantly, lowering customer acquisition cost for each new fintech partner.

Key Outcomes

60%

Reduction in card program onboarding time

3.2x

Increase in API throughput after infrastructure overhaul

50+

Fintech clients onboarded within 12 months of launch

Why It Worked

The Decisions That
Made the Difference

Good execution matters. But the right early decisions matter more.

We treated Apto's fintech clients as end users, not just API consumers — every developer-facing surface was tested against real client feedback before shipping

The multi-tenant data model was designed for isolation and auditability from day one, which prevented costly refactors when compliance requirements evolved

Event-driven architecture for transaction processing gave the platform headroom to scale authorization volume without service degradation during peak load

Close collaboration with Apto's compliance and legal team during workflow design meant the tooling reflected actual regulatory requirements, not assumptions

Tech Stack

AWS (SQS, Lambda, RDS)

Integrations

Persona (KYC / identity verification) Marqeta (card network processing) Stripe Treasury (ledger and funding) Twilio (cardholder SMS notifications) Plaid (bank account verification for funding sources)

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