01 — Licence to launch
A licensed consumer or business bank — ledger, accounts, cards and app — delivered as one programme rather than five vendor integrations.
Most neobank programmes fail in the seam between the licence and the product. The regulatory application assumes one operating model, the core vendor assumes another, and the mobile team discovers the difference in month seven. We run the licence path and the build as a single plan, so the system you ship is the system you described to the regulator.
The ledger comes first. Accounts, limits, postings and reconciliation are decided before a screen is designed, because every product decision downstream inherits them. Card issuing, payment rails and servicing are then built against a ledger that already balances.
Common questions
How long does it take to launch a neobank?
Eleven to eighteen months is realistic for a licensed retail bank, measured from the start of the licence application to first customer. The licence, not the software, is almost always the critical path. Programmes that quote six months are usually building on someone else's licence as an agent, which is a different product with different economics.
Should we get our own licence or use Banking-as-a-Service?
Use BaaS if speed to market matters more than margin and you can accept a partner's risk appetite as your own. Get your own licence if the economics only work when you hold the deposits, or if your roadmap needs products your sponsor bank will not approve. Many teams start on BaaS and migrate, which is viable if the ledger is built to be portable from day one.
What is the most common cause of neobank programme failure?
Treating the core ledger as a commodity. Limits, postings and reconciliation encode the bank's operating model, and a ledger chosen for delivery speed will constrain every product decision for the following decade. The second most common cause is discovering the gap between the regulatory application and the built system too late to change either.
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