A different kind of onboarding
Three months ago, we brought Johannes Kanter on board as Chief Growth Officer at FastoPayments. He came with over 15 years of digital marketing experience, a track record of building growth engines for startups and established brands, and the kind of energy that makes you rethink how you do things. But joining a regulated payments company is not the same as joining a typical tech startup. And we want to be upfront about that.
The learning curve is the point
The first three months have been an adjustment period. For Johannes, and for us. Payments is a world of compliance frameworks, scheme rules, risk thresholds, and partner relationships that take time to fully understand. You cannot growth-hack your way through an EMI licensing process. You cannot A/B test a chargeback ratio. The learning curve is real, and Johannes has leaned into it rather than around it.
Asking better questions
What we have seen is a shift in how we think about the commercial side of the business. Questions we were not asking before are being asked now. How are we positioning ourselves to merchants who have been burned by unstable processing? What does our onboarding experience actually feel like from the other side? Where are the gaps between what we say we do and what merchants experience in practice?
No hockey stick, just direction
These are not flashy wins. There is no hockey-stick graph to show off after 90 days. But the foundation is being laid. We have started moving things in the right direction: tightening our messaging, rethinking how we approach new verticals, and building a pipeline that reflects where we want to be, not just where we have been.
The bet we made
Bringing someone from outside the payments industry into a senior role is a bet. It is a bet that fresh perspective and commercial instinct can complement deep domain expertise. Three months in, we are more convinced than ever that it was the right call.
Johannes is just getting started. And so are we.
💡 Interested in learning more about what’s included in a typical high-risk merchant account? View our complete breakdown of FastoPayments’s high-risk merchant accounts.
