The Green Sheet Online Edition
August 25, 2025 • 25:08:02
The gatekeepers you forgot about: How banks decide if your business succeeds
Startups spend weeks perfecting their pitch decks, filled with growth plans, financial projections, and product roadmaps designed to impress investors and prove the business will soon be worth millions. Founders focus on raising funds, building teams and planning to scale, believing that once the money is in place, everything else will follow.
But the decision that truly determines whether the business can operate doesn't come from the investor, the tax advisor, or the product team. It comes from the payment and banking provider.
The one piece that truly enables a business to operate is the one who allows it to receive funds, process payments, pay suppliers and salaries, and hold money on its behalf. Without a functioning bank account, even the best tax setup or investor backing means nothing, because the business simply never starts.
Banks and providers assess new clients through a very specific lens, focusing on risk rather than potential. They decide who gets access and who doesn't, and more often than not, the entire operation gets blocked before anything even begins.
How banks think
Businesses often assume that if something is legal, it will automatically be accepted. But legality doesn't guarantee viability. Even when the business model follows every regulation, banks and payment providers can still refuse to support it. Their decision isn't based on whether something is allowed by law but whether they are comfortable taking the risk
To understand how banks think we need to see how banks work.
Banks have two main responsibilities: making sure no crime is committed and that everyone pays their taxes. They act as semi-governmental gatekeepers because they help maintain the stability of the entire financial system, not just for their own clients but for the global economy.
Every transaction is reviewed, filtered and assessed against these two goals, and if something slips through that shouldn't have, the bank can face serious penalties and even lose its license.
Banks and payment providers are expected to assess what could go wrong before anything actually does. Their responsibility is to prevent issues, not react to them after the fact. This means they often reject anything that doesn't clearly fit into their risk framework, even if the business is fully legal. Their job is to protect the financial system, not to ensure that every business idea gets a chance to succeed.
By focusing on risk, they end up holding far more influence over a company's ability to operate than most founders or even experienced investors realize.
The importance of payment and banking
Payment and banking today impact customer experience, risk management, technology, product development, data security, compliance, finance and more. It should be considered a standalone function, an essential element of the business strategy, not just a part of finance.
Understanding how funds are held, received or sent is vital to plan for success, and it is not something that can be fixed after launch or left to a junior team member. Any mismatch between the business plan and the financial structure can block the entire operation regardless of its potential.
Why investors should pay attention
Investors often approve startups or new market penetration plans without checking if the business can actually move money across borders. But without understanding how the funds are routed, moving across borders, how much, how often and how quickly, even the best go-to-market strategy can fail.
Payment and banking has so many moving parts which can be easily overlooked: capital controls; sanctions; FX risks; delayed, frozen or blocked funds; etc. These all can all affect the viability of every business, regardless of the actual business delivery and success.
Just like agile reshaped how products are built, the same shift is now happening in how businesses approach banking and payments. Instead of building a full structure first and only later trying to make it work with providers, the smarter approach is to start with what works in practice.
The market is shifting, and the most forward-thinking investors already recognize this. Rather than forcing a business model into a setup that banks and payment providers don't understand or accept, it makes far more sense to begin by understanding what kind of structure, flow and risk profile banks are actually willing to work with.
Those who still try to push through innovative, untested and unclear setups will end up facing frozen funds, delayed approvals and blocked accounts; all these issues can be easily avoided with the right planning from the start.
Knowing which providers are being used and on what terms from the beginning spares businesses from unnecessary problems and last-minute firefighting.
Once a payment and banking strategy is in place early on, investors can immediately see if the business can scale: if funds can move across borders, if FX costs are properly considered, and if the entire setup is built to grow with volume. Treating payments and banking strategy as a core part of business infrastructure is a must to achieve success.
Payments and banking is not a finance task
Too many founders still put the CFO or accountant in charge of "finding a provider." But payment and banking setup should not sit under finance. It's a structural, strategic part of how the business operates.
Cash flows connect every aspect of the operation, as they are all part of the process and rely on the same flows, even if indirectly. Instead of adjusting each time something breaks, teams have to work in synchronization as only a structured setup reduces unnecessary questions, delays and costs, and gives the business a stable base to build on.
Unfortunately, very few business owners, finance professionals or even C-level teams have formal training in payments and banking. The ones who manage payment and banking tasks are not adequately trained to do so. Key areas, such as how payments and banking affect technology, UX, compliance and other essential aspects of a business, are absent from accounting, economics courses and MBAs.
When decisions are made without fully understanding how they affect the business or how different departments depend on each other, damage becomes inevitable. This is how otherwise promising businesses end up with blocked accounts, excessive fees, or inefficient fund flow structures that later require expensive restructuring.
Proper training in payment and banking strategy is no longer a nice-to-have but a basic requirement for any business with international exposure.
What founders and investors must know
The entire sector has reached a point where businesses can no longer rely on generic solutions or basic market knowledge to secure long-term success, because the layers of requirements on both the financial and technological side keep multiplying.
What used to be a simple bank account or a plug-and-play merchant account now involves decisions around UX, treasury, data security, API connectivity, compliance, risk controls, sanctions filtering, settlement timelines evaluation, client verification structures, operational oversight, and constant alignment with changing local and international standards.
Without an expert guiding this from the start, the business will be exposed to invisible errors that later surface in blocked accounts, high fees or lost revenue. Payments and banking are no longer just tools to support the product but functions that determine whether the product can exist and be sold in certain jurisdictions.
All business needs to be accessed by users and operate at scale, but without the right payment and banking partners and setup, it is impossible. Investors and founders have to understand that the real value of a business is in the ability to understand and plan for how banks think and how money moves internationally. 
Viktoria Soltesz is the CEO and founder of PSP Angels and The Soltesz Institute. She is a leading advocate for strategy-led financial operations, ethical industry practices, and structured education in an area too often overlooked in traditional business training. PSP Angels is a globally awarded, independent payment and banking consultancy that has supported over 1,000 companies in building scalable, secure financial infrastructures. The Soltesz Institute is the first and only independent online organization offering EU-accredited training and certifications focused exclusively on payments and banking. To contact Viktoria, please email viktoria@pspangels.com.
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