=== session 2026-10-01 10:00 ===
[10:00:12] THEM: Thanks for making the time. I'm Dana, I run operations at Harbor Lane, and Priya here leads compliance.
[10:00:21] ME: Good to meet you both. Thanks for the intro notes, they helped.
[10:00:34] THEM: So quick background. We do cross-border payouts for marketplaces. We hold licences in the UK, Singapore and the UAE.
[10:00:47] THEM: We have about 40 business customers and we move roughly four hundred thousand dollars a day.
[10:01:02] ME: And the team is twelve people, with engineering in Lisbon, is that right?
[10:01:09] THEM: That's right. Leo leads the developers, he couldn't join today.
[10:01:25] THEM: The problem we want to talk about is onboarding. It takes us nine days on average to onboard a new business.
[10:01:38] THEM: We want that down to three. Most of the delay is manual review.
[10:01:52] ME: How much of your volume goes through manual review today?
[10:02:04] THEM: About thirty one percent of payouts get touched by a person. We want to get that under ten.
[10:02:19] THEM: Priya built the first risk scoring sheet herself. It is a spreadsheet with about sixty questions.
[10:02:33] THEM: It works, but it does not scale, and nobody else can maintain it.
[10:02:48] ME: Understood. What does the sheet produce at the end, a score or a decision?
[10:03:01] THEM: A score from one to five and a short written assessment. A person signs off on anything above three.
[10:03:17] THEM: For identity we use Very Doc. They do liveness, passport and proof of address.
[10:03:29] THEM: I rate them well on fraud. What they do not catch is forged bank statements.
[10:03:44] THEM: Almost all of our fraud losses last year came from forged statements. About a hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
[10:03:58] ME: That is useful. Is the forged statement problem growing?
[10:04:11] THEM: Yes. In our own data document fraud attempts grew one hundred forty four percent year on year.
[10:04:26] THEM: It is the thing that keeps me up at night, honestly.
[10:04:41] ME: Let me ask about routing, since that was in your note. How do payouts choose a corridor today?
[10:04:55] THEM: Today it is simple. One entity or the other, picked by hand when the customer is set up.
[10:05:08] THEM: What we want is a routing engine. But it has to be deterministic.
[10:05:19] THEM: The same payout must always take the same corridor, and I must be able to explain every decision to an auditor.
[10:05:33] ME: So rules decide, and a model can at most suggest.
[10:05:41] THEM: Exactly. No model makes the final call. I would lose my licence.
[10:05:56] THEM: The order of rules matters too. Licence coverage first, then cost, then speed.
[10:06:10] ME: That order makes sense. Do the rules change often?
[10:06:22] THEM: A few times a year when a regulator changes something. We need to see what changed and when.
[10:06:37] ME: So versioned rules with an audit trail. We have built that shape before.
[10:06:49] THEM: Good. Now, what about AI in the review step? We are open to it but careful.
[10:07:03] THEM: Our policy is no live customer data goes to a model. Test data only until our security review is done.
[10:07:16] ME: That is fine. We can work on synthetic cases first and keep the model out of the live path.
[10:07:31] THEM: How long would a first version take, do you think?
[10:07:44] ME: I would rather not give a date before we have seen the scoring sheet and a sample assessment.
[10:07:57] THEM: Fair. We need an NDA in place before I can send those.
[10:08:09] ME: Agreed. Sam on our side will send the mutual NDA this week.
[10:08:22] THEM: Then I will send the scoring sheet and one sample assessment right after.
[10:08:36] THEM: On budget, the first phase is capped at sixty thousand dollars. Dana, correct me if that changed.
[10:08:47] THEM: No, sixty is right for phase one.
[10:09:01] ME: That works for a first phase. We will send data-handling options by the twelfth so your security team can pick one.
[10:09:15] THEM: Perfect. One more question. Do you know what other payout companies pay for a tool like this?
[10:09:29] ME: I do not have a number I trust. I will look into it and come back to you.
[10:09:42] THEM: And who would we work with day to day?
[10:09:51] ME: Me for the design and the rules work, and one engineer for the build.
[10:10:05] THEM: Great. Leo will want to talk about how it plugs into the payout service.
[10:10:18] ME: Happy to. Can you tell me what the payout service is written in?
[10:10:27] THEM: It is a Python service with a Postgres database. Leo can share the interface.
[10:10:41] ME: Good, that is an easy fit.
[10:10:55] THEM: Is there anything you need from us besides the sheet and the sample?
[10:11:08] ME: A list of the corridors you support today and the cost of each would help.
[10:11:19] THEM: I can put that together. Give me a few days.
[10:11:33] THEM: So to recap. NDA this week, then the sheet and a sample from me, then options from you by the twelfth.
[10:11:44] ME: Yes. And I owe you an answer on what similar tools cost.
[10:11:56] THEM: Wonderful. Thank you both, this was a good first call.
[10:12:04] ME: Thank you. Talk soon.
