Stephen Walsh, Founder and CEO, Keeper Solutions

I’m Stephen Walsh, founder and CEO of Keeper Solutions. We’re a technology services company based in Ireland, specializing in fintech and financial services. We help fintech founders to design, develop, scale, and integrate AI platforms across lending, payments, accounting and finance, neobanking, and wealth management. We work with clients in the US and in Europe, mainly in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Our main delivery location is Croatia, and we also deliver from Romania. Right now, we’re about 70 people in total.

Specialization in financial services has been very helpful. My own background is in core banking systems, global service delivery, software development, and application services outsourcing. When I set up Keeper Solutions, I wanted to bring together a fintech financial services domain specialization with good practice in global service delivery.

We’re involved in design — specifically design sprints and AI-enabled design sprints. These are the typical kinds of design processes, facilitated by product designers, in which they engage with the stakeholders of our client. We map out the problem statements, the user journeys, the user personas, and the solution. We also map out the technical architecture required based on who will use the platform, how many people will use it, and the context in which it will be used.

Our main flagship service is Software Development as a Service (SDAS). This is a managed software development service and likely accounts for over 95% of the company’s revenue. It is based on providing a tailor-made, managed capacity of engineering capability to our clients at a fixed price point, with the flexibility to scale up or down. SDAS is a very durable, long-term model. We typically work with our clients for years — five, 10, or 15 years with some clients.

All our services are underpinned by our ISO 27001 certification. We also have an AI lab at the company, so we’re able to help clients design AI features and platforms and implement them. In financial services, there’s a very particular context because it’s a highly regulated industry. We understand that our clients may hold licenses and ultimately bear the responsibility to protect their licenses and reputations with the regulator, and to maintain trust with their customers. It’s very important in financial services that AI is delivered in a safe, responsible, and explainable way. We have the capability to do that using various measures, such as KYA (Know Your Agent), our AI gateway — which enables companies to track AI use and provide an audit trail — and the ability to mask personally identifiable information and protect their intellectual property.

We have also developed some IP in the company. Our AI gateway enables secure multi-model access, and we’re also developing reusable components for AI testing. These tools allow our engineering teams to accelerate their work. In summary, our services cover design, development, and AI integration.

It’s a combination of focus, capability, reputation, and footprint. We’re focused on fintech, and within that, on areas where we have experience: lending, embedded finance, payments, value-added services in payments and cards, accounting and finance platforms, and neobanking. So, we work with a number of clients helping them build these kinds of finance management platforms in a SaaS B2B environment.

We also have a geographical focus — we work with companies in the Eastern Time Zone in the United States, with our US base in Atlanta, and with clients in Ireland and the United Kingdom, and to some extent in Western Europe.

We have developed a very strong reputation on the back of work done with very reputable clients: Fexco, the world leader in dynamic currency conversion; Momnt, a very scaled-up embedded finance point-of-need lending company fintech in Atlanta; AccountsIQ, which has a widely adopted accounting and finance platform used in the United Kingdom and Ireland; and Umba, the neobank for Africa.

We have technical expertise in these areas, our ISO certification, and a deep understanding of fintech practices — payments, lending, accounting and finance, regulations, and the technological implications of designing, developing, and delivering mission-critical, scalable platforms in a regulated environment. All of this is underpinned by our talented engineers and designers. Our reputation in Croatia and Romania, and across wider Central and Eastern Europe, helps our brand attract and retain talent in those markets. Having a good working environment, attracting top talent, and engaging in interesting, leading-edge fintech projects all seem to go together quite well.

We’re seeing significant growth in our existing customer base. AI is obviously a big focus, and we have a credible AI capability. However, in financial services, AI is both an accelerator and a brake. There’s a lot of pressure to engage with AI and move forward with it, but because banks hold the license and the responsibility, they also have to be very cautious and must maintain trust with regulators and customers.

Over the last couple of years, there’s been an awful lot of hype and proofs of concept in AI. What we’re starting to see now is that fintechs and banks are beginning to understand what their customers would appreciate in terms of AI, and how that could be integrated into their platforms. We’ve also seen that scaled-up fintechs actually need experienced software engineers to modernize their platforms, not just AI — but they do want those engineers to be working with leading-edge AI tools, in a way that protects their intellectual property and delivers the productivity gains they’re looking for.

We are seeing significant growth from platform modernization and AI integration. We’ve been engaged in a series of roundtables on AI and fintech — held in Manchester, Glasgow, Dublin, Atlanta, and Belfast — and we believe that getting AI governance right is a prerequisite for the responsible integration of AI within financial services.

On the stablecoin side, particularly in international B2B payments, we’re seeing significant interest, uptake, and development of payments platforms, especially in emerging markets where cross-border transactions can be quite expensive. One client, for example, is looking to reduce the time it takes to complete a cross-border payment from five days down to same-day, and the cost from F% down to 1%, using stablecoin. So there’s a definite growth opportunity in that space as well.

In our industry, trust is very important, and so are relationships. Typically, when we’re working with a client as a strategic technology partner, it’s a long-term engagement spanning many years, and we go through the entire lifecycle with them. That’s a big commitment from Keeper’s point of view, and from the fintech’s as well. So it often takes time to get to know each other before we actually start an engagement.

One of the things we’ve been doing for the last three or four years is sponsoring the innovation challenge at Fintech South in Atlanta. We offer the winner free design sprints — and that’s been a way for us to get to know promising companies. Good Agriculture, a farm finance management platform based in Atlanta, came to us through that channel and has been a client for the past 6 months.

We try to ensure that when we engage potential clients, we add value at every stage of the journey. That’s also why we’re convening roundtables — to bring banks, fintechs, and regulators together to develop best practices for AI adoption, KYA (Know Your Agent), explainability, and related areas. We tend to engage in developing knowledge and being useful. From that, we get to know people, understand their pain points, and, at some point, put options on the table and begin to engage with them in a client- or partnership-oriented manner.

That’s it exactly. We have to listen very hard and really try to understand their problems.

A lot of technology companies are doing something in medtech, fintech, manufacturing, green technologies, and so on. We specialize in the financial services domain because it’s a massive industry in its own right, and even within it, there are certain areas we’re not focusing on much. Even within lending, payments, accounting, finance platforms, neobanking, and wealth management, there’s plenty. The key is listening, but also understanding — because we understand how business is done and the regulations across the different parts of the financial services industry.

What I would say to fintechs and financial services companies in a growth phase is that it can pay off to have a trusted technology partner who understands your business and can help serve as a platform for your success. Keeper Solutions is such a company, and we’re ready to help our clients succeed — because their success is our success.

The other message I would have for designers, software engineers, and AI professionals is that Keeper Solutions is a great place to develop your career. We reward our team well, we try to skill them up, and we share 10% of our profit each year with all our team members. If you’re interested in a career in financial technology and AI, come to Keeper Solutions, and we’ll look after you. It’s like being part of a family.