There are two routes to market. Rent a banking stack from a middleware provider — fast, but you live on their platform, pay forever, and inherit their counterparty risk. Or license your own platform and connect your own rails — the BAAS Kit Pro model.
| Provider type | Model | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsor-bank BaaS / middleware | Recurring fees; sits between you and a partner bank | A seat on their platform |
| Licensed BaaS (own charter) | Regulated entity + APIs; recurring + bps | A banking relationship, not the software |
| Card-issuing specialists | Card rails + processing; per-transaction | A card program, not a full platform |
| Ledger / money-movement infra | Ledger and payment-ops APIs; usage-based | A component, not the product |
| BAAS Kit Pro | One-time licence, full source code | The entire platform, under a perpetual licence |
Provider categorisations per industry analyses.
A one-time licence vs. perpetual per-account, per-transaction, and platform fees that compound as you scale.
You connect your own licensed bank and rails. There is no middleware intermediary whose insolvency or ledger error can freeze your customers' funds.
You hold and control the platform records — the single most important lesson of the 2024 BaaS reset.
Full source code means you can change banks, processors, or compliance vendors without a rewrite or a renegotiation.
A fraction of the time to a working foundation — the time-to-market of 'buy', with the control of 'build'.
Building a regulated platform from scratch costs USD 500K–USD 2.5M and takes 9–18 months, with compliance alone consuming 25–40% of the budget. Renting middleware is faster but never stops costing, and you never hold the licence. Licensing a production-grade foundation is the third option, and for most serious teams it is the right one.
| Build from scratch | Rent middleware | License with BAAS Kit Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to foundation | 9–18 months | Weeks–months | A fraction of the time |
| Up-front cost | $500K–$10M | Low | One-time licence |
| Ongoing cost | Full eng team | Per-account / per-txn, forever | None from us |
| Source-code access | Yes | No | Yes — full source, perpetual licence |
| Tri-party / lock-in risk | None | High | None |
| Control of ledger | Full | Dependent on provider | Full |
We'd rather tell you the truth than sell you the wrong thing.
If you want a single vendor to also be your bank and never touch infrastructure, a licensed BaaS provider is a legitimate path — you trade control and economics for simplicity.
If card issuing at massive scale is your entire product, a dedicated card-issuing specialist will out-ship a generalist on card tooling specifically.
We'll tell you honestly in discovery if licensing your own platform isn't the right call for your stage. That candour is part of how we work.
Ready to license your own platform?