Introduction
You need to understand that hiring a fintech company is not the same way you would hire a typical 3rd party software or development vendor. When you hire a fintech software development company, you are not simply purchasing some code; you are purchasing a provider’s ability to help you manage risk.
In many cases, developed fintech products (such as mobile banking applications, digital wallets, payment gateways, open banking integration, etc.) can be very challenging to build or integrate and contain functionally-critical touch points regarding financial interaction, identity verification, and trust. Therefore, choosing a vendor that is not going to deliver on time is costly. Choosing an incompatible vendor can also create issues such as needing to redo your build/integration, compliance issues, security risks, and potentially unexpected negative experiences for your investors.
This is why cut the RFP process is very important, BUT ONLY IF you utilize the RFP to ascertain how the vendor actually operates (i.e., not asking, “do you do QA?,” but instead, “provide me a copy of your quality assurance process (release checklist), defect escape rate (the number of defects reported after the customer receives the product), and the method employed to identify and prevent security vulnerabilities prior to shipping.”).
In this post, you will find:
- A searchable question bank (to copy and paste) for your RFP
- The requested evidence to provide to your vendor so you are not left with just promises from your vendors
- A scoring system (with weights included + “must-pass” rating)
- A few red flags that we have seen founders wish they had paid more attention to.
We will be providing a proven use case method for how to help founders through this process by providing templates/checklists and FAQ-type documentation.
Guide to using the RFP (keep it from being just a bunch of paper)
Prior to sending out anything to vendors, perform the following three steps:
1) Define the issue on one page:
What is the product? Who are the target customers? What does “MVP” mean for you in terms of functionality? What are the regulatory requirements? What are your integration requirements? What is your timeline? What will be successful for you in 90 days?
If you move directly to “build” rather than getting clarity on the issue, the cost to complete the project will become a guessing game. If you need additional context, here is an overview of the way we approach Fintech discovery and the expected outcomes of it.
2) Request data rather than opinion(request examples):
For each respective category (security, delivery, quality assurance, support) ask the potential vendors to provide samples of data, i.e., examples of the systems they would utilize, how they manage and measure success, and examples of how they will ensure compliance.
3) Apply a uniform scoring to vendors across all categories
The risk of not establishing a scoring system would be giving more credit to a vendor because of their personality or the way they spoke vs giving credit for having an established, trustworthy delivery team. We will include our standard scoring rubric later on.
RFP Question Bank for Fintech Vendors
A menu of questions that can be used in any type or size of project, as long as you maintain Security, Delivery & Compliance (for example: you may experience only a small number of concerns if your project is smaller in scope).
A. Overview of Vendor and Fit
- What percentage of your Works are in Fintech/Payments today?
- What types of Fintech Products have you devised in the last 24 months (Wallets, Lending, Banking, Payments, RegTech)?
- Who are your typical Clients (Start-ups, Scale-ups, Enterprises)?
- When the project requirements change during development how is that handled?
- Who decides FO’s for your products, and can you keep decision-making fast?
Attachment: Provide a one-page company profile and list of all Fintech Products owned by your company
B. Team Composition and Operating Model
- Who specifically will be included on our team (Roles, Seniority and Location/Time Zone)?
- How many of the members of our team will be full-time vs shared members (QA, DevOps, Security)?
- Who will have the day to day accountable lead (not the Sales Contact)?
- How do you deal with key personnel risks; (backup ownership, documentation, onboarding)?
- What is your approach to using AI to help with the design and implementation of products, and how do you confirm their usage?
Attachment: Provide a Proposed Organizational Chart showing the team and their assignments as well as a RACI showing who does what.
C. Similar projects and references
- Present two or three comparable projects (both in related area of concern and complexity) that include similar outcomes as well as their anticipated deliverables.
- What are the common mistakes made in a recent fintech project, and what did you learn from these mistakes?
- Please provide us with a minimum of two people who can act as references (preferably, they need to have had similar compliance and integration requirements).
- If you cannot provide us with case studies publicly, would it be possible to provide us with a private case study under a non-disclosure agreement?
The importance of this (in the case of fintech) involves experience that goes beyond the conception of an application; it encompasses knowledge of complex procedures and potential issues including edge cases, audit trails, onboarding/KYC drop-offs, chargebacks, settlement logic, simple/cross-account flow(s), and vendor dependencies.
D. Delivery process and metrics (this section will reflect the reality)
- Provide an outline of your deliverable cadence (sprints, demos, and release dates).
- How do you write complete and accurate acceptance criteria?
- What documentation will you provide on a weekly basis (status, risks, decisions, and demo notes)?
- How do you keep track of delivery predictability (planned vs. delivered)?
- What metrics do you use to benchmark quality and efficiency (e.g., lead time, cycle time, defect and change failure rate)?
Attach sample(s): weekly status report, sample sprint board, and sample release checklist.
A quality fintech partner should clearly demonstrate their progress towards completion of a project through their ongoing communication and should keep the associated risks associated both prominent and openly visible instead of relying on comments such as “we are currently working towards it.”
E. Security Controls And The Secure Software Development Life Cycle (SSDLC)
Request clear references from all vendors; statements like “we utilize best practices” will not suffice.
- Do you conduct threat modeling? If so, when? Who, specifically, participates in threat modeling exercises?
- What secure coding policies or checklists do you enforce during development?
- What type of automated security testing do you perform during continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), including (1) static application security testing (SAST), (2) dynamic application security testing (DAST), (3) dependency vulnerability scanning, and (4) secrets vulnerability scanning?
- How do you manage your secrets including rotation, storage, access, and auditing logs?
- What is your process for disclosing vulnerabilities, and what should clients expect regarding your service level agreements (SLAs) for patching?
- What is your logging policy with regard to collecting personally identifiable information (PII) in both development (dev) and staging environments?
- What is your approach to encryption (data at rest and data in transit) and key management?
- What methods do you use to restrict access (e.g., implementing principles of least privilege, multiple factor authentication (MFA), role-based access control (RBAC), etc.)?
Include a sanitized SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC) checklist and an example of a security testing report.
If you want a firm third-party reference on application security validation, the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) is a valid alternative.
You may also want your vendor to be aware of accepted frameworks for developing secure solutions. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) is an excellent reference for providing procurement language to vendors.
F. Compliance & Regulatory Readiness (Product Fit)
Choose only those that you know apply (do not ask about things that are out of scope).
- What compliance environments have you operated in? (PSD2, PCI DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, etc)
- Do you developed PSD2-compliant development patterns, such as Strong Customer Authentication flows, into real products?
- How do you support audit readiness once evidence has been collected through change logs, access logs and approvals?
- How do you design for traceability, specifically related to who changed what when and why?
- What is your experience with integrating KYC and AML integration providers? How do you handle vendor outages and fallbacks?
- How do you handle data residency and region-specific requirements (EU/UK/US)?
Attach existing audit evidence package (sanitized), plus an example of a “decision log” or “change log”.
G. Architecture, Integrations And Data Handling
- What is your normal architecture approach for fintech applications (modular monolith versus service oriented)? Why?
- How do you handle idempotency and reconciliation for payments and/or ledger like flows?
- What is your integration approach for:
- Payment Gateway Integration
- Open Banking Integration
- Notifications, Webhooks, Retries & Failure Handling
- How do you version APIs and mitigate breaking changes?
- How do you define observability (logs, metrics, traces), and how do you perform incident debugging?
Attach existing architecture diagram (sanitized) + integration checklist.
H. QA, Testing Strategy and Release Readiness
- Who is responsible for QA? Is it separate from the development team?
- What does your testing pyramid look like in practice (unit/integration/e2e)?
- How do you deal with regression testing, particularly for payments and onboarding?
- How do you define “Done” for a feature?
- How do you manage test data (KYC, Bank Depository, and payment)?
- How do you guard against “demo code” being a risk to production?
Please include the following attachments: Test Plan, Regression Checklist, and Bug Report.
I. SLAs, Support, Incident Response
- Do you provide production support and maintenance? What levels?
- What are the SLAs for severity (i.e., response & resolution targets)?
- How do you monitor production and provide alerts?
- What is your incident response process (i.e, triage, communications, root cause analysis, remediation)?
- What is your process for deployments/rollbacks and change approvals?
- What is your on-call model (i.,e. hours, weekends, escalations)?
Please provide the following attachments: Incident Postmortem (redacted); Support SLA Sheet.
J. Commercial Contracts, Price Structures And Proprietary Information (Including the IP)
- What types of price models do you provide? (i.e., fixed, time and materials (T & M), hybrid). Which do you suggest for fintech and why?
- How do you accommodate scope change requests, trade-offs, and re-estimating your work?
- Who will own the proprietary rights that come along with the work product that is created?
- What is your warranty period for the service provided?
- Please explain your termination terms and commitments of transferring materials such as documentation, repositories, credentials, and runbooks.
Note: Transfer of materials should be included as part of a deliverable and focus on making it a deliverable instead of just a promise.
K. Conducting A Pilot Project (Optional but Powerful)
Rather than regarding an entire proposal as a gamble, consider running a paid pilot (i.e., pilot project).
- Create 2–4 week timelines per pilot that will demonstrate:
- How often wwill wedeliver
- Type of quality that will be delivered
- How well we will work together
- How disciplined are we with respect to security
- As such, the following outputs can be furnished with each pilot: Delivery cadence, quality benchmark, collaborative effort, and security compliance, as well as
An example of how quickly you can distinguish between a “Sounds good” statement vs. “Reliable Shipping.”
Scoring rubric (with weights) + must-pass gates
Each category will have a 1-5 scale, where:
- 1 = Low to Mostly Promissory
- 3 = Acceptable, with some evidence
- 5 = Strongly Verified with Clear Artifacts
Must Pass Gates:
If you fail any of these must-pass gates, you will be stopped from continuing with this checklist:
- Cannot clearly articulate Secure SDLC with actual controls in use
- No real FinTech references or evidence of relevant experience
- No delivery artifacts (even if sanitized) were provided for review
- No identifiable ownership or accountability of the outcomes
| Category | Weight | What “5” looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Fintech domain fit | 15% | Multiple comparable builds; understands real constraints |
| Team & ownership | 15% | Clear accountable lead, stable team, strong QA/DevOps coverage |
| Delivery discipline | 15% | Weekly demos, predictable cadence, transparent metrics |
| Security controls | 20% | Threat modeling + CI scanning + secrets discipline + evidence |
| Compliance readiness | 15% | Prior work in relevant regimes; audit-friendly processes |
| QA & release quality | 10% | Strong test strategy + definition of done + low defect escape |
| Support & SLAs | 10% | Clear severity model, incident process, monitoring, RCAs |
Value = ∑ (weight *(score/5))
To create your final score, add up all of the scores’ ∑ weight × (rating / 5); your results will be a score out of 100.
Tip for Scoring:
Once you have individually scored your items, take 30 minutes to do a “score calibration” with your stakeholders to help determine what a 3 and 5 mean on your products.
Common fintech RFP mistakes to avoid
Avoid these common mistakes when issuing an RFP for your fintech project
- Selecting vendors based solely on PowerPoint slides
- Not requesting tangible deliverables: sample metrics, reports and checklists
- Overestimating speed when you should consider security and quality assurance
- Not specifying which party is responsible for compliance (the vendor may comply but your governance policies and legal liability are still yours)
- Not taking into account the reality of vendor dependencies when planning the work (KYC providers, banks, and payment processors); ask how the vendor designs for failure scenarios.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is a request for proposal (RFP) required if my business is in the beginning stages?
You will not need a huge, complex 30-page document; however, when there is no standard question set or active scoring process in place, you will be making your partner selections based on feelings.
- What’s meant by “security practices” and “security evidence”?
Practices are what a vendor states, and evidence that backs up the vendor’s statements can be found in the following ways: Continuous Integration (CI) checks, reviewed rule sets, sample reports of incidents, incident response processes, and audit trails and/or logs.
- Should I use a fixed price or should I pay for hours worked?
In general, the best way to bill for a product that is changing often is a hybrid method of a fixed price for the discovery phase and a time and materials method of billing according to weekly deliverables and projects that are clearly controlled.
- If a vendor says they can do everything, what should I think?
In a business relationship, trust is very important, and a trustworthy vendor will share with you what they will and will not do, what assumptions will need to be made in order for them to provide their services, and what risks they see in relation to providing those services.
Appricotsoft's Approach to RFP Expectations (Here's what we'll show you)
Appricotsoft works on clean expectations and delivering honesty. No drama, no mystery. No “Trust us.” The way we work and engage clients reflects that mindset.
We typically include the following in our RFP:
- Weekly Demos – Weekly demos to earn trust; you will see USA in action vs just a status update
- Single Point of Truth for Artifacts – Our backlog with acceptance criteria, decision log, risk log, status, demo notes, rel
- Responsible AI Use – AI can help with drafting and minimize repetitive work. However, humans own the outcomes; reviews are required, and anything that alters scope/architecture will be logged.
- Security as part of Design – design with security built-in, do not add security as an afterthought (especially for Fintech application development).
If you would like more context on what we mean by “go to value” in a fintech development partner, this is a good companion to this text.
Conclusion
An effective fintech RFP must deliver on its promise.
The vendor will simply respond to your request with evidence of their use of the system through examples and metrics. Use the list of questions above as well as establish a series of passes and scores.
If you are in the process of comparing vendors for your Fintech application development (payments, banking, wallet, open banking, and/or KYC/AML), and would like a second opinion on your RFP or vendor responses, please contact us, whether you ultimately choose to work with us or not.