Same form factor. Very different infrastructure. They look identical in-hand, but credit and debit cards are very different on the back end. Prepaid cards are stored value products. (The customer is spending their money.) Credit cards are revolving loans. (The customer is spending your money.) From the infrastructure to the required day-to-day management, they're entirely different products. Some vendors blur the lines in their marketing, making it seem as if you can build a

Launching a credit card (or other lending product) can make you feel like you're spread pretty thin. There's a myriad of vendor, partner, and infrastructure decisions to make, and all of them are consequential. You're juggling a lot: Searching for a sponsor bank. Writing the credit policy that will define how your first loans are made (and how your first returns will look!) Convincing debt providers to take a chance on you. Contracts. So many contracts. Assembling the tech st

Yes — if you bring unique insights, clear conviction, and extreme curiosity, you're a strong fit. In fact, Ensemblex has co-founded with several entrepreneurs that came outside of fintech. At Ensemblex, we back domain experts, technologists, and operators who do not rest until they fix a problem. Whether you're coming from sports, music, education, or engineering— if you’ve felt the friction, understand the user, and have a bold idea for how the world should evolve, you're ex

🚀 Accelerated Journey Put simply: studios like Ensemblex compress the launch timeline. Especially in highly regulated sectors like...

To build or not to build? It’s one of the biggest decisions you’ll make. When launching a credit card or lending product, one of the first decisions you face is how to architect your infrastructure. Should you choose a turnkey Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform? Or should you DIY it, stitching together all the vendors yourself? There’s no universally right answer. Both have pros and cons and how you weigh them is unique to your goals. But think carefully: your decision now