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Field notes on backend architecture, distributed systems, delivery tradeoffs, and practical lessons from production work.

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Designing a Fintech Backend: Crypto + Open Banking Under One Roof
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Designing a Fintech Backend: Crypto + Open Banking Under One Roof

Over the better part of this year, I’ve been building a platform designed to serve both banks and blockchains through one request pipeline, one ledger, and one compliance engine. If that sounds straightforward, you haven't tried it. The two domains share surface-level primitives (accounts, transactions, balances, identity) and then diverge on literally everything that matters: trust models, settlement finality, regulatory frameworks, and failure modes. This post is the architecture document I wish existed when I started. It covers everything from event sourcing patterns to gas estimation heuristics to why your HSM setup will make or break you. No hand-waving, no "it depends" without explaining what it depends on.

38 MIN READ
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PSD2 and Open Banking Integration: A Developer's Field Guide
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PSD2 and Open Banking Integration: A Developer's Field Guide

Over the better part of the last year and a half, I’ve worked extensively on PSD2 integrations - connecting to bank APIs across Europe, troubleshooting certificate chains late into the night, and learning firsthand how “technology neutral” can become a very non-neutral challenge in implementation. This post is what I wish existed when I started. Not the regulatory overview your compliance team sends around. Not the vendor pitch deck. The actual engineering reality of building a PSD2-compliant third-party provider application from scratch, deploying it, and keeping it alive in production. If you're a backend engineer who's been told "we need to connect to bank accounts" and you're staring at the Berlin Group spec wondering what hit you - this is for you.

23 MIN READ
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