Recorded live on the floor at Baltic Fintech Days in Riga, this conversation with Walletto’s Irina Istjagina gets straight into what it actually takes to build embedded finance infrastructure at scale. Irina breaks down how Walletto operates as a principal member of both Visa and Mastercard, offering issuing, acquiring, compliance, KYC, and fraud prevention as a modular stack that partners can pick from rather than taking all or nothing. She explains why competitors in card issuing often end up renting Walletto’s gateway anyway, and what that says about the real competitive dynamics in European fintech. The conversation turns to the digital euro and how agile EMIs like Walletto may actually be better positioned to monetise the incoming CBDC infrastructure than traditional banks. And for startups, Irina makes a compelling case for why launching under Walletto’s license first is the smartest way to test a payments idea before spending two years and serious money getting your own.
Walletto’s Irina Istjagina on Embedded Finance and the Digital Euro
