Three steps. Fixed prices. Nothing hidden.
Every engagement runs the same way, whether it is a payment core or a customer app. This page is the whole of it, including the parts most firms leave for the contract.
The three steps
Blueprint or Outline
Two to six weeks. Fixed.
A costed plan before anyone writes code. A Blueprint for regulated systems, an Outline for everything else, and you can stop there.
Build
Fixed scope. Fixed price.
The system itself, built to the plan from step one, on that scope and that price. You are using it long before it launches.
Run
Monthly.
We operate, secure and extend what we built, or what you already have. Or take a dedicated team monthly and point it wherever you need.
A fixed-price plan that you own outright, whichever of the two it is. We do not work from a rate card, because the number depends on the scope. You will have it before the second conversation.
Two ways in, depending on what is at stake
Steps two and three are identical either way. Only the scoping differs, because a system a regulator will read has to be scoped differently from one that has to win a customer.
Blueprint
For anything that moves, holds or lends money, or that a regulator will eventually read. The scope has to survive an audit, so the scoping does too.
- Product strategy and roadmap
- User journeys and a clickable prototype
- System architecture and data model
- Compliance map for your jurisdiction
- A phased, costed build plan
- A date you can hold us to
Outline
For apps, platforms, commerce and internal systems, where the risk is commercial rather than regulatory. Shorter, because it should be.
- What to build, and what to leave out
- The flows that decide whether it works
- A clickable prototype
- Technical approach and integrations
- A costed build plan
- A date you can hold us to
What fixed price actually means
Anyone can write the words. What makes them believable is saying what sits outside them, and what happens on the day the scope moves.
- Design, engineering and QA for the agreed scope
- Architecture, data model and technical documentation
- Project management, and the lead who answers for it
- Deployment, launch support and handover
- Defects in anything we built, for thirty days after launch
- Licence, regulatory and legal fees
- Cloud, hosting and third-party services: KYC, messaging, card scheme and rail fees
- Paid media, content production and photography
- Your team's time: decisions, reviews, compliance and legal input
- Anything agreed after the scope was signed
We do not mark up third-party costs. You pay those vendors directly, from accounts in your own name, because those accounts are yours from the first day anyway.
It usually does. When it does we price the change, show you what it does to the date, and you decide. We do not start on it until you have said yes in writing. Nothing grows quietly, and nothing arrives as a surprise at the end.
What we need from you
The engineering is our problem. These five things are not, and a build that misses them slips for reasons no amount of engineering can fix.
One person who can say yes
Named at the start, with the authority to decide. Not a committee that meets every other Thursday. The delays we plan around are almost never engineering delays.
Answers inside five working days
On anything that blocks a build. If something is going to take longer than that, we need to know early so the plan can carry it rather than break around it.
Access to the people who actually know
Your compliance officer, your operations lead, whoever understands how the business really runs today. An hour of their time saves a week of ours.
Your bank and regulator contacts
Introductions, not paperwork. We cannot design around a rail, a limit or a requirement that we are not allowed to ask a question about.
The constraints you have not mentioned yet
A board deadline, a budget ceiling, an incumbent vendor we have to live alongside. We would much rather plan around a constraint than discover it in month three.
A fixed price and a fixed date are only possible when the answers come back. This is the half of the work we cannot do for you, so we would rather you see it before you sign than hear about it when a date slips.
Questions clients ask
The ones that come up on every first call, answered here so they do not have to be asked.
Who builds it?
Our engineering team, under an architect who has built core banking systems before. Every technical decision and every merge passes the same review gate before it reaches your repository.
What happens if you disappear?
You have the code, the documentation, the designs and the architecture, in your own repositories, from the first milestone. Nothing we build depends on us continuing to exist.
How long does a build take?
We do not put a number on that before the Blueprint, because until the architecture and the compliance scope are settled, any date is a guess dressed up as a commitment. The Blueprint ends with a dated, costed plan. Once that is signed, the date is fixed the same way the price is.
What if the regulator rejects our application?
We cannot promise an outcome we do not control, and you should be careful with anyone who does. What we can do is build to the standard the audit expects and document it that way from day one. If the answer comes back no, you still hold the architecture, the compliance map and the working product, in your own repositories, and you can resubmit or take it to another jurisdiction without starting again.
What does it cost?
Every engagement opens with a fixed-price plan, a Blueprint for regulated systems and an Outline for everything else. Builds are then fixed-price from that plan, and dedicated teams are monthly. We do not work from a rate card, because the number depends on the scope rather than on a tier you pick off a page. You will have yours before the second conversation.
Who you will work with
Three roles are accountable on every technical build, and each one answers for something specific. You meet all three, and they are founders rather than account managers.
Product lead
That the thing being built is the thing worth building, and that it is still that thing in month four.
Delivery lead
The date, the scope and the weekly demo. This is the person you call when something feels off.
Lead architect
Every technical decision, and the standard that code has to meet before it reaches your repository.
Building something that has to hold up?
Tell us what it is. The first conversation is free, and you will have a number before the second one.
The first call and the scoping conversation are free.
A lead in your timezone, on your calendar, not a shared inbox.
Or write directly to info@7billion.ae.