By Kiran Sharma | Co-founder, Vasu International Payment Solutions

When it comes to innovation in digital assets and financial technology, many companies pride themselves on being “disruptors.” However, real disruption isn’t about headlines or hype cycles – it’s about building something that still stands when the noise dies down.

I’ve spent the last decade working in cross-border payments and financial infrastructure across Asia and other parts of the globe. I’ve helped build and scale companies that operate in markets with friction – sectors with real transactional volume, underserved by traditional finance, and rich with opportunity for those who can navigate the regulatory landscape thoughtfully. In these spaces, flash doesn’t pay the bills – revenue does.

So the question is: how do we build revenue engines that are sustainable, even in unstable or evolving markets?

We’ve all seen it – companies that raise $100 million, throw it at customer acquisition, and call it growth. But growth without revenue is just burn rate. Capital gets devoured by overstaffed teams – too many people doing too little, hired for how their resumes read on paper rather than their capabilities in the real world. Often times, behind that flashy momentum, is a messy decision-making table with too many chefs in the kitchen.

If you want to build something that lasts, prioritize the fundamentals – like licensing. Secure them across multiple jurisdictions, even if you’re not activate in those regions yet. Some licenses take time, others cost more, and some are surprisingly straightforward once you’ve built a clean KYB process. Either way, you’ll never regret having regulatory infrastructure ready, because you never know which door it might open.

To build lasting revenue in fintech, it’s important to bridge compliance and sales from the very beginning. A product isn’t ready to scale just because it looks good on a pitch deck – it needs to be live tested, priced appropriately, and aligned with the operational realities of your client base. Sales efforts should be driven by readiness, not pressure. Without that alignment, the entire process becomes guesswork – like hitting a golf ball off a moving boat into a shifting target. You might get lucky once or twice, but it’s not a strategy. In this space, the only way to grow viably is to be proactive rather than reactive to client needs. Success usually comes from anticipating regulatory friction, arriving with a solution that’s ready for deployment before the client even asks for it, and ensuring it aligns with both your compliance environment as well as their speed and commercial expectations from day one.

At Vasu International, we structured our revenue engine using layered framework. We built our foundation on regulatory approvals and licenses across priority regions, alongside exclusive global partnerships that allow us to operate confidently in both established and emerging markets. We didn’t run from underserved verticals – we studied their compliance bottlenecks and built products that solved for them. This wasn’t about chasing unicorn status, it was about building a profitable, repeatable engine that could weather bull and bear markets alike.

We’re living through a time where volatility touches every part of our industry – from changing regulatory landscapes to on-chain liquidity squeezes and global FX fluctuations. Disruption is built in to the name of the environment, and to survive, revenue models can’t depend on ideal conditions. It has to work when a banking partner cuts off your access with 24 hours’ notice, when a new country bans crypto overnight, when FX rates spike by 7% in a week, or when an investor deal collapses and cashflow actually matters again. That’s where a real revenue engine shows its worth, and it’s usually achieved through redundant partnerships and backup options.

As someone who speaks regularly with investors and global partners, I can tell you – they’re done chasing the next “future of finance” hype train. They want regulatory clarity, proof of revenue, scalable operations, and actual demand in proven markets. They don’t want to see a whitepaper, they want to see a working ledger.

If I had to boil it down, building lasting revenue in fast-moving markets requires a shift from growth at all costs to growth with structure. Instead of chasing surface metrics like monthly volume or user signups, dig deeper into end user experience and the long-term viability of both your solution and your clients’ business. Choose verticals with real urgency, not just current popularity. Design pricing that builds trust, not a quick win. As one of my partners likes to say – aim for a small piece of the pie for a long time, not a large piece for a short time. Leverage stablecoins for liquidity. Look at every cost center as a potential margin opportunity. That’s how you might be able to build something that lasts beyond the current cycle. We don’t need more fintech buzzwords. We need more companies that understand how to make money and keep scaling it – even when the market shifts under their feet.

It’s equally important to surround yourself with people who are willing to go through the grind with you. The largest deals require background checks, source-of-funds declarations, selfies, video verifications etc. – and sometimes that has to come from your largest shareholders. If your key stakeholders go MIA during onboarding, you’re dead in the water before the partnership even starts.

Choose investors and partners who are operationally present – people who see themselves as part of the team, not just passive beneficiaries. Don’t take money from those who’ll make compliance painful, who ghost during urgent due diligence, or who think that regulation is someone else’s job. If you’re building in fintech, your cap table is your risk surface, so pick wisely.

It’s just as critical to hire compliance professionals who are willing to do the actual work, not just default to “no.” I’ve seen real revenue blocked by compliance teams who

shut deals down at the first sign of complexity – not because the client was in any way non-compliant, but because they didn’t want to invest the time to truly understand the regulatory framework or build the additional reporting workflows needed to support it.

There’s a difference between protecting the business and playing it safe out of laziness or fear. In today’s environment, especially in fintech and cross-border payments, there’s nothing wrong with onboarding clients who are fully licensed and operational, even if they operate in industries that require enhanced due diligence. You just need to understand your own risk appetite, define it clearly, and build the infrastructure to support it. Good compliance doesn’t mean saying no. It means knowing when to say yes, and being ready to back that decision up with the right internal processes.

The market will keep changing. But companies built on clear compliance operations and sound pricing models will always outlast the market churn. Sustainable growth isn’t a mystery, it’s a discipline, and in this industry, discipline is what separates those who make it from those who make noise.