When Serhii Zakharov talks about payments, he speaks from deep, hands-on experience. “I started my career very early,” he recalls. “At age 17 I worked on IT solutions for e-commerce marketplaces and payments.” What began as teenage curiosity quickly became a career-long obsession with transaction flows, fraud risks and operational inefficiencies - particularly those holding back fast-moving digital industries.
A few years after that early start, Zakharov founded his first IT company in Kyiv, dedicated to payments and fintech innovation. One early success was solving a problem triggered by the introduction of open banking in the EU. “Somebody could go to a website, make lots of payments and cancel them, creating huge exposure for e-commerce companies,” he says.
Serhii’s team built a confirmation module for open banking providers that notified merchants when a payment was initiated and when it was fully credited - effectively blocking recalls and fraudulent transfers. Tis ethos of fixing the industry’s biggest structural pain points would later shape PayDo’s entire model.
BUILDING PAYDO
PayDo, launched in 2016 and licensed by the FCA the following year, grew out of Serhii’s frustration with how slowly the financial sector adapted to online-first businesses. Traditional merchants - shops, restaurants, in- person services - were well-served. But digital-first companies, including iGaming operators, marketing agencies, SaaS providers, crypto platforms, and gaming developers, regularly hit walls.
“Historically these industries faced difficulties opening bank accounts, securing acquiring solutions or even accessing basic services,” he explains. “Tere were misunderstandings with governments and banks because everything was new, evolving and adapting.”
PayDo’s solution was to consolidate every essential payment component these businesses typically struggle to secure into one ecosystem. Te platform now offers multi-currency business and personal accounts, virtual cards, e-wallets, direct acquiring, and access to more than 350 payment methods.
For sectors juggling multiple PSPs, banks, crypto processors and local payment providers, this consolidation removes what Serhii calls “a heavy operational burden.”
A UNIQUELY COMPLEX LANDSCAPE Nowhere is that burden heavier than in iGaming. Merchant services
remain the biggest pain point, particularly in markets where direct Visa or Mastercard acquiring is difficult due to licensing and compliance demands. “You also need local alternative payment solutions,” Zakharov notes. “iGaming is heavily dependent on conversion rates.” Without local methods, even minor friction can decimate customer acquisition.
Te operational complexity multiplies from there. Operators must manage corporate expenses, country-specific payouts, crypto settlements, incoming and outgoing transfers, and a web of legal and compliance touchpoints. According to Serhii, “Tese four departments just eat at resources every day.” PayDo’s role is to replace that sprawl with a single point of contact.
As open banking becomes universal across Europe and the UK, a new operational issue is emerging - and PayDo has positioned itself early. While many fintechs offer APIs to initiate payments, few are prepared for the volume. “Imagine tens of thousands of payments per day, which are actually bank transfers,” Zakharov says. Te challenge isn't connectivity - it’s monitoring.
Fintechs must adapt their systems to oversee vast numbers of low-value transfers and train compliance teams to assess a flood of alerts, including those triggered by transactions as small as £10. PayDo’s innovation lies in creating a specialised infrastructure for collecting open-banking payments on behalf of e-commerce, iGaming, and crypto merchants.
“We’re not providing open banking ourselves,” he clarifies. “We are solving the problem of collecting funds.” Te system remains fully compliant in both the UK and EU but is built for speed, scale, and active monitoring - allowing merchants to embrace open banking without overwhelming their risk teams.
LOOKING AHEAD TO 2026
Geographically, PayDo is expanding beyond its existing footprint in the UK, Europe, and Canada, with licensing plans underway in the UAE. But the bigger challenge, Zakharov suggests, is awareness. Te problem PayDo solves is niche, technical, and often invisible until a business feels the friction first-hand.
“We need to better explain the issue we are resolving,” he says. “So, increasing our marketing, sales and business development efforts is our immediate goal.”
As iGaming and other online sectors continue to grow faster than the fintech world can keep up, PayDo’s bet is simple: the future belongs to platforms that can absorb complexity - not pass it on to merchants.
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