LIVE SHUTTLE

CARD ISSUING · PAYMENTS INFRASTRUCTURE

Payments and card issuing infrastructure, from licence to live.

In payments since 1998. Open-loop card programmes taken live in three jurisdictions and operated in four, covering licensing, scheme certification, processor integration and AML tooling.

THE EXPERIENCE

Where the experience actually is

  • Open-loop card programmes taken live in three jurisdictions, licensing through to production, and issuing operations run across four.
  • Credible on both sides of the Atlantic: EMI and PI licensing under European rules, and the US sponsor bank model with its own money transmitter, Reg E and Reg Z obligations.
  • Core ledger and real-time authorisation engine built from scratch, including an external authorisation model where the platform holds the ledger of record.
  • Multi-tenant card issuing platform architected and delivered as a service.
  • Technical takeover of an acquired card processing platform, with no loss of service.
  • Continuous since 1998: internet wallet, cash machine integration, chargeback defence, mobile payment gateways, national-scale ticketing payments.

WHO

Erling Gudjohnsen

FOUNDER · LIVE SHUTTLE EHF

Twenty-eight years in payments, the last decade of it in card issuing. I have taken open-loop programmes from licence application through scheme certification to production, built the ledger and authorisation engine underneath them, and inherited a live card processing platform through an acquisition without dropping a transaction.

Live Shuttle is the company I contract through. When you engage it, you are engaging me. There is no bench, no junior team, and nobody else writing the report.

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SERVICES

What I do, and what it costs

FOR INVESTORS AND ACQUIRERS

Technical due diligence

Three to five days plus a written report, for EEA and US card programmes. A generalist diligence shop can read a codebase. It cannot tell you whether a programme’s BIN sponsorship, scheme certification status and AML tooling will survive contact with a regulator.

€10–25kUS$20–50k in North America

FOR OPERATORS BUILDING CARD PROGRAMMES

Advisory sprint

Two to four sessions. For when you are building card issuing or entering a new market and need to know what you don’t know.

€3–8kor €2–5k monthly

Fixed-scope readiness review

Apple lab test, scheme certification, PCI scope, or market entry, each assessed against a defined boundary with a defined deliverable.

€6–15k

Interim CTO or engineering lead

Two to three days a week, three-month minimum, notice on both sides.

€1,200–2,000per day

START HERE

Paid diagnostic

One day. A two-page note naming the three to five things that will actually hurt, ranked by what each costs you if it goes wrong, plus what I could not assess without deeper access.

€2,000credited in full against any engagement agreed within 30 days

HOW IT RUNS

How an engagement runs

  1. A 45-minute scoping session, no charge. Mutual NDA first if you’d prefer one.
  2. A named range on the call, and a one-page proposal within 24 hours.
  3. Mutual NDA before access. Half on engagement, half on delivery, 14 days from invoice.
  4. Scope changes agreed in writing. Proposal valid 14 days.

WRITING

On card issuing

  • CERTIFICATION

    What actually breaks in an Apple lab test

    The failures are rarely in the cryptography. They are in personalisation profiles nobody re-read after the last mandate release.

  • SPONSORSHIP

    Why BIN sponsorship diligence misses the real risk

    Everyone reads the fee schedule. Almost nobody reads what happens to your BIN range if the sponsor exits the business.

  • ARCHITECTURE

    Who holds the ledger of record

    It looks like an integration detail. It decides your reconciliation model, your dispute process and your failure modes.

CHECKLIST

Card Programme Launch Readiness Checklist

Eight domains where card programmes actually fail, as questions you can answer yes, no, or not sure. Not sure is the finding. It is the list I work through on every readiness review.

Ask me for the checklist