Ihor Vlasov
Ihor Vlasov is the owner of M&A House and a co-founder of N5Deal, the M&A marketplace for licensed fintech and banking businesses, and of BankStore.ai. He works on mergers and acquisitions in fintech and AI — valuation, licensing and deal structure — and has argued, in N5Deal's 2026 Fintech M&A Report, that buyers most often go wrong by pricing a licensed fintech as if it were a software business. Under the "Around Fintech" banner he interviews founders and investors and speaks at Web Summit and Slush on fintech licensing and M&A strategy. He studied at Kyiv National Economic University and is based in the United Kingdom.
Guides
- How to price a business for sale
- How to sell a business
- M&A advisory firms: what they do, what they cost and how to choose one
Glossary terms
- 3-D Secure
- 3-D Secure 2
- AI Accelerator
- AI Agent
- AI Alignment
- AI Bias
- AI Tokens
- AI Underwriting
- AML
- API
- API Banking
- API Endpoints
- Account-to-Account Payment
- Accretive Acquisition
- Acquihire
- Acquirer
- Acquirer Reference Number
- Acquisition
- Address Verification Service
- Adjusted EBITDA
- Agent Credential
- Alpha
- Alternative Payment Method
- Angel Investor
- Annual Recurring Revenue
- Anti-Dilution Protection
- Antitrust Clearance
- Approval Rate
- Artificial General Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Superintelligence
- Asset Allocation
- Asset Purchase
- Assets Under Management
- Attention Mechanism
- Auction Process
- Audit Trail
- Authorisation Hold
- Authorisation and Capture
- Automated Clearing House
- Autonomous Systems
- Average Ticket Size
- BaaS
- Backpropagation
- Bank Charter
- Bank Identification Number
- Beta
- Bilateral Negotiation
- Binding Offer
- Blended Pricing
- Blockchain
- Blockchain-Based Settlement
- Bolt-On Acquisition
- Book Building
- Break Fee
- Bridge Financing
- Burn Rate
- Buy Now Pay Later
- Buy-Side Advisory
- Buy-and-Build
- CBDC
- CET1 Ratio
- CLIP
- CLOUD Act
- Cap Table
- Capital Call
- Capital Structure
- Capture
- Card Network
- Card-Not-Present Transaction
- Card-Present Transaction
- Carried Interest
- Cart Abandonment
- Carve-Out
- Cascading
- Cash-Free Debt-Free
- Central Bank Money
- Chain of Thought
- Change of Control Clause
- Chargeback
- Chargeback Ratio
- Chargeback Reason Code
- Clearing
- Coding Agents
- Commercial Due Diligence
- Commoditization
- Community Reinvestment Act
- Comparable Company Analysis
- Compelling Evidence
- Completion Accounts
- Compute
- Computer Vision
- Conditions Precedent
- Conglomerate Merger
- Contactless Payment
- Control Premium
- Convertible Note
- Convolutional Neural Network
- Cost of Equity
- Cost-Aware Routing
- Cost-to-Income Ratio
- Counter-Terrorism Financing
- Counterparty Risk
- Covenant
- Credit
- Credit Derivatives
- Credit Rating
- Cross-Border Fee
- Cross-Border Payments
- Cultural Due Diligence
- Customer Due Diligence
- DORA
- Data Augmentation
- Data Room
- Data Sovereignty
- Data as a Service
- DeFi
- Decline Rate
- Decline Recovery
- Deep Learning
- Depreciation
- Diffusion Model
- Digital Payments
- Digital Wallet
- Dilutive Acquisition
- Direct Debit
- Direct Listing
- Disclosure Letter
- Discounted Cash Flow
- Distressed M&A
- Diversification
- Divestiture
- Dividend Yield
- Double Descent
- Down Round
- Drag-Along Right
- Dry Powder
- Due Diligence
- Duration
- Dynamic Currency Conversion
- E-Money
- EBITDA
- EMV
- ESG Investing
- EV/EBITDA Multiple
- Earn-Out
- Embedded Finance
- Emergent Behaviour
- End-to-End Learning
- Enhanced Due Diligence
- Enterprise Management Incentives
- Enterprise Value
- Equity Value
- Escrow
- Exchange-Traded Fund
- Exclusivity Period
- Exit Strategy
- Experience Economy
- Expert System
- Explainable AI
- FX Margin
- Factuality Evaluation
- Failover
- Fairness Opinion
- False Positives
- Family Office
- Federated Learning
- Financial Due Diligence
- Fine-Tuning
- Fintech
- Follow-On Investment
- Forward Propagation
- Foundation Model
- Free Cash Flow
- Frictionless Flow
- Friendly Fraud
- Fund of Funds
- GENIUS Act
- GNN
- General Partner
- Generative AI
- Generative Adversarial Network
- Golden Parachute
- Goodwill
- Gradient Descent
- Gross Payment Volume
- Growth Equity
- Guardrails
- Guest Checkout
- Hallucination
- Hard Decline
- Hardware Security Module
- Heads of Terms
- Hedge Fund
- Hidden Layer
- Horizontal Merger
- Hosted Payment Page
- Hostile Takeover
- Hurdle Rate
- Hybrid and Multi-Cloud
- Hyperparameter Tuning
- IPO Window
- Idempotency Key
- Identity Verification
- Impact Investing
- Index Fund
- Indicative Offer
- Inference
- Information Memorandum
- Initial Public Offering
- Instant Payout
- Instruction Tuning
- InsurTech
- Interchange Fee
- Interchange-Plus Pricing
- Internal Rate of Return
- Investment Thesis
- Issuer
- J-Curve
- KYC
- Know Your Agent (KYA)
- Know Your Business
- Large Language Model
- Latent Space
- Legal Due Diligence
- Letter of Intent
- Leverage Ratio
- Leveraged Buy-Out
- Limited Partner
- Liquidation Preference
- Liquidity Discount
- Lock-Up Period
- Locked Box
- Loss Function
- M&A
- MLOps
- Machine Learning
- Management Buy-Out
- Market Power
- Material Adverse Change
- Merchant Account
- Merchant Discount Rate
- Merchant Identification Number
- Merchant Underwriting
- Merger
- Mezzanine Debt
- MiCA
- Minting
- Misalignment
- Mixture of Experts
- Mobile POS
- Model Context Protocol
- Model Parameters
- Multimodal Model
- Multiple on Invested Capital
- NLP
- Near Field Communication
- Neobank
- Net Asset Value
- Net Settlement
- Network Token
- Non-Disclosure Agreement
- OCC-Regulated
- Objective Function
- Observability
- One-Click Checkout
- Open Finance
- Originate-to-Distribute (OTD)
- Outcome-Based Pricing
- Overfitting
- PCI Compliance Level
- PCI DSS
- PSD2
- Passporting
- Payment Aggregator
- Payment Descriptor
- Payment Facilitator
- Payment Friction
- Payment Gateway
- Payment Orchestration
- Payment Service Provider
- Payout Cycle
- Platform Risk
- Point of Sale
- Point-to-Point Encryption
- Poison Pill
- Politically Exposed Person
- Pontes
- Portfolio Company
- Post-Merger Integration
- Post-Money Valuation
- Pre-Arbitration
- Pre-Money Valuation
- Pre-Training
- Precedent Transaction Analysis
- Prepaid Card
- Price-to-Earnings Ratio
- Primary Account Number
- Private Equity
- Private Placement
- Pro Rata Right
- Processor
- Programmable Finance
- Prompt
- Prompt Engineering
- Prompt Injection Attack
- Purchase Price Allocation
- QR Code Payment
- Quality of Earnings
- RAG
- RLHF
- Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS)
- Real-World Assets
- Reconciliation
- Refund
- RegTech
- Regularisation
- Regulatory Capital
- Reinforcement Learning
- Reinforcement Learning Environments
- Remittance
- Representations and Warranties
- Representment
- Reserve Account
- Retrieval Reference Number
- Retry Logic
- Return on Tangible Equity
- Revenue-Sharing Model
- Reversal
- Reverse Merger
- Rights Issue
- Risk-Based Monitoring
- Risk-Based Routing
- Risk-Free Rate
- Robo-Adviser
- Roll-Up
- Rolling Reserve
- Runway
- SAFE
- SCA Exemption
- SOC 2 Compliance
- SPAC
- Safeguarding
- Sanctions Screening
- Sandbox
- Scheme Fee
- Seamless Payments
- Secondary Market
- Seed Investment
- Sell-Side Advisory
- Senior Debt
- Series A
- Series B
- Series D
- Series E
- Settlement
- Settlement Networks
- Share Buyback
- Share Purchase
- Sharpe Ratio
- Signing and Closing
- Single Euro Payments Area
- Smart Contract
- Smart Routing
- Soft Decline
- Sovereign Wealth Fund
- Spin-Off
- Split Payment
- Sponsor-Bank Fees
- Stablecoin
- Stablecoin Settlement
- Stalking Horse Bid
- Stand-In Processing
- Standstill Agreement
- Startup M&A
- Strong Customer Authentication
- Supervised Learning
- Switching Costs
- Symbolic AI
- Syndicate
- Synergies
- Synthetic Identity
- Synthetic Securitisation
- Tag-Along Right
- Take Rate
- Tangible Book Value
- Tap to Pay
- Teaser
- Technological Singularity
- Tender Offer
- Tensor Processing Unit
- Term Sheet
- Terminal Value
- Tiered Pricing
- Tokenised Deposits
- Tokenised Securities
- Tokenization
- Tokenized Public Equities
- Total Value Locked
- Training Data
- Tranches
- Transaction Lifecycle
- Transaction Monitoring
- Transfer Learning
- Transformer
- Transitional Services Agreement
- Treasury Management
- Ultimate Beneficial Owners
- Unattended Terminal
- Underfitting
- Underlying Profit Before Tax
- Underserved Population
- Underwriter
- Unicorn
- Unit Economics
- Unsupervised Learning
- Validation Data
- Valuation Cap
- Velocity Check
- Vendor Loan Note
- Venture Capital
- Vertical Merger
- Vintage Year
- Virtual Account
- Void
- Warranty and Indemnity Insurance
- WealthTech
- Webhook
- Weighted Average Cost of Capital
- White Knight
- Working Capital Adjustment
- Yield Curve
- Zero-Shot Learning
- x402
Deals
- Meta Platforms → Scale AI
- OpenAI → Windsurf
- OpenAI → io Products
- Global Payments → Worldpay
- Google → Wiz
- Google → Character.AI
- Microsoft → Inflection AI
- Capital One → Discover Financial
- GTCR → Worldpay (55% stake)
- Nasdaq → Adenza
- Broadcom → VMware
- Intercontinental Exchange → Black Knight
- Microsoft → Activision Blizzard
- Block → Afterpay
- Microsoft → Nuance Communications
- S&P Global → IHS Markit
- Nexi → Nets
- Nvidia → Arm Holdings
- Worldline → Ingenico
- Visa → Plaid
- Charles Schwab → TD Ameritrade
- PayPal → Honey
- London Stock Exchange Group → Refinitiv
- Mastercard → Nets account-to-account business
- Global Payments → TSYS
- FIS → Worldpay
- Fiserv → First Data
- IBM → Red Hat
- Intel → Mobileye
- SoftBank Group → Arm Holdings
- Visa → Visa Europe