MONEY speaks with Multitude Bank about the infrastructure regulated firms need, and how a Malta-based bank built a payments offering around client needs, not the other way around.
Every regulated business in Europe is effectively two businesses at once: the one its licence permits it to run, and the one that banks will allow it to be.
Multitude Bank p.l.c. is a Maltese-licensed credit institution that provides banking and payment solutions to regulated businesses across Europe: payment institutions, electronic money institutions, and MiCA-authorised firms—a sector that has become an increasingly important niche in Malta's financial services offering.
MONEY sat down with Multitude Bank Deputy CEO Dario Azzopardi to discuss what this sector needs from its banks, and how a licensed credit institution built an offering around its clients rather than asking its clients to fit into a readymade one.
"For regulated firms, opening a bank account is rarely the real challenge," Dario says.
"The challenge is finding a banking partner that understands how the client's business operates and can provide infrastructure that supports it as it grows."
Across Multitude Bank's client base, Dario explains, three needs recur: becoming operational after receiving a licence; strengthening the resilience and efficiency of an existing banking setup; and expanding into currencies, markets or customer segments the current arrangement cannot support.
Each, he says, points to a quality a regulated firm should reasonably expect from its bank: a service built around the client's actual business model.
A firm can be supervised, compliant and well capitalised and still find that banks fail to support its model. That is where much of the practical difficulty of being regulated actually sits: not in obtaining permission, but in finding an institution that understands what the permission was for. Even more nuance is required when institutions hold multiple licenses at once.
Regulated firms, Dario says, need a banking partner that takes the time to understand their model.
"For most banks, the conversation normally starts with the type of account someone wants to open," Dario says.
"But I find the more useful starting point is how the business actually works: its licences, customer journey, flow of funds, controls and growth plans."
"We realised that too many clients were being overlooked by banks and wanted to find ways to step in."
Regulated businesses carry structures and transaction flows that can be unique and challenging.
A banking partner, Dario says, must be able to work with that complexity rather than reduce a firm to a sector label like 'crypto', 'gaming', or 'payments'.
"That's why we take the time to get to know our clients' business."
In Malta, the licensing population has broadened considerably in recent months. Today, a firm can hold an entirely sound authorisation and still find the door closes at the account-opening stage, not because of anything in the licence, but because of the model behind it.
Governance is a key issue
Dario says that for the sector to flourish and build durable trust with both local and international banks, newly established institutions need robust governance from day one, not as a consequence of growth, but as the framework that makes growth supportable.
In practice, he explains that this means onboarding and monitoring tools, an AML framework proportional to the flows the firm expects to handle, an effective three lines of defence, and a board with the experience to oversee the operation, including independent members.
Firms are at different stages of maturity, and a banking partner should account for that: Multitude Bank supports clients from an early stage and takes where they are into consideration.
Infrastructure that fits the operating model
A key customer expectation concerns what the banking relationship actually does.
For the team at Multitude Bank, the right setup supports the full operating model: how funds are safeguarded, how liquidity is managed, how payments are settled, and brings those capabilities together rather than scattering them across providers.
For a firm managing both safeguarding and payment flows, consolidating them in one place reduces complexity and the number of counterparties it has to reconcile between.
Multitude Bank provides safeguarding and reserve accounts, payment accounts, processing, and fund movement, working alongside trusted payment partners where an arrangement calls for it. It supports EUR, SEK and CZK, with API-based integration and virtual accounts linked to a master bank account. All of these also support open banking operations.
Europe may be a single market, but payments remain stubbornly local in practice, and that is where the day-to-day complexity sits.
"What good looks like is fairly straightforward to describe," Dario says.
"Safeguarding and payments from one partner. Instant payments on local rails. A second account against concentration risk. Onboarding measured in months, not quarters."
He argues that what distinguishes Multitude Bank is the time it takes to understand each business before proposing any of that.
"We do this before we decide whether we can support a client. It takes longer and is more work on our end, but we believe this is the only way to arrive at a structure that holds and meets needs and expectations."
A relationship that scales
The last expectation is the least discussed and probably the most consequential.
A strong onboarding process gives a client clarity on what is required, how decisions are made, and what must happen before it can begin transacting.
That transparency, Dario says, is what builds a long-term relationship.
Multitude Bank is an MFSA-licensed credit institution (C 56251), based at ST Business Centre 120, The Strand, Gżira GZR 1027, Malta. It is part of Multitude Group, whose parent, Multitude AG, is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
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