Round-Up Silver · Confidential

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Prepared by Peter Putros
Confidential · For Tony

Round-Up Silver

Project Roadmap
Prepared by Peter Putros

From an idea sketched on the back of a cigarette box, all the way to live in the App Store. Here's how we get there: what we build, when we build it, and the decisions we'll make together along the way.

💡 Idea → 🛠️ Build → 🚀 Launch → 📈 Grow
From kickoff to live
12 to 16 weeks
Including paperwork and review
Project phases
Eight
Staged with approval gates
Live in App Store
UK first
EU and US once proven
Day-one features
All three tiers
Roundup, subscription, coin marketplace
The commitment

A clear plan with eight phases, honest timelines, and full transparency throughout. The build is staged so you commit to each milestone once the previous one ships. We launch UK-only on day one to keep regulatory exposure tight, then expand once we've proven the model with real customers.

The most important thing upfront: the build itself takes six to eight weeks. The paperwork (banking partnerships, regulatory permissions, Apple and Google reviewing a finance app) takes another six to eight on top. We run both in parallel from day one, so the launch date stays in our hands.

What the customer experiences

Before we get into how it's built, here's what someone using the app actually does:

Think of it as a digital change jar. Every time a customer taps their card for £3.40, we round it up to £4. That extra 60p goes towards their gold or silver, all happening quietly in the background while they get on with their day.
1 Customer taps card £3.40 Coffee shop 2 Bank tells our app about it Open banking link 3 We calculate roundup: 60p Up to nearest £1 4 Friday: total week is £4.20 One weekly debit 5 Bank releases £4.20 Customer pre-approved 6 Vault adds 0.05g silver In customer's name Customer opens the app on Saturday morning → sees their silver balance has grown by 0.05g, all from a week of spare change

What we're building

Three things working together: a mobile app, a marketing website, and a secure platform behind the scenes that handles the money, the identity checks, and the gold itself.

Think of it like a hotel. The mobile app is the lobby, where customers come and go. The platform behind it is the back of house: kitchen, housekeeping, billing. The vault partner is the security company holding everyone's valuables in a safe room. And the regulatory umbrella is the licence on the wall that says we're authorised to operate.
REGULATORY UMBRELLA CUSTOMER on phone Saves spare change · watches their gold balance grow · sells back when they want to MOBILE APP iPhone and Android Sign up · link bank · see balance · transfer · withdraw WEBSITE Marketing site for new customers Tells the story · drives sign-ups · shows the product OUR SECURE PLATFORM The brain of the operation: runs the maths, holds the records, talks to everyone Audited monthly · UK-hosted · fully encrypted BANKING PARTNER Reads transactions, moves the money FCA-AUTHORISED IDENTITY CHECK Verifies who's who, passport plus selfie 60-SECOND CHECK COMPLIANCE WATCH Watches for fraud, sanctions, money laundering REAL-TIME ALERTS VAULT PARTNER Buys and stores the physical gold and silver LBMA-ACCREDITED PHYSICAL VAULT · BRINKS or LOOMIS · LONDON, ZURICH or NEW YORK Each customer's gold is allocated to them personally, like a labelled safe-deposit box
On the regulatory umbrella: we operate as an authorised agent of an established regulated firm. It works like franchising under a parent company's licence, which means we reach market in weeks instead of years, with the same customer protections in place.

Two parallel tracks, one launch date

The build and the paperwork run side by side. The slower of the two sets the launch date, and it's almost always the paperwork. That's why we start the regulatory conversations in Week 1, well ahead of the build wrapping up.

Think of it like building a restaurant. You can have the kitchen ready in six weeks, but you open once the food hygiene rating arrives. So you start that paperwork the day you sign the lease, well ahead of finishing the kitchen.
Wk 1 to 2 Wk 3 to 4 Wk 5 to 6 Wk 7 to 8 Wk 9 to 10 Wk 11+ BUILD TRACK 1 · Strategy 2 · Brand 3 · Design 4 · App + Website Build 5 · Partner Integrations 6 · Testing 7 · Assets PAPERWORK TRACK (in parallel) Banking partner application Vault partner contract App Store accounts 8 · App Store Review LIVE IN UK 🚀
Build (we control the pace) Paperwork (external clock) Apple and Google review

How we work together

The project is staged so each phase wraps with your approval before we start the next. Two streams run alongside each other: an early stage that produces an investor-ready demo and brand, and a full build stage that takes it through to launch in the App Store.

Stage 1 · Discovery, Brand, Design and Investor Demo Phases 1 to 3 · 3 to 4 weeks · clickable demo, brand identity, live pitch site
Approval gate before Stage 2
Stage 2 · Full Build, Integrations, Testing and Launch Phases 4 to 8 · 5 to 6 weeks build and launch · live in the App Store
Triggered when ready
Legal and Compliance UK fintech lawyer review, T&Cs, trust deed, financial promotions sign-off
Runs in parallel

The staged structure means if at any point the project changes direction, we can wrap after Stage 1 with a complete investor demo, brand identity, and live pitch site, which you can take further with whoever you want.

The eight phases

Each phase has a clear deliverable, a defined timeline, and a short list of decisions we'll make together along the way.

1

Strategy and Foundations

Week 1 · 3 to 5 days

Before we touch a single screen, we sit down and make the decisions that drive everything else. Who's our first hundred customers? Are we launching with silver, gold, or both? What's the minimum someone can save in a week? What's our story to investors? This is also when we agree on the regulatory architecture and start the long-lead-time conversations with the banking and vault partners.

You walk away with: a clear product brief, a competitor teardown, a one-page financial model, and a decided regulatory approach. Everything downstream becomes faster because we've made the hard decisions early.
Questions we'll discuss
  • Who's our target first 1,000 customers, and where do we reach them?
  • Silver-first, gold-first, or both at launch?
  • What's the minimum a customer can save per week?
  • Do we offer physical withdrawal from day one, or stay vault-only?
  • Are we positioning against Moneybox and Plum, or against traditional bullion dealers?
2

Brand Identity

Week 1 to 2 · 1 week elapsed

The name, the logo, the colours, the typography, the voice. In fintech, and especially in gold, trust is built before a customer ever taps a button. The brand has to look like something you'd hand your life savings to.

On why this matters: when you ask someone to link their bank account AND trust that physical gold exists somewhere with their name on it, every visual signal matters. A polished logo earns sign-ups before the customer even reads what you do. We sweat the brand because the trust gap is the single biggest commercial lever in this category.
You walk away with: a logo and wordmark, a colour palette and type system, a one-page brand guidelines doc, a brand voice doc, the trademark search, and the domain locked down.
Questions we'll discuss
  • What's the brand voice: premium and serious, or accessible and modern?
  • Do we want a name that signals gold and silver, or something more abstract?
  • How British do we want to feel: Royal Mint serious, or Monzo casual?
  • Do we project "save for the future" or "protect what you have"?
3

Design and Investor Demo

Week 2 to 3 · 5 days active

Every screen the customer will ever see, designed and stitched together into a clickable prototype on a phone. The five screens that matter most (sign-up, identity check, dashboard, transfer confirmation, error states) get hand-tightened obsessively. The rest are polished but pragmatic. The output is something you can put in an investor's hand and let them tap through.

You walk away with: a clickable prototype on a real phone, all key screens designed, plus the marketing site live with a waitlist signup. This is what unlocks investor conversations and validates the proposition before we commit to the heavy build.
Questions we'll discuss
  • What's the one screen we want investors to remember?
  • How much explanation does the customer need on day one?
  • Do we show today's gold price prominently, or keep it understated?
  • What does the empty state look like, for a brand-new user with zero balance?
4

App and Platform Build

Week 3 to 6 · 3 weeks active

The actual app (iPhone and Android) and the platform behind it. This is where the design becomes a working product on a real phone. Customers can sign up, see screens, navigate, set preferences. The plumbing for everything else (bank connections, identity checks, gold buying) sits in place ready to be wired up in the next phase.

Think of this phase as building the house: the rooms are framed, the walls are up, the wiring is run through the walls. It looks like a house. The electricity and water go live in Phase 5.
You walk away with: a working app you can install on your phone today. All the screens. All the navigation. All the polish. Ready to be connected to real bank accounts and real gold in the next phase.
Questions we'll discuss
  • Do we ship dark mode at launch, or add it later?
  • How prominently do we show today's metal prices?
  • Push notifications: what triggers them, and how often is too often?
  • What's the support story: in-app chat, email, or both?
5

Partner Integrations

Week 5 to 7 · 2 weeks active

The four big connections: the banking partner that reads transactions and moves money, the identity-check provider that verifies customers in 60 seconds, the compliance service that watches for fraud and sanctions, and the vault partner that buys and stores the gold. Each one is its own conversation, its own paperwork, its own integration. They run in parallel with the build.

On the banking side specifically: we use a system called Variable Recurring Payments. Once the customer has approved us once, we can take varying small amounts each week, up to a cap they set. The customer's bank handles the security; we just trigger the amounts. It's the same technology Monzo and Revolut use for their roundup features.
You walk away with: a fully connected app. Real bank accounts can be linked. Real customers can pass identity checks. Real gold ends up in real vaults attributed to real users. We test all of this in sandbox mode before any actual money moves.
Questions we'll discuss
  • Which banks must we support on day one? (Top 10 covers ~95% of the UK market.)
  • What's the maximum weekly roundup we'll allow for first-time customers?
  • Do we use the Kinesis vault partner for speed, or hold out for the Royal Mint conversation for better margins?
  • What's our story to customers about where the metal is physically stored?
  • Do we offer sell-back at spot price, or with a small spread we keep?
6

Testing and Polish

Week 7 to 8 · 1 week active

Now we try to break it. Every edge case: what happens when the bank connection drops mid-transfer? What about a customer who tries to verify with a fake passport? What if the metal price moves while a buy is in flight? We test on real devices with real users in a small private beta. We check the app works for someone who's blind and uses a screen reader. We test the money maths to four decimal places. Everything passes this phase before going public.

You walk away with: an app that's been hammered on. A small group of beta testers who've been through the full flow. Known issues documented, fixed, or accepted. Ready for App Store submission.
Questions we'll discuss
  • Who are the 20 to 30 beta testers we'll bring in for the private trial?
  • What's our acceptable quality bar before launch?
  • Are there edge cases unique to our customer base we should specifically test?
7

App Store Listings and Marketing Assets

Week 8 · 2 to 3 days

The screenshots customers see in the App Store. The 170 characters of description that go above the "more" fold. The keyword research for search optimisation. The press kit. The day-one launch announcement. The how-to videos for onboarding. All the stuff that turns a working app into something people can actually find and understand.

You walk away with: a complete App Store and Play Store listing for both, screenshots in all required sizes, a launch-day press kit, and the optional first marketing email to your waitlist.
Questions we'll discuss
  • What three benefits do we lead with on the App Store?
  • Do we have press contacts to brief ahead of launch?
  • Soft launch (slow trickle) or hard launch (big bang)?
  • What's the pricing for the two subscription tiers?
8

Submission, Review and Launch

Week 8 to 10 · 2 weeks elapsed

We submit to Apple and Google. They review. Finance apps get extra scrutiny: they want to see exactly who's regulating us, how we handle people's money, what happens when something goes wrong. Apple typically takes 2 to 7 days for finance apps; Google 1 to 3 days. One round of clarifying questions is normal; we plan for it. Once approved, we're live.

Think of App Review like the food standards inspector: they want to give you a pass, and they will look closely at anything that catches their eye. We submit with everything documented (the FCA registration, the test customer accounts, the screenshots of the vault certificate UI) so the reviewer has everything they need in front of them.
You walk away with: a live app in the UK App Store and Google Play. Real customers can download it. Real money can flow. The product is in the world.
Questions we'll discuss
  • Launch UK-only on day one, or open to Ireland and EEA simultaneously?
  • What's our communications plan for the first 30 days post-launch?
  • What does success look like at the 30-day mark? At the 90-day mark?
  • What's our contingency if Apple comes back with a finance-specific question?

What we handle vs. what we bring in specialists for

The right people for the right job. I deliver the build end-to-end, while a few pieces are better done by specialists with deep domain experience, who get them done properly first time.

AreaWho handles itWhy
Strategy and product direction Us, together This is your business; the decisions are yours
Brand strategy and voice In-house Direct hand-off into the build
Logo and visual identity Specialist freelance designer A fintech-specialist designer. The logo is the trust anchor, worth doing once and properly.
Mobile and web design In-house Built directly off the brand identity
App and platform build In-house End-to-end delivery
Marketing site copywriting (hero and App Store) Specialist fintech copywriter The highest-leverage 50 words on the entire site. Worth a specialist.
FCA-compliant legal copy and disclaimers Fintech lawyer Mandatory. The right wording here keeps us inside the regulatory perimeter.
T&Cs, privacy policy, trust deed Fintech lawyer UK fintech lawyer review of the full document set
App Store screenshots and marketing assets In-house Standard delivery
Banking, identity, compliance, vault integrations In-house End-to-end delivery with the chosen partners
Testing and QA In-house End-to-end
App Store and Play Store submission In-house End-to-end including any review rounds
Post-launch monitoring and updates In-house Optional ongoing retainer or by-the-hour

Items to confirm with a UK fintech lawyer

These are the questions a UK fintech lawyer signs off on. Most of them are structural choices we need to confirm, rather than risks to dodge. I'm flagging them now so we plan for them, well ahead of discovering them six months in.

  • 1
    Banking partner coverage for outgoing payments The regulated partner we operate under needs to cover both reading bank data AND moving money. We confirm with them and our lawyer that their permission covers the outgoing-money side as well as the data side. This is the single highest-priority item, since it shapes the whole integration architecture.
  • 2
    Are roundups "payments" or "investments"? The framing determines whether we sit inside or outside a regulated activity. Physical allocated metal plus payment routing should sit outside, with the lawyer confirming the structure on paper.
  • 3
    Allocated, fully owned custody Each customer's gold needs to be allocated specifically to them, rather than held in a shared pot. This is the difference between staying outside investment-product regulation and being caught inside it. We copy the legal architecture BullionVault uses, then have the lawyer review.
  • 4
    Who approves our financial promotions? UK rules require an FCA-authorised firm to approve any "financial promotion" we put out. Either our banking partner provides this, or we contract with an approver firm separately. Worth pinning down before any paid acquisition.
  • 5
    HMRC dealer registration With bank-to-bank transfers only, we likely sit outside HMRC's "high value dealer" registration. With cash-paid physical delivery in the mix, we register. Our anti-money-laundering duties apply either way; we build them in from day one.
  • 6
    Silver VAT mechanics Investment gold sits VAT-free in the UK. Silver attracts VAT, unless it stays in an approved vault. So our silver mechanic works economically only when storage is mandatory and physical delivery triggers a clear VAT flow. A VAT specialist signs this off.
  • 7
    What happens to customer gold if the business winds up? A trust deed makes it clear that customer gold sits on trust for them, separate from our balance sheet. So even in the worst case, customers recover their grams from the vault. We make this watertight and disclose it openly in the terms.
  • 8
    Consumer Duty New UK rules require us to demonstrably look out for our customers' financial wellbeing. Straightforward to comply with at launch: we document our target customer and prove the product is fair value for them.

Decisions we need from you before we start

Some of these need answers before Stage 1 begins; others can wait until Phase 1 (Strategy and Foundations). Worth thinking about ahead of our next conversation.

Before we sign anything
  • Is the UK limited company in place yet, and is the company name decided?
  • Who's the legal signatory: you, you and Billy jointly, or via a holding entity?
  • What's the path from Stage 1 to Stage 2: does the existing seed runway carry us through, and what triggers the move to Stage 2?
  • Have we got two or three potential investors lined up for Stage 2, or do we use Stage 1 to build that pipeline?
Before Phase 1 kickoff
  • Silver-first, gold-first, or both at launch?
  • Vault-only at launch (storage only), or physical delivery from day one?
  • What's the working name and have we registered the domain?
  • Do you want me to lead the conversations with the banking and vault partners, or will Billy take those?
  • What's the pricing model for the subscription tiers: fixed monthly, percentage of holdings, or both?
What happens next

If this plan makes sense to you, a separate scope of work will be drafted with the milestones, deliverables, and costs associated with each. That document becomes the basis for the engagement.

From there, the first step is a one-week discovery sprint: a proper requirements workshop, a competitive landscape doc, a sketch of the partner integrations, three brand directions, and a scoped plan for the full Stage 1. You walk away with documents you can take to investors regardless of whether we continue together.

If you'd prefer a different direction, or want to talk it through with Billy first, we leave it here as a starting point. Either way, looking forward to the next conversation.