Originally featured in FinTech Profile, this Q&A with Kani CEO & Co-founder Aaron Holmes covers Kani’s origin and mission, his day-to-day and predictions for the payments industry.
Who are you and what’s your background?
I’m Aaron Holmes, CEO and Co-founder of Kani Payments, a fintech based in Newcastle that helps payments companies make sense of their data—specifically around reconciliation, reporting and regulatory compliance.
Before Kani, I held leadership and operational roles across both high-growth fintechs and established institutions—from Thredd in London to Flex-e-Card and Newcastle Building Society. Most of my career was spent deep in payments operations: building reconciliation logic, managing scheme submissions and being the person ultimately responsible for getting the numbers right.
I started Kani in 2018 to fix the problems I’d been dealing with firsthand for years: slow, manual, error-prone processes for turning raw transaction data into something you can trust and report on.
What does your day-to-day look like at Kani?
Day-to-day, my focus is keeping us pointed in the right direction across product, strategy and partnerships. I spend time with our engineers and product teams to make sure what we’re building solves real problems. That means staying close to clients, auditors, regulators and scheme partners so we’re not just ticking boxes but actually making life easier for the people doing the work.
Outside of product, I’m involved in commercial strategy, international expansion and the bigger-picture decisions that shape where Kani goes next. Some days I’m deep in a client deployment; others I’m talking to a bank about integration, demoing our platform or feeding into an industry consultation. In payments data, the devil’s in the detail—so I like to stay close to the ground.
What does Kani do?
Kani is a SaaS reconciliation platform built by people who’ve lived the data pain of payments. Our goal is simple: take the mess out of reconciliation and reporting, and give teams better control over their financial data.
We help companies automate the matching, checking and reporting of payment flows across processors, banks, card schemes and internal systems. The outcome: smoother audits, simpler regulatory filings and less month-end stress.
Our platform covers three core areas:
- Automated reconciliation software — automate the matching of complex flows across processors, schemes and banks; centralise inputs; surface exceptions; accelerate close; improve data lineage.
- Transaction reporting — generate, validate and schedule regulatory and scheme outputs, including our award-winning Mastercard QMR and Visa GOC reporting module, with consistent templates and audit-ready evidence.
- Payments data analytics — real-time insight on volumes, fees, chargebacks, fraud indicators and operational KPIs to support operational resilience and capacity planning.
What sets us apart is the experience behind the product. Our team comes from all corners of card payments. We’ve been the ones manually stitching files together at month-end. That’s why we build tools that actually work in practice.
Today we’re working with global clients across the fintech ecosystem, helping them scale operations, stay compliant and get ahead of complexity.
How is Kani funded?
We’re privately funded. In early 2024, we raised a multi-million-pound Series A led by Maven Capital Partners, alongside support from NPIF II and the Maven VCTs. FT Partners acted as our exclusive financial advisor.
That investment is fuelling our next phase: expanding internationally, growing the team and doubling down on platform development to meet rising demand from regulated fintechs.
What’s the origin story at Kani?
Kani started as a problem I couldn’t ignore. In ops and compliance, I was manually wrangling processor data, submitting reports and firefighting errors caused by bad file formats or missing data. There had to be a better way—so we built one.
The idea was simple: take the pain out of payments reporting for the people doing the work. That meant automation, transparency and structure—especially as regulation and volumes only move one way (up).
We chose Newcastle as our HQ on purpose. The city has incredible tech talent, three universities on the doorstep and a growing fintech ecosystem that’s getting the recognition it deserves. We’re proud to be part of that.
Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?
Our customers are fintechs, issuers, processors, acquirers and BIN sponsors—anyone dealing with high-volume, high-stakes payments data.
Clients like Paysafe, Swiipr, Pluxee, Cardaq and TransactPay use Kani to reconcile billions in transactions and streamline reporting. We also have a referral relationship with Mastercard, who recognise the value of what we do and help introduce us to banks and fintechs worldwide.
We operate on a SaaS subscription model. Pricing scales with data volume and features, but our value proposition is the same: save time, reduce risk and give teams clarity over their data with payment reconciliation software, transaction reporting and payments data analytics that are audit-ready.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
I’d fix the back-end mess. Fintech has made huge strides in UX and front-end innovation, but behind the scenes it’s still chaotic. Data is fragmented, terminology is inconsistent, and the same field can mean ten different things depending on the processor.
That’s the hidden tax on innovation. Every launch, audit and compliance check gets harder because the foundations are shaky. Stronger standards and more accountability around data quality would mean faster launches, cleaner reporting and fewer late nights in Excel.
What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?
Don’t assume your data is good enough—check it. And don’t wait for a regulator or auditor to tell you there’s a problem.
Poor data hygiene creates risk: reconciliation delays, reporting errors and safeguarding failures. Fixing that starts with visibility and accountability, often alongside specialist partners who know where to look. Practical next steps:
- Map every manual step in reconciliation and reporting.
- Measure the time spent on data prep vs exception resolution.
- Benchmark outputs against an audit-ready standard and daily reconciliation expectations.
- Prioritise projects that replace spreadsheets with automated reconciliation software and standardised transaction reporting.
Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?
I’m a bit of a news junkie. For big-picture shifts and regulatory news, I go to the Financial Times, Reuters and Bloomberg. For fintech-specific coverage, I like Finextra and LinkedIn, especially for the conversations around product, compliance and ops.
I also read more niche titles like Banking Risk & Regulation, which go deeper on fraud oversight and back-office architecture. That’s where many of the real conversations start.
Who are 3 people from the FinTech sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?
Three worth following: Marcel van Oost, the Fintech Finance team and Devie Mohan.
Marcel van Oost is one of the most consistent, well-informed voices in the industry, sharing insights and curating global fintech news.
Fintech Finance regularly produce high-quality content—interviews, trend analysis and event coverage—and remain a strong media presence.
Devie Mohan, co-founder of Burnmark, provides sharp analysis of financial innovation, regulation and the role of technology.
What FinTech services or apps do you personally use?
We’ve been using Airwallex at Kani, and it’s been spot on—reducing the hassle of managing global payments, which is exactly what you want when you’re growing quickly.
I’m impressed with what Zero is doing on carbon impact—helping businesses understand their environmental footprint, not just their finances.
And Monzo deserves a nod. From the early days they’ve kept things simple while pushing the boundaries of what a bank can be in 2025.
What’s the best new FinTech product or service you’ve seen recently?
As above, Zero’s Green Score stands out. It’s aimed at small businesses and translates financial data into a clearer picture of carbon footprint—spend on travel, energy, suppliers and so on. What’s clever is it doesn’t expect you to be a sustainability expert; it gives a simple score and practical suggestions to improve over time.
That kind of tool is a great example of fintech moving beyond money management into helping businesses make better decisions overall.
What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
One big trend is the end of manual reconciliation—and it can’t come soon enough. With transaction volumes rising and regulation tightening, no one has the time or appetite for spreadsheets and manual checks. Compliance reporting, safeguarding and fraud detection all depend on solid, traceable data.
As AI and automation integrate into more processes, tolerance for messy or unreliable inputs disappears. You can’t automate chaos. The winners will be those who take data seriously from the start and invest in getting it right—because everything else hangs off the back of that. Expect daily reconciliations, stronger data lineage, fewer exception backlogs and outputs that are audit-ready by design.
