How We Rescued a Fintech Platform in 6 Weeks

A client came to us with a fintech platform that was hemorrhaging—poorly architected code, 40% test coverage, and a team that couldn’t ship new features without breaking something else.

They’d hired a contract shop to build their MVP. The shop shipped fast. Then they left.

What remained was unmaintainable spaghetti code, N+1 query problems crushing their database, and a payment reconciliation system that worked only by accident.

Here’s what we did in 6 weeks:

Week 1–2: Diagnosis

We didn’t rewrite everything immediately. We mapped the codebase, identified the bottlenecks, ran load tests, and prioritized what would actually move the needle. The reconciliation system was losing money on every transaction. Payment processing was a mess. Database queries were catastrophic.

Week 3–4: Stabilization

We fixed the database layer first—added proper indexes, rewrote the N+1 queries, and got response times down 60%. Improved the payment reconciliation logic so it actually balanced correctly. Increased test coverage from 40% to 75% on critical paths.

Week 5–6: Modernization

Refactored the payment processing layer to be testable and maintainable. Added proper error handling and observability so they could see what was actually happening in production. Documented the system so future engineers wouldn’t have to guess.

The Result

They went from shipping once a month (with bugs) to shipping twice a week. Infrastructure costs dropped 30%. Their team could finally focus on product instead of firefighting.

The Pattern

This isn’t unique. Most companies carrying technical debt hit this wall: the code they inherited (or built fast) starts choking their growth. If this sounds familiar, let’s talk. We specialize in untangling these knots.