Get the payments and operations side of your business right.

Hands-on product help with payments, onboarding, and AI workflows.

From someone who's been there beforeI've been there before
  • PayPal
  • Salesforce
  • Braintree
  • Paxos
  • Olo
  • BNY

What do you need help with?

Payments or AI for my business Building a fintech product

You're great at what you do, but maybe you don't speak fintech?

I can help you with…

Getting paidWe've got money coming in and going out, but we're not sure it's all set up right.

Charging customers, renewals, refunds, and payouts, all tested before real money moves.

  • Charging once, or on a schedule for a subscription or membership
  • Knowing who has paid, and for what
  • Keeping customers active: self-service card changes, alerts when a payment fails, and reminders before a plan lapses
  • Running payments day to day: price and plan changes, refunds, and disputes
  • Getting your earnings into your bank, and paying out to contractors and partners
  • Setting up a test version to try everything safely before real money moves
Onboarding customersWe need customers signed up and verified, without letting bad actors in.

Getting new customers signed up, verified, and in the door.

  • Building a sign-up people actually finish, and keeping track of who signed up and who dropped off
  • Giving people access when they pay, and removing it when they lapse, without doing it by hand
  • Deciding who gets in: reviewing sign-ups, KYC ID checks if required, and spotting fraud
  • Picking the right tools for sign-in and ID checks, and storing only the personal details you need
Getting ready to launchWe're about to go live, and we don't know what we've missed.

Getting your product, and everything behind it, ready for launch day.

  • Deciding what has to be ready for launch, and what can wait
  • Testing the entire customer journey, from first click to support, before you go live
  • Preparing clear answers for the questions customers will ask
  • Adding the payments, onboarding, and other operational pieces your product needs before real customers can actually use it
  • Writing the playbooks you'll run from day one, so it's clear who handles what when something goes wrong
Putting AI to workWe want AI, but we don't know what's realistic.

Taking manual work off your plate, and adding AI where it helps most.

  • Mapping how work gets done today, to find the biggest pain points and what AI can take on
  • Choosing where AI earns its place with your customers and deciding when a real person takes over
  • Setting up ready-made tools like ChatGPT or Claude, and fitting them into how you already work
  • Building it alongside the people who'll run it day to day, and testing that it gets things right

Why work with me

  • I've built inside the providers you rely on.
  • I explain the trade-offs in plain language.
  • I vet the approach before you commit.
  • I map your internal workflows and ops, not just what customers see.
From the start, it was clear Jamar truly understood our needs. His hands-on help with Stripe payment processing setup was invaluable. His forward-thinking approach has set our team up for success long-term.
Solo founder
Try a free working session

Building a fintech product? The hard parts aren't the features.

It's the money movement, KYC, compliance, and ops that let you launch and scale. I've built them for products that businesses and millions of people rely on.

What I bring

Payments and money movement

Pay-ins, payouts, wallets, and partner integrations, from API design to launch.

Identity, KYC, and compliance

Onboarding that converts, KYC and KYB that work, and a plan compliance and partners can stand behind.

Launching and scaling

The ops, playbooks, and controls to take a pilot to launch, or a live product to scale.

AI in fintech

AI features, and AI in your internal operations, with the evals, human review, and audit trail a regulated product needs.

Why work with me

  • I treat client requests as product decisions, so what you build scales past your first customers.
  • I earn the trust of compliance, legal, and ops, so the handoffs between teams hold up.
  • I started as an engineer, so everything from joining your customer calls to building a prototype to finalizing the spec comes naturally.
Jamar provided a great mix of subject-matter expertise and true depth on identity and KYC, plus the ability to evaluate forward-looking theses. His approach, thoughtfulness, and insight were most valued.
Consulting partner, fintech and blockchain
Get in touch

Ways I plug in

Flexible ways to work together, based on what you need.

A one-off session

We pick the problem that matters most and work it through together. You leave with a plan for it, and a view on what else can wait.

Ongoing, alongside you

Recurring sessions where we work through things together. This could be standing office hours, or a structured piece of work like an assessment of your payments or AI setup. Your team carries the work between sessions.

Embedded in your team

Hands-on in the day-to-day: specs, the MVP build-out, the launch plan. I can also step in while a product lead is on leave or between hires.

Whichever way we work, I bring the curiosity to dig in and figure things out, plus senior product judgment without a senior product hire.

Where I've done this before

I've spent 18+ years building and launching fintech and B2B products.

PayPal and Braintree
Launched the capabilities that let enterprise clients like Uber and GrubHub offer Venmo across all their brands.
Paxos
Launched a global identity platform, and the internal tools and ops behind it, used by Interactive Brokers in the US and Mercado Libre in Brazil and Mexico.
Olo
Owned the checkout flows and APIs that Chipotle, Five Guys, and Sweetgreen built on.
Buddy Media and Salesforce
Led engineering for enterprise client onboarding, permissions, and admin tools.
Fractional work
Connected a fintech's internal tools to an AI chat assistant, so its team runs routine operations by asking. Led identity and KYC work as a subcontractor on a consulting firm's fintech client. Set up Stripe payments for a founder's launch.

Not just advising. Building and writing.

I build my own products and write about what I learn along the way, so I know firsthand what it takes to ship.

Area 246
Building for where I'm from

My product studio where I build and ship tools that make everyday life easier for people in Barbados and places like it.

Visit Area 246

Common questions

Do you only work in payments, fintech, identity, and AI?

Those are where I have the most depth and can be useful fastest. I take on adjacent work (B2B SaaS, marketplaces, regulated industries) when the problem maps to patterns I know. If it doesn't, I'll say so.

What size company is this for?

Any size, from solo founders to enterprise teams. Most clients are either a business adding payments, sign-ups, or AI to what it sells, or a team building a fintech product.

Is the free working session really free, or is it a sales call?

It's free. It's a 30-minute call to scope the problem, and you leave with a concrete next step. If we're a fit, we can talk about working together from there, whether that's a more in-depth one-off session or something ongoing.

How do you charge?

It depends on how we work together.

  • Individual working sessions are billed by the hour. If a problem needs more than an hour, we agree the scope first. Either we narrow it so you leave with something you can use, or we plan the bigger piece as an assessment.
  • Assessments start from an estimate of hours. We check in as the work goes, and agree on any extra time before I use it.
  • Ongoing sessions and embedded work are a monthly retainer, sized to how much of my time you need.
Can we change how we work together later?

Yes. Plenty of work starts with a one-off session and grows, or scales back once a launch is done.

Can I email you the problem instead of booking?

Yes. Send it through the contact form, and we can follow up with a working session if it needs one.

Are you open to subcontracting?

Yes, I also work with consultancies and agencies that need extra support in payments, identity and KYC, or AI for a client engagement. Get in touch here.

Can we talk under NDA?

Yes. Most people can describe the problem at the level we need without one. If you'd rather sign first, I have a mutual NDA we can use before we get into specifics.

A little background

Jamar Parris

I'm Jamar Parris. I've shipped product at startups and large companies in Barbados, New York, San Francisco, London, and Singapore.

I work fractionally, so the goal is always a team that can eventually run it without me.

Outside of fractional work and building, I'm into hiking, travel, and photography.

MS, Information Networking · Carnegie Mellon University BS, Information Technology & Accounting · University of the West Indies Stripe Certified Associate Architect Prompt Engineering & Generative AI

Unblock yourself.

Bring what you're working on. We'll pick what matters most, and you'll leave with a next step you can take this week, with or without me.

Try a free working session

or send me the problem