A small firm with a long memory of how payments really work.
We were founded in 2014 in Ukiah, California by Barbara Ormsby — a former payments operations leader who got tired of watching good companies receive bad advice.
Barbara Ormsby
Before founding Leo Fintech Advisors, Barbara spent seventeen years inside payments operations and treasury teams — first at a regional acquirer, later at a venture-backed issuing platform. She has personally led BSA/AML programs through three regulator examinations and migrated card portfolios across four major processors.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from California State University, is a CAMS-certified anti-money-laundering specialist, and serves on the Western Payments Forum advisory committee. She lives in Mendocino County, where she also keeps bees.
Built on the boring work nobody wanted to do.
When Barbara opened the doors in 2014, the brief was simple: be the firm that actually reads the merchant agreement. The first three engagements were unglamorous — an interchange optimization study, a chargeback workflow audit, and a vendor RFP for a community bank. They paid in full and referred us to four more clients.
Eleven years later we're still here, still small, and still allergic to slide decks that don't translate into work tickets. We've grown to a team of nine, opened a second meeting space in San Francisco, and added a quiet Risk & Compliance practice that now does roughly half our revenue.
We don't take referral fees from technology vendors. We don't white-label other firms' opinions. And we keep our roster small — typically twelve to fifteen active clients at any time — because a senior advisor only has so many good hours in a week.
Five quiet principles that decide every engagement.
Independence is non-negotiable
We do not accept commissions, kickbacks, or revenue-share from any technology partner. It's in our engagement letter.
Plain language wins
If a client can't repeat our recommendation back to us in their own words, we haven't done our job yet.
Implementation matters
A memo that sits in a drawer is a memo we shouldn't have written. We stay until the change is live.
Small teams, senior people
Every engagement is led by an advisor with at least ten years in the trade. Always.
Boring beats clever
Reliable, repeatable processes are worth ten clever frameworks. We optimize for the second hundred transactions, not the first.
Keep your word
Fixed fees. Real timelines. Honest no's. The simple things still surprise people.
Nine senior advisors. One shared inbox.
Our team blends former regulators, payments engineers and operations leaders. We don't have a junior bench — by design. When you email us, a partner answers.
- • Average tenure in industry: 14 years
- • Specializations: payments, BSA/AML, treasury, dispute operations, BaaS
- • Languages: English, Spanish, Mandarin
