Fintechs come to a vendor from two directions. Some have localized for years and have a lot in place: a localization team with its own processes, a translation platform integrated with the repository, glossaries and translation memories built over time, vendors split by language or content type, in-country reviewers for the markets that matter most. What they need is more capacity, more languages or a better way to handle the part of the content that changes daily. Others have grown large in a single market and are now expanding. They have product, compliance and marketing teams, but no localization process yet, and they need to build one that will hold up as the number of markets grows.
A vendor that needs you to change your release process, move to their platform or restructure your repository before work can start is solving their problem with your time. One of the most important questions a good vendor asks is: how do you work today, and where do you need us? The answer decides which parts of the work the vendor takes and which parts stay with your team and your other partners, and it is different for every company.
In practice, the answer usually takes one of three shapes. They are not stages of growth. A team that is just starting may pick the third one and a mature team may stay with the first one on purpose, and many use two at once. What they have in common is that the vendor adapts to the client.
Model 1
Extra capacity: your team runs the process, we add hands
Your localization function works. What breaks is volume. A market launch triples the number of strings for six weeks. A regulatory deadline lands on top of a product release. You add a language none of your current vendors covers. A vendor for one language cannot absorb a peak, or is not fast enough for the release cycle.
In this model your team keeps everything: the translation platform, the glossary, the style guide, the release calendar and the definition of "done". We join as additional translation capacity inside your setup. We work in your platform, with your glossary and memory, to your instructions, and next to your other vendors.
What makes it work:
- No commitment in either direction. Volume goes up and down with your real need, and you are invoiced monthly for what was actually translated. One of our clients went from small ongoing updates to a single batch of 182,000 characters and back to small updates, with no commitment in between.
- Fast turnaround on small jobs. Regular updates in two to three days. Urgent requests in 24 to 36 hours.
- Low cost of adding a language. There is no minimum volume, so adding one more language or testing a new market does not need a project-sized budget.
- Your assets stay yours. We work in your platform, so your translation memory and glossary stay where they are, under your control. There is no platform you have to move to.
Where it gets difficult: a new vendor is only as good as the onboarding. If your glossary, style guide and string context are in order, extra capacity produces consistent output from the first batch. If some of that context lives in your reviewers' heads, the first weeks will show it. Teams in this model get the most value when the onboarding gets real time and attention.
Model 2
Shared process: we take a defined part, your team keeps the rest
This is a common arrangement for a fintech with an established localization function. The work is divided along a line that makes sense for the business, and each side owns its part from start to finish.
Three ways to draw that line work well in practice:
- By content type. Your team keeps regulated content and brand marketing, where internal legal review and in-country sign-off are part of the process anyway. We take the high-volume content that changes all the time: help center, support templates, release notes, transaction emails, product interface.
- By language. Your team or your in-country partners keep the markets that bring most of the revenue, where years of product knowledge and reviewer relationships have built up. We take the other markets, where the challenge is coverage and speed rather than depth.
- By service level. Your team keeps human translation for critical content. We run AI + Human (also called MTPE) as a separate process: testing AI models on your content, correcting the output, keeping terminology consistent.
What makes it work: shared language assets and one glossary that everyone uses, including your other vendors. A shared process fails when it turns into fragmentation: marketing translates its own content, product translates the interface, support handles the docs, and nobody shares a translation memory or terminology. The line between your team and each vendor has to be drawn deliberately and written down.
What we take on inside our part: a dedicated project manager, native-speaking translators with proven experience in your industry, glossary and style guide maintenance for the content we own, automated quality checks, and, where the boundary needs it, the integration work that keeps both halves in sync.
Model 3
Full ownership: we run the process, your team makes the decisions
Two kinds of companies choose this model. The first has no localization process yet and does not want to build one from scratch before entering new markets. The second has a localization function and wants it to spend its time on strategy, terminology governance and compliance rather than on coordination. In both cases the vendor owns the mechanics and your team owns the decisions: what gets localized, into which languages, by when, and what "good" means.
The scope in this model normally includes:
- Localization engineering. Setting up or reconfiguring the cloud platform, connecting it to your CMS and code repository, building custom integrations where the standard ones do not fit, and automating upload and download so that new content is detected and routed without anyone filing a ticket.
- The full team. Not just translators. A project manager as your single point of contact. Language leads who keep each language consistent. An AI engineer who tests models and tunes prompts. A localization engineer for integrations. Testers who check the translations in your product. A resource manager who recruits for rare language pairs.
- Language assets. Building the glossary and style guide where they do not exist, and importing your existing translations into a translation memory so that past work keeps earning discounts.
- Quality as part of the service. Multi-stage quality checks, proofreading, and testing in the live product rather than in a spreadsheet.
- Services beyond translation. Desktop publishing, multilingual marketing, video and voiceover localization when a launch needs them.
What your team still owns: the roadmap, the terminology decisions that touch regulated language, sign-off, and the assets themselves. Handing over the process should never mean losing access to what the process produces.
How the work gets set up
Whichever model you choose, the setup follows the same six steps.
- Meeting and assessment. We discuss your goals, review your brand and content to understand tone and expectations, and provide a free quote or a test translation.
- Team assembly. A dedicated project manager plus translators who specialize in your industry and content types. All of them are native speakers of the target language. Our own screening has a 2.5% pass rate.
- Project setup and launch. We build the workflow on a cloud platform with translation memory, glossary and quality-check tools, or connect to the platform you already use, and the project starts.
- Progress tracking. Regular updates, plus the ability to check the schedule and talk to the team through the platform at any time.
- Review and delivery. Your team reviews and gives feedback. Corrections are free. Final content is delivered manually or through an automated integration.
- Continuous translation as you grow. A continuous process so that localized versions ship on the same schedule as your product, with no minimum volume.
For planning purposes, a standard project start takes about thirteen days from signing the contract to the first translation batch. That covers selecting and confirming the team, an optional test translation, a briefing to collect requirements and reference material, platform setup and onboarding, importing your existing content and translation memory, and building or aligning the glossary and style guide. The actual time depends on scale and complexity. If a deadline is tight, we can assign more translators or use AI-assisted translation, and the memory and glossary keep everything consistent as the team grows.
Choosing between the three
| Your situation | Likely model |
|---|---|
| Localization works. The problem is peaks, deadlines and gaps in language coverage | Extra capacity |
| Regulated content needs internal control, but the volume of help and interface content is unmanageable | Shared process, split by content type |
| The main markets are well covered by your team or in-country partners. The other markets are neglected | Shared process, split by language |
| You want AI + Human at scale but nobody in-house to run model testing and quality | Shared process, split by service level |
| Strong in one market, expanding to several, no localization process yet | Full ownership |
| Your localization team should spend its time on strategy and compliance, not coordination | Full ownership |
| Localization is spread across marketing, product and support with no shared glossary or memory | Full ownership, starting with shared language assets |
Moving between models without starting over
The reason to care about lock-in is that these models are not permanent. A team that hands over a region this year may bring it in-house next year. A team that uses a vendor for extra capacity may hand over a whole content type after a good first year. That change should take a handover, and no more.
Three things decide whether it does:
- You can take your assets with you. Translation memory and glossary can be exported at any point, in a standard format, without a negotiation.
- The platform is not a trap. Work happens in your platform, or in one you can access and leave at any time.
- The contract is flexible. No minimum volumes, no retainers, no annual commitment. Monthly invoicing for actual volume means changing the shape of the engagement is a conversation.
These are also good questions to ask any vendor you are evaluating. The answers cost nothing while things go well, and everything when they do not.
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