A sponsor bank isn't a decorative logo on a fintech's website. It's a regulated institution with real oversight obligations, even when the fintech owns the app, customer experience, and day-to-day operations.

Federal banking agencies are proposing a more tailored approach to third-party risk management. That doesn't make vendor oversight easier. It makes understanding the actual risk of each relationship more important.

A major payments provider outage caused by ransomware isn't just a headline - it's a wake-up call. Using BridgePay's February 6 ransomware incident as a case study, we explore how multiple systemic failures - not a single flaw - are almost always behind these outages, and why treating security as a checkbox isn't enough.