"The licence is proof. The vision is the story."

An interview with Blas Pegenaute, CEO of Sequence, on becoming Switzerland's 5th FINMA-licensed FinTech — and what comes next.

By Cristina Villar · 28 May 2026 · Geneva

On 18 May 2026, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) granted Sequence SA a FinTech licence under Art. 1b of the Banking Act. The certificate of finality arrived by email. There was no public ceremony. No champagne in the office. Just an email, after years of work.

Sequence becomes the fifth FinTech-licensed institution in Switzerland — and the only headquartered in Geneva.

I sat down with Blas Pegenaute, founder and CEO of Sequence, to talk about what that actually means.

For people who haven't followed the regulatory journey, what is a FINMA FinTech licence — in plain language?

Blas: It's a regulated authorisation. Specifically under Article 1b of the Swiss Banking Act. It allows us to accept public deposits up to a hundred million Swiss francs, as long as we don't invest them and we don't pay interest on them.

In plain language: it's the lightest-touch banking-style authorisation Switzerland offers. It's not a full banking licence — we're not a bank. But it puts us under direct FINMA supervision, with the same expectations on capital, governance, risk management, and conduct.

It's the regulatory layer that lets us build financial services directly into our platform, instead of routing everything through partner banks. That distinction matters more than people realise.

Most readers will see the headline — "5th FINMA FinTech in Switzerland" — and assume that's the story. Why isn't it?

Blas: Because the licence is proof. The vision is the story.

The reason we did this is because we believe the way Swiss businesses run their finances today is broken. Fragmented. They have a separate ERP, a separate bank, a separate accounting tool, a separate fiscal layer. Every transaction is duct-taped across five systems. That's not infrastructure. That's a coping mechanism.

We're rebuilding the financial backbone of Swiss businesses. Integrated. Automated. Built for founders. The licence is what allows us to do that natively as a regulated institution. So the story isn't "we got approved." The story is "a different kind of Swiss financial infrastructure is now possible, and it's emerging from Geneva."

Why was the geography of this important to call out?

Blas: The four prior FinTech licences in Switzerland — Bivial, Relio, SR Saphirstein, Yapeal — are all in Zürich or Zug. Which makes sense historically: that's where the Swiss financial ecosystem has been concentrated for fifty years.

But Geneva matters. Romandie matters. The Lemanic arc has a real entrepreneurial density — it's the European HQ for hundreds of multinationals, it's the home of CERN-spinout startups, it's where some of Switzerland's most internationally connected companies are based. 

We didn't set out to make this a regional story. But the fact is: if you're a Swiss SME or a startup in French-speaking Switzerland, you now have a FINMA-licensed FinTech building infrastructure specifically for you, in your time zone, in your language. That changes things.

Tell me about the process itself. People who've never gone through it have no idea what it involves.

Blas: Honestly, it's a lot of being unglamorous, for a long time.

A FINMA application is essentially a forensic-grade demonstration of every part of your business: your governance, your IT controls, your AML processes, your capital structure, your risk framework, your business plan, your operational resilience, your data architecture. Hundreds of pages. Then iterations with FINMA, responding to clarifications, supplementing with new documents. Then waiting. Then more iteration.

The hardest part isn't the documentation. It's the discipline to keep building product, keep serving clients, keep hiring, keep raising — while in parallel running a regulatory marathon nobody outside the company can see. There are no announcements during that phase. You can't say "we applied" with any confidence, because applications don't always succeed.

The whole team carried this for years. And our partners at Kellerhals Carrard — Cornelia Stengel, Gaspare Loderer, Manuel Brogli — walked every step with us. Their work doesn't show up in a press release, but every line of the application has their fingerprints on it.

How does this change what Sequence can do tomorrow?

Blas: Immediately, nothing for existing clients. Their contracts, their pricing, their workflows all continue exactly as they do today. We were very deliberate about that.

What it unlocks is what comes next.

What does this mean for the wider Swiss FinTech ecosystem?

Blas: I think it's a signal that the Swiss FinTech story is broader than the crypto and digital-assets cluster that's defined the past five years.

What we're showing is that there's a different layer of FinTech that matters just as much: the operational and financial infrastructure for the real economy. The SMEs. The startups. The everyday companies that pay salaries, send invoices, reconcile accounts, manage cash. None of that is glamorous. All of it is broken.

And it can be rebuilt — under FINMA supervision — without being a bank, without being a crypto exchange, just by being good infrastructure for normal businesses.

That's a different category. And we want to be the company that defines it.

A lot of founders read these interviews looking for the "lesson." If you had to name one — what is it?

Blas: Build the unglamorous part first.

Most startups optimise for the announcement: the launch, the round, the milestone tweet. But the things that compound are the boring ones. Compliance, governance, infrastructure, risk frameworks, the rigour you build into your processes when nobody is watching.

A FINMA licence is exactly that kind of compounding bet. It looks unglamorous for years and then, in one day, it becomes one of the most defensible assets you have.

If I have a lesson, it's: don't be allergic to the slow, structural work. That's where the real moats get built.

One last question. The licence is granted. The announcement is going out. The team is celebrating. What's the first thing you do tomorrow?

Blas: Back to work.

The licence isn't a destination. It's a starting line. And the line is right behind us now — so the only direction left is forward.

Sequence is rebuilding the financial backbone of Swiss businesses. Now FINMA-licensed under Art. 1b of the Swiss Banking Act.