
Alma
Alma Pay
Designed and built the first version of Alma’s native BNPL app: deferred and split payments, a virtual card and the partner shop directory.
Native financial product engineering
Native iOS engineering for payment, banking and BNPL products where security, authentication, integrations and delivery all have to work together.
Discuss the product Explore the expertiseClément Sauvage · Bits’n Coffee
Clément Sauvage is a senior iOS developer and product engineer who designs, builds and ships native financial applications. Since 2008, he has worked on Apple products where the mobile client is part of the financial system: payments, deferred and split payments, strong authentication, partner integrations and App Store delivery.
His fintech work includes designing and building the first version of Alma’s BNPL app, and leading the creation of Crédit Agricole Nord de France’s mobile banking experience in an agency context with a team of three iOS developers. Clément is a Stripe Partner and has contributed to Stripe’s developer community since its early days. Based in France, he works directly with fintech and banking teams in English and French across Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland.
When to bring me in
The role is useful when a financial product needs one senior owner connecting the native experience, platform security and the systems behind every transaction.
What does the financial product need?
Turn a product definition, banking system or chosen PSP into a native app with a credible architecture, clear authentication and payment states, and a release path prepared for App Review.
Join an existing team, own the sensitive areas and make the architecture, security and delivery decisions explicit without creating dependency on an external specialist.
Assess the codebase and its client-server contracts, identify what is worth keeping and sequence stabilization work while the product continues to move.
Fintech iOS expertise
The engagement covers the mobile product from architecture to release, with security and regulatory requirements treated as engineering inputs rather than late-stage patches.
Design session lifecycles, data minimization, Keychain access, device-generated keys protected by the Secure Enclave, biometric gates and calibrated device-integrity signals from the product’s actual threat model.
Build recoverable onboarding, identity-verification hand-offs, strong customer authentication, device binding and the production edge cases created by lost devices, expired sessions and interrupted journeys.
Integrate Apple Pay, Stripe, Adyen, Mollie and in-house banking APIs across the iOS client and its backend contracts, including 3-D Secure, retries, idempotency and reconciliation.
Build in Swift with SwiftUI or UIKit according to the product and codebase, then prepare signing, TestFlight, privacy disclosures, review access and the requirements attached to regulated services.
Lead product and architecture decisions, guide internal developers or an agency team, coordinate backend and specialist contributors, and leave code and conventions the organization can own.
Verified fintech experience
Two native engagements spanning BNPL, mobile banking, platform integration and team leadership.

Alma
Designed and built the first version of Alma’s native BNPL app: deferred and split payments, a virtual card and the partner shop directory.

Crédit Agricole Nord de France
Led the creation and delivery of the mobile banking experience in an agency context, managing three iOS developers across the iPhone app and Apple Watch companion.
Engineering principles
The security and process should match the product: a BNPL checkout, a banking app and a financial tracker do not share the same threat model or regulatory perimeter.
Identify what is protected, who could attack it and the consequences of failure before choosing controls, storage, authentication and client-server boundaries.
Define transitions, retries, timeouts and reconciliation across the app, backend and PSP so the interface reflects a durable transaction model instead of owning it.
Work with legal, risk and compliance teams to turn their decisions into testable flows and technical constraints without presenting engineering as regulatory advice.
Document the decisions, establish maintainable conventions and transfer enough context for the internal team to operate and evolve the product after the engagement.
Frequently asked questions
The regulatory perimeter, system responsibilities and delivery model should be explicit before architecture begins.
The mobile client sits inside a wider risk and regulatory system. Authentication, secure storage, payment state, partner APIs and App Store requirements must work together without making the product slow or difficult to recover.
Clément is a Stripe Partner and has also worked with Adyen, Mollie and in-house payment or banking APIs. Provider selection remains a business decision; the engagement covers the mobile integration and the contracts it needs from the backend.
Yes. The work can cover SCA, biometric and device-bound authentication, identity-provider hand-offs, document or liveness journeys and recovery paths. Compliance, risk and legal teams define the applicable requirements; Clément translates them into the product.
For a new financial product where Apple Pay, device identity, platform security and native interaction are central, native iOS is Clément’s preferred starting point. An existing cross-platform app should be assessed on evidence rather than rewritten on principle.
No. Clément understands the technical context around SCA, KYC, AML and data protection, but compliance decisions remain with the company’s legal, risk and compliance teams. His responsibility is to implement those requirements faithfully in the product.
Share the financial product, the banking or payment systems involved, the current team and what needs to ship. I’ll personally review the context and explain how I would approach the iOS build.
Discuss the product