The embedded finance architecture firm
built by people who ran the programs.
ExpandUp helps SaaS platforms, fintechs, enterprises, and financial institutions design payment and embedded finance programs that increase revenue, improve margins, accelerate growth, and create long-term enterprise value.
Our team has launched payment platforms, built digital banks, managed sponsor bank relationships, scaled compliance programs, and operated businesses processing hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
We help organizations make the architecture, monetization, and operating decisions that determine whether embedded finance becomes a growth engine — or an expensive detour.
Three Operator Lenses. One Program Decision.
Embedded finance success requires three questions to be answered simultaneously — and most advisory relationships only answer one. Sean, Justin, and Bronwyn each bring one of those operator lenses. Every engagement gets all three.
Program model, bank structure, infrastructure, compliance design, economics architecture, and cross-border payment infrastructure — evaluated for where you're going, not just where you are.
Payment monetization, product strategy, partner integrations, go-to-market execution, and the adoption drivers that determine whether the program takes hold.
Operating model, governance structures, decision systems, adoption strategies, and the organizational capacity to run what the program requires after launch.
Organizations fail at embedded finance not because the strategy was wrong but because the people giving advice had never been accountable for the result. A strategist hands off. A vendor steers toward what they sell. A generalist describes the landscape without having navigated it.
ExpandUp is different because the people in the room have owned the outcome — the revenue, the compliance program, the bank relationship, the go-live. That's not a structural claim. It's a track record.
Operators. Not consultants.
Every member of the ExpandUp team has been accountable for the outcome — not just the advice. The credentials below are programs built, revenue generated, and institutions changed.
Sean Graham
Founder & Managing PrincipalSean is a fintech executive and payments operator with 25+ years of experience building and scaling banking, payments, lending, and embedded finance businesses. His background spans product, operations, risk, technology, and commercial leadership across both financial institutions and fintech platforms.
Sean launched a digital bank that grew to $4B in assets, built enterprise payment platforms processing more than $100B annually, and led a $350M payments business that processed over $80B annually while delivering more than $100M in revenue growth. He also ran multi-billion consumer and mortgage lending businesses and managed global and cross-border payment operations. Throughout his career, he has launched and scaled products across payments, lending, treasury, and embedded finance.
Sean brings the architecture and economics lens to ExpandUp. He helps clients determine how payment and embedded finance programs should be structured, monetized, and scaled to maximize revenue, margin, customer value, and enterprise value. His experience operating from both the bank and platform side helps clients avoid costly infrastructure decisions and build programs designed for long-term success.
ExpandUp · Bank of America · USAA · TIAA · AvidXchange · First Union Bank · Evergreen Funds
Bronwyn Erasmus
PrincipalBronwyn is a transformation executive who helps leadership teams identify scaling constraints and build the operating architecture required to unlock growth.
Across eBay, Tesla, and AvidXchange, she was repeatedly brought into situations where organizations were struggling to scale, align, or execute effectively. Over the course of her career, she has led organizations of more than 300 people, delivered $10M+ in efficiency gains, reduced payment processing costs by 27%, reduced service demand by 37%, improved customer response times by 80–90%, and built operating systems that continued running long after her departure.
At ExpandUp, Bronwyn brings the organizational architecture lens — helping clients evaluate whether an opportunity is organizationally realizable and designing the operating models, governance structures, decision systems, and adoption strategies required to make it successful at scale.
eBay · Tesla · AvidXchange
Justin Nelson
Independent Principal AdvisorJustin is a fintech founder, product executive, and investor with 25+ years of experience in B2B software, payments, and integration-led platforms.
He co-founded Strongroom Solutions, which was acquired by AvidXchange — and it was the combination of Strongroom's platform and AvidXchange's payments program that multiplied product revenue from $3M to $30M ARR in under two years. Post-acquisition, he led platform initiatives that cut integration build time by 70% across 30+ partner integrations.
He knows firsthand what the right payments program, applied to the right platform, can do to a business.
Justin brings deep expertise across payment monetization, ERP and partner integrations, product strategy, product design, business development, customer research, and go-to-market execution — the full range of disciplines that determine whether a payments program actually takes hold in the market.
AvidXchange · Strongroom Solutions · Accenture
Engineering & Architecture Partners
Extended Delivery NetworkExpandUp works with a network of specialized fintech engineering teams assembled around client program requirements. When a program needs capabilities beyond strategy and architecture — we bring the right builders to the engagement.
Our engineering partners are specialists in payments infrastructure, AI systems, and lending platforms — with the depth to design and build custom payment capabilities that fit the architecture, not the other way around.
Payments infrastructure · AI systems · Lending platforms · Custom payment capabilities
Architecture, commercialization, and execution — together.
ExpandUp is vendor-agnostic and positioned explicitly as a program architect — above infrastructure vendors and rails. We work on the decisions that determine what the program can become, not just on the implementation of decisions already made. ExpandUp customizes our engagements to meet your needs.
Get in touch
Unit #5108
Charlotte, NC 28277