EXCLUSIVE: “RegTech’s Best-Kept Secret?” – Ivan Stefanov, NOTO in ‘The Paytech Magazine’

NOTO is a quiet force that’s now reaching into every corner of financial crime prevention. As the regtech marks its 10th anniversary, Co-founder Ivan Stefanov looks at what it’s helped clients achieve – and what’s left to do

In 2015, a group of fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) professionals began quietly building in a garage what would become NOTO – 360 Fraud and Compliance, also known simply as NOTO.

Drawing on their extensive combined experience in payments, risk, compliance and fraud detection, the founders set out to create a platform that was data-agnostic, flexible across verticals, and performant in real time – able to serve banks, fintechs, payment processors and e-commerce. But, at the same time, they also began pushing the arguably more complex and challenging frontiers of financial services to do with cryptocurrency and gaming.

“NOTO was born from our experience in fraud prevention and AML compliance,” recalls one of those founders, CEO Ivan Stefanov. “We were using the same customer and transaction data, just for different purposes, and we asked ‘why not create a single platform that interprets that data for both?’. That’s how NOTO came to be.”

From the beginning, the team focussed on building everything in-house, emphasising low latency (millisecond-scale response), high throughput (thousands of transactions per second), and an architecture that could adapt to individual client requirements, different regulatory regimes and industry nuances.

“Our goal was simple,” Stefanov says. “To unify fraud prevention and AML compliance through one intelligent platform that could evolve with the industry.”

As regulation tightens, digital finance accelerates, new currency and transaction types emerge, and fraud becomes ever more prevalent and sophisticated – all against a volatile macroeconomic and market backdrop – NOTO’s unified approach feels increasingly prescient. Marking its 10th anniversary this year, the company could never have foreseen just how necessary the leading-edge solutions it offers were going to become.

Stefanov spent his career prior to NOTO in in-house roles where colleagues regarded risk management as the ‘business prevention department’. But the past two decades have seen almost weekly cybersecurity outages suffered by leading market players, growth in instant SEPA payments, increasing mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency transactions for cross-border trade, a broader push towards frictionless customer payments, emergence of ‘pseudo-financial’ players (from retailers to ride providers), and geopolitical events like the Ukraine- Russia conflict, resulting in extensive worldwide sanctions, not to mention AI being used to bypass financial crime prevention protocols and measures.

It has all altered the perception of risk and placed managing it very much front-of-mind for any organisation dealing in financial transactions.

“Regulation is tightening, financial products and payment rails are becoming instant and remote, and risk is increasing,” Stefanov says. “That combination drives demand for regtech solutions like NOTO. The financial world is now instant. Compliance and fraud prevention need to operate at the same speed.”

The developments of recent years have placed NOTO, with its real-time intelligence capabilities, in a market sweet spot it could hardly have anticipated at the outset. Between 2023 and 2025, it began forging partnerships that built both its technical capacity and its market credibility. Major partnerships, such as those with LexisNexis and Creditinfo, are considered critical to the industry.

Another example, in 2025, was i-gaming operator EGT Digital’s integration of NOTO’s fraud and AML (FRAML) platform to consolidate its compliance workflows. The collaboration showcased NOTO’s ability to deliver real-time analytics, insight driven by machine learning, and multi-layered security in sectors with complex, high-risk exposure.

“What sets NOTO – 360 Fraud and Compliance apart is what’s in the box – an enterprise financial crime prevention platform with every critical component connected through a single API,” notes Stefanov. “Implementation is simple, but the flexibility it offers is huge. Clients can bring their own data, build custom rules and deploy models that reflect their unique risks – all without waiting on their internal IT teams.

“Our platform gives compliance and fraud experts the tools to apply their knowledge in real time, not wait for someone else’s roadmap.”

Striking the right balance

NOTO has also had a creditable go at cracking the longstanding conundrum of balancing the protections necessary for financial crime prevention, with ensuring seamless customer experience – achieved with a delicate blend of precision and proportion.

Stefanov explains: “Fraud prevention works best as a multi-layered funnel across the whole customer journey – from onboarding to logins and transfers. Using data orchestration, you can be accurate without creating friction.

“What sets us apart is what’s in the box – an enterprise financial crime prevention platform with every critical component connected through a single API”

“You can’t solve every problem in one stage of the customer journey. The key is flexibility, multiple filters and constant measurement.”

With most firms now very much awake to the high cost – in regulatory sanctions, downtime, reputational damage and lost customers – of not placing their risk-prevention systems front and centre of their business strategies, NOTO has developed a crystal-clear vision of the gaps many need to fill to eradicate any blind spots.

“Without data and accurate metrics, you can’t know how well you’re really doing,” Stefanov says, adding that sticking-plaster approaches and cost-saving quick fixes will no longer cut it in today’s high-risk operating environment.

“Most blind spots come from technological limitations – fragmented systems, incomplete data, and compromises made during implementation,” Stefanov continues. “The success of any regtech project depends on the implementation phase. Rushing it or trimming corners almost always means weaker results.”

From experience, NOTO can quickly spot the exposures firms have, which could cost them dearly in remediation, lost business and regulatory sanctions if not rectified.

“The biggest red flag is when an organisation focuses only on cost and under invests in compliance and fraud prevention,” he warns. “The price of inaction is always higher – in fines, losses, and reputational damage.

Technology alone can’t fix compliance gaps if it’s poorly implemented or chosen in a rush. Cutting corners creates the illusion of progress but leaves firms exposed.”

With this in mind, NOTO’s approach with new clients is to undertake a no-compromise, root-and-branch review of their compliance and fraud detection processes and systems. It acts as a critical friend, highlighting the actions they need to take to withstand financial crime and ensure regulatory readiness, then developing an action-focussed project plan which picks them off in priority order.

This measured, engineering-first philosophy to creating bespoke solutions fitted to individual client needs explains the reputation NOTO has built for reliability, and its growing market adoption. Financially and operationally, the firm has been bootstrapped and organically built, rather than heavily externally funded. It has achieved consistent growth, profitability and a steadily expanding tech stack, with investments in

Cloud infrastructure, marketing automation and global business development helping to ensure revenue of around $7million in 2024. Unsurprisingly, controlled application of AI is one of the levers the company has pulled to help it deliver the speed and agility its clients need with its capability for rapid data analysis.

“AI and machine learning are integral to our roadmap,” says Stefanov, “but we’re careful to separate hype from reality. It’s about using AI where it makes sense – improving accuracy and productivity without removing expert judgment. Agentic features can enhance productivity for investigation teams by automating repetitive steps while keeping full human oversight.

“Fraudsters are often the earliest adopters of new tech. It’s our job to keep up – and to make sure institutions can react with the same speed.”

A calm, capable force

NOTO’s belief in the importance of preventative risk management has seen it also invest heavily in industry education, innovation and thought leadership, organising RegTech Unleashed events in Europe and Latin America. And it has expanded its business development and customer success teams to support a growing client base that now spans four continents. For Stefanov, however, success isn’t just about market share, it comes from having meaningful impact.

“Success means our clients can manage fraud and compliance with one intelligent solution – fewer tools, less complexity, faster insight,” he says. “Ultimately, the goal is to make compliance a business enabler, not a blocker, to let clients focus on growth while staying secure and compliant.”

Looking ahead, NOTO sees opportunity in the convergence of data orchestration, AI, and decentralised finance (DeFi).

“Complexity will grow, and so will the need for intelligent, integrated solutions,” says Stefanov. “Looking back to 10 years ago, no one could have predicted how far regtech would come. The next 10 will transform it again – probably faster than any of us expect.”

From a garage in Europe to a global client base spanning fintech, banking, crypto, and gaming, NOTO has established its reputation quietly by delivering speed, accuracy, and trust – and the opportunities to build on that foundation are nothing less than mind-boggling.

In an era when regulation tightens by the day to plug risk holes few could have anticipated, and fraudsters move faster than ever, fuelled by the same enlightened technologies, NOTO’s philosophy of unified intelligence, transparent data, organisation-centred solutions and practical innovation may be exactly what financial institutions need.

A calm, capable force working behind the scenes to keep the system honest and safe.

This article was published in The Paytech Magazine Issue #17, Page 32-33