Andrei Gornostajev (Wallester) on Scalable Card Issuing, Compliance, and Applying AI in Fintech

In this episode, Victor Forsfaelt Ljungberg from AWS speaks with Andrei Gornostajev, CTO at Wallester. Andrei explains how Wallester was created to build a modern, real-time platform for card issuing, solving the challenges companies faced with outdated systems. He outlines their growth into a full-service provider with customer onboarding, AML checks, and integrations with personalization centers and 3DS providers. Wallester enables white-label partners to issue branded physical and virtual cards instantly via API and has expanded into expense management and payroll features. Andrei discusses the technical journey, including Visa integration, scalability under heavy load, and PCI DSS compliance, supported by AWS managed services. He shares his leadership approach—balancing long-term vision with short-term agility—and fostering innovation through strong hiring and learning days. They also explore how Wallester applies GenAI internally to boost engineer productivity and externally to improve fraud detection and onboarding by reducing false positives. AI is seen as a major driver of future disruption in areas like customer onboarding and financial decision support.