Who this is for
This guide is for teams organizing their thinking before a sponsor-bank evaluation. It does not identify a bank, promise an introduction, predict approval, replace diligence, or describe a complete legal or compliance program.
Decision map
Prepare one consistent program definition before outreach. The customer, product, money movement, geography, channels, data handling, partners, and exclusions should not change depending on who is presenting. When assumptions remain unresolved, label them and assign an owner rather than presenting them as settled.
Readiness also requires an operating story. Show who will own controls, vendor management, customer support, complaints, disputes, reconciliation, reporting, monitoring, change review, incident response, and escalation. The bank will conduct its own evaluation; the team’s job is to make its proposed model and evidence clear enough to inspect.
Roles and dependencies
The company retains responsibility for its decisions, materials, and proposed operating model. A sponsor bank retains its own evaluation, approval, oversight, and relationship responsibilities. Processors, vendors, advisors, and Chisel do not replace either party or the accountable compliance, legal, risk, product, technology, finance, and operations teams.
Questions to ask
- Can every function describe the same customer, product, flow, and program boundary?
- Which materials are approved, current drafts, dependent on partner input, or still missing?
- Who owns each control, record, review, vendor, customer issue, and escalation?
- What ongoing governance and change process does the proposed relationship require?
- Which open questions materially affect fit and should be surfaced early?
Adjacent capability handoffs
Connect owns the primary relationship questions. Use Bank Partner Mapping, Partner Diligence Packet, and Implementation Checklist as ways to organize topics and ownership. These links do not imply bank access, placement, approval, or module availability.
Continue with the processor-readiness guide and network-counterparty readiness guide to distinguish responsibilities that may otherwise be bundled into “the partner.”
Primary next step
Review the Connect capability and create a versioned program brief that names evidence owners, open assumptions, and the decisions each prospective counterparty must make for itself.
Published after review. Claims status: approved. Reviewer: Todd. Module-status matrix checked on 2026-09-27; the matrix does not establish public availability for the linked modules.