From scientific research to running their own business in Europe. Two stories of Ukrainian entrepreneurs

An academic career can become the foundation for one's own business—especially in finance, where one has to work not only with business models but also with licensing, financial monitoring, data protection, and other regulatory requirements.

Among the Ukrainians creating financial and technology companies in Europe are entrepreneurs with academic backgrounds. Vladyslav Zaporozhchenko and Tetiana Dashevska came to business by different paths: he began with banking research, while she spent years working in banking and fintech.

Vladyslav Zaporozhchenko: from banking research to the payments business

At first, banking was a research subject for Zaporozhchenko. As a student, he studied banking supervision and the payment card market, completed an internship at the NBU's administration, and prepared more than 30 materials on fintech. After his studies, he worked at banks—in lending, payments, and corporate products. His research subject became his daily work: he saw how financial products depend on operations and regulatory requirements.

Later, he says, it became interesting not only to analyze changes but also to create products himself and take responsibility for their operation. His own projects required skills from academic work: working with primary sources, testing assumptions, assessing risks, and documenting decisions.

The next step was the European market: procedures there are more predictable, but they require financial-monitoring, KYC, and compliance policies, risk assessment, and flow planning. In 2018–2021, Zaporozhchenko became the founder of the Czech company AMERO PAY; from 2021, he has been the director of the British QIUNTEXBANK TECHNOLOGY LTD; and in 2022, the Polish company Qiuntex Pay was entered in the KNF register of small payment institutions.

Working in different countries showed how much regulatory approaches can differ: he dealt with the requirements of the Czech National Bank, the UK's FCA, Canada's FinTRAC, Switzerland's VQF, and other regulatory and professional organizations.

In 2022, together with Yulia Raubishke, he founded the British consulting company INTERNATIONAL FINTECH BUSINESS LTD, which provides financial licensing and regulatory support. The company was registered on October 20 of the same year. This was where his previous experience in banking, fintech, and working with regulators found practical application.

Tetiana Dashevska: from a banking career to her own platform

Dashevska's path was different. She entered entrepreneurship after more than twenty years in banking and fintech. With a PhD in economics and an MBA, she spent a significant part of her career launching digital banking products—in other words, she saw from the inside how every new service begins.

Over the years, Dashevska says, she repeatedly ran into the same problem. Every new neobank or payment service had to build a substantial part of its technological infrastructure independently: customer identification, transaction processing, and reporting took months, sometimes years, as well as significant resources. What surprised her most, she says, was the repetition itself—companies were writing things that dozens of companies before them had already written.

Eventually, she decided that this work did not need to be repeated every time—and that is how the idea of a platform made up of ready-made modules emerged, adaptable to the needs of different companies. In 2023, Dashevska and Yevhen Pavlenko founded SoftBees. The company operates in Ukraine and Poland and develops such a platform for launching and developing digital financial services. The model is the same as Zaporozhchenko's: the team remains at home, while the legal entity operates within the European legal framework.

The European market added requirements concerning information security, risk management, personal data protection, and financial monitoring to the technological tasks. In Dashevska's experience, the academic method here means formulating assumptions, checking risks, and documenting decisions. In 2025, SoftBees completed certification of its information security management system under ISO 27001.

What these stories have in common

The stories of Zaporozhchenko and Dashevska do not indicate that an academic degree is a necessary condition for business success. They show how academic and professional experience can find application in entrepreneurship.

In fintech, decisions have to be made while taking technology, finance, and regulatory requirements into account simultaneously. That is why experience working with data, research, and complex documentation becomes a practical tool. For Zaporozhchenko, the journey began with research into the banking system; for Dashevska, it began with many years of work in banks. At first, knowledge helps one understand the problem, and later experience suggests how to turn that understanding into a product or company.