Payment Resilience Review

Know where your payment operation is exposed — before an incident tells you.

The Payment Resilience Review is a fixed-scope, fixed-price diagnostic from Polar Moment. We assess your payment operation against a defined framework and deliver a written findings report with prioritised recommendations. You know exactly what you are committing to before you book.

Customer paying by card

Is this the right time for a Payment Resilience Review?

This review suits Heads of Payments, Payments Directors, CTOs, and IT Directors who have a specific concern about their payment operation. You may recognise yourself in one of these situations:

  1. You read about the M&S payment failure and could not answer whether your own system would have handled it differently — or why.
  2. You have a PCI DSS audit, a peak trading period, or a new payment integration approaching. You want to know where you are exposed before you get there.
  3. You are selecting or renegotiating with a payment vendor or acquirer. You want independent advice from someone who has been on both sides of that conversation.
  4. Your board or CFO is asking questions about payment resilience and regulatory compliance that your current reporting does not answer clearly.
  5. You have inherited a payment architecture or operation and want an honest picture of what you have — before something goes wrong.

What does a Payment Resilience Review cover?

The review covers five areas. Each area is rated independently in the written report.

1

Payment Architecture

Structure, acquirer connectivity, failover design — and whether the architecture as built matches the architecture as documented.

2

Operational Resilience

Incident response, peak trading readiness, and vendor dependency risk. Closing the gap between your theoretical SLA and operational reality.

3

Regulatory & Compliance

Your position against PCI DSS, FCA obligations, and DORA. Forthcoming regulatory changes flagged with an honest view of where you stand.

4

Commercial Risk

Acquirer and processor relationships, contract terms, fee structures, and commercial leverage you are not currently using.

5

Payment Readiness

Unattended payments, Android terminals, orchestration, regulatory pipeline, and reconciliation modernisation.

Payment readiness — how well positioned are you for where payments is heading?

Payments is changing faster than most organisations' infrastructure can keep pace with. This section looks beyond your current operation and assesses your organisation against five shifts that are already reshaping payment operations:

  • Unattended and self-service payments. EV charging, vending, kiosks, pay-at-pump, and automated retail are all growing rapidly. We assess your current terminal estate and identify what would need to change.
  • Multi-channel payment orchestration. Organisations operating across in-store, online, mobile, and unattended environments increasingly need a unified orchestration layer. We assess where you are on this journey.
  • Android-based payment terminals. The shift from proprietary to Android-based payment devices is accelerating. We assess your current estate and flag the decision points ahead.
  • Regulatory change pipeline. PSD3, BNPL regulation, DORA, and rolling Visa and Mastercard scheme rule changes. We assess which of these will land on your operation in the next 12 to 24 months.
  • Payment data and reconciliation modernisation. Real-time payment data and automated reconciliation have become baseline expectations. We assess your current position and identify practical steps toward modernisation.
Android payment terminal EV charging payment Payment system operations

What do you receive?

The Payment Resilience Review delivers one output: a written findings report with prioritised recommendations. It is not a slide deck or a list of things to commission further work on. It is an independent assessment you can act on directly — or share with your board as it stands.

  • Format: Written report, typically 10 to 20 pages. The executive summary is suitable for board or CFO circulation.
  • Ratings: Each of the five areas receives a clear traffic-light rating, so you can see at a glance where the priorities are.
  • Recommendations: A prioritised action list — what to address first, what can wait, and what is a material risk if left unaddressed.
  • Delivery: Report delivered within five working days of the assessment session.
  • Ownership: The report belongs to you. There is no ongoing obligation and no pressure to commission further work.

Who delivers the Payment Resilience Review?

Every Payment Resilience Review is led by a Polar Moment director with deep specialism in the areas most relevant to your situation. A director leads the engagement — we never delegate it to a junior team.

John Rozek

John Rozek — payments domain authority

John brings thirty years of experience in production payments, having worked inside NatWest Streamline, PayPal, M&S, and Worldpay. He has advised Circle K (14,200 stores, 26 countries) on payment orchestration and outdoor payment strategy, and TJX (Fortune 100, 5,000+ stores, 9 countries) on PCI scope reduction. John typically leads the regulatory, commercial, and payment readiness dimensions of the review.

Paul Deed

Paul Deed — payments technical director

Paul has spent twenty years building and operating payment systems in production. His work spans Android payment terminal development for EV charging and vending environments, embedded payment hardware, AWS-hosted payment infrastructure, and multi-scheme EMV accreditation. Paul typically leads the architectural, operational, and payment readiness dimensions of the review.

How much does a Payment Resilience Review cost?

The Payment Resilience Review is a fixed-fee engagement. We state the price upfront because you deserve to know what you are committing to.

  • Price: Agreed at the scoping call. Fixed fee — no billable hours, no scope creep, no surprises.
  • Timeline: Scoping call usually within five working days of enquiry. Assessment session within two to three weeks. Written report within five working days of the session.
  • Format: Delivered remotely or on-site. Half-day or full-day, depending on scope.
  • What comes next: The report stands alone. If it identifies areas where deeper support would help, we will say so clearly. You decide whether to take that further.

Book a scoping call

The initial scoping call takes thirty minutes and carries no obligation. We will tell you whether the Payment Resilience Review is the right fit for your situation — and if it is not, we will say that too.

Get in touch