From idea to launch: building SwissFx from the ground up

SwissFx began as an idea in December 2024. By early 2026, it had become a visible financial company with a brand, a website, a platform experience and a growing presence in the Swiss business community. The period between those two points was not a single launch project. It involved several workstreams moving forward at the same time.

In the first Perspectives interview, Rachael Camp explained why SwissFx was created. The second explored what it takes to build trust in a financial platform. In this third conversation, she focuses on the practical building journey: how an idea became a company that people could see, understand and begin to use.

Once the idea was there, what did you build first?

R. C. : “The first thing I did was the branding, alongside the initial market research. That was the most natural place for me to begin because my background combines graphic design, research and user experience.

At that stage, SwissFx was still an idea that my partner and I had been discussing with people in our networks. Branding gave the project a visible identity, but it was not only about choosing colours or creating a logo. I was also thinking about how the company should present itself, what it should communicate and how the experience should feel for a business using it.

The research side was happening at the same time. I wanted to understand whether the problems we had noticed were shared by other businesses and how they described their own needs. Those two strands - defining the identity and testing the proposition - developed together.”

What did building the SwissFx brand involve in practice?

R. C. : “I designed the visual assets, the website and the brochures myself. Anything visual or brand-related came through me. I created the designs in Figma and gradually built the different elements needed to make SwissFx feel like a coherent company rather than a collection of separate ideas.

The first website was a simple one-page site with a pre-registration form. It gave us somewhere to explain the direction of the business while the wider setup was still being prepared. We then built the fuller version of the website in anticipation of the launch.

There were many late nights and weekends involved. When you are building the brand yourself, every page, visual and piece of information involves a decision about how the company should be understood. The website had to introduce SwissFx clearly while also showing how its different currency and payment capabilities fit together.”

How did you approach the platform setup?

R. C. : “Building SwissFx from the ground up did not mean developing every underlying technical system ourselves. We work with a partner network and we were able to use an established platform infrastructure, then apply the SwissFx branding and client experience to it.

That approach was important because the underlying environment already had to support secure financial activity at scale. Our job was to identify the right setup, understand how it worked, ensure that the partners and processes fitted within our operating model, and create a coherent SwissFx experience around it. The platform is therefore part of a wider operating structure, not a standalone interface.”

What could you build while the regulatory process was still under way?

R. C. : “We could prepare a great deal, but we could not onboard clients until the approval process was complete. That created an unusual building period. We were developing the brand, the website, the platform experience, the documentation and the commercial materials, while knowing that the company could not yet operate fully.

The website developed from the initial registration page into the version prepared for launch. We were also putting the wider business structure in place and making sure the different parts were ready to work together.

By late February and early March 2026, the website and broader setup were ready for a soft launch, alongside the final stages of regulatory approval. From the outside, that can look like a fairly quick transition. From inside the business, it felt much longer because so much of the work happened before we could welcome the first clients.”

How did early conversations shape the business before launch?

R. C. : “I spoke with people in our networks and carried out informal interviews to understand what they would require from a service like SwissFx. I would ask how the proposition sounded, whether it matched a real need and what might make the setup useful in practice.

Those conversations raised concrete questions. Some businesses were interested in local account capabilities or direct debits in the UK. Others were considering expansion into new markets and needed to work with additional currencies. We also heard questions about rates and access to less commonly used currencies. These are the kinds of operational situations explored in our guides to multi-currency business accounts and emerging market currencies.

My research and UX background was very useful here. The aim was not to ask people to confirm an idea we had already fixed. It was to listen for the problems, behaviours and requirements that should influence the way the company was built.”

How did you begin making SwissFx visible?

R. C. : “We used LinkedIn and created the social presence a company is expected to have, but we quickly realised that content alone would not do the real work for this type of B2B service. SwissFx is not a consumer product that will suddenly go viral. Businesses usually start a conversation when they have a practical problem to solve.

Networking therefore became one of our strongest tools. I met people, explained what we were building and asked for their reactions. We also carried out some cold outreach. That requires a thick skin, but it was less difficult than I had expected.

Selling was actually one of the positive surprises of the process. I am not a traditional salesperson with polished lines, and I did not want to become pushy. I found that I enjoyed speaking about the business when the conversation was relevant and respectful. At some point, I realised that if I stayed quietly at home and never mentioned SwissFx, no one would know that we existed.”

When did it start to feel like a real company rather than a project?

R. C. : “The transition happened gradually, but the visibility changed things. When the full website was live and I was meeting people as the co-founder of SwissFx, I was no longer only working on an idea behind the scenes.

I had to become more comfortable with representing the company publicly. That is different from simply showing up professionally as yourself. You are also carrying the brand, its standards and the responsibility attached to it.

I am still learning how to separate those two identities. As a founder, you can start to feel that you have become the brand. At the same time, that visibility is necessary. Building the company also meant learning to embody it.”