Building a $45M pipeline in high-risk crypto payments

By Artyom Jurkevich, Founder & CEO, RevSculpt

Over eight months we built a working outbound pipeline for Finassets, a B2B crypto payment gateway for high-risk verticals, in a market where the buyer is hidden on purpose and cold outreach rarely lands. Cold email returned a 0.2% reply rate with zero positive answers, so we moved everything to a LinkedIn-first, multi-account, signal-based approach.

The result: 2,243 leads and 16 SQLs worth close to $45M in direct-client processing volume, with three clients already processing transactions.

Finassets entered a new market, and we entered it alongside the brand. The product was never the question: deposit acceptance and mass payouts in crypto, predictable TCO, onboarding in one to two weeks.

The whole challenge sat with the people on the other side.

In offshore iGaming, where ownership and licensing structures are often layered across jurisdictions such as Curaçao and Malta, the person who decides on payment processing is kept out of view by design.

And once you know who to look for, they are usually not on LinkedIn at all.

We started in October 2025 and built pipeline where it normally does not exist.

Results over 8 months

From 3,961 LinkedIn connection requests, we got 2,380 accepts, 300+ replies, 16 SQLs, and about $45M in direct-client processing volume.

On LinkedIn we sent 3,961 connection requests, had around 2,380 accepted (60%), and received 300+ replies, with a share of those contacts turning into deals later.

Acceptance climbed from roughly 20% to more than 50%, and on the most familiar accounts as high as 86%, as the profiles and the messaging became recognisable.

In total that came to 2,243 leads across all sources and 16 SQLs in the pipeline, representing close to $45M in direct-client processing volume.

For a payment gateway, processing volume, not deal count, is the honest measure of pipeline value.

Three clients are already connected and processing transactions, and five signed agency agreements, three of them active, are bringing in merchants currently in screening.

We worked three segments in sequence: iGaming as the core, then Forex/CFD, then eCommerce.

Industry events ran as a separate track, producing up to 15 to 20 held meetings per event, around 70% of them genuinely worthwhile.

The deal cycle here runs up to a year. We are eight months in and the engagement continues, so at this stage we report in SQLs rather than closed deals.

A data-driven call: dropping email

We tested cold email properly first, sending around 2,660 messages to merchant databases.

The reply rate came in at roughly 0.2%, with zero positive responses.

The reading was clear: high-risk runs on warm personal contact, which is far easier to build on LinkedIn than from an unfamiliar inbox, especially where AML and FATF Travel Rule obligations make merchants cautious about unsolicited approaches.

We recorded the result as a fact and moved the entire effort to LinkedIn-first, saving a couple of months that would otherwise have gone into reviving a dead channel.

The real difficulty: getting to the right person

On most markets the hard part of outreach is the message.

In high-risk crypto, the hard part is the recipient, and that changes the whole method.

The decision-maker is hidden by structure. The offshore setup keeps the person in charge out of view, which turns sourcing into a small piece of intelligence work rather than a filtered export.

And even once you know who to look for, that person is usually absent from LinkedIn.

There you mostly find business developers, sales, and recruiters — the roles for whom communication is the job, while the payment manager or owner stays inactive.

Reaching them means working through adjacent roles and second-degree connections.

How we reached them

Managed multi-account infrastructure. We assembled and maintained a pool of LinkedIn accounts embedded into the Finassets team as if they were staff, and outreach ran from them.

We warmed the profiles evenly so the infrastructure could grow to industrial volume safely, without hitting limits or losing accounts.

Segmentation into 18+ audiences. We split each major segment into roughly six sub-segments, iGaming ×6, eCommerce ×6, and layered a crypto / no-crypto division on top, giving us more than 18 separate lists, each with its own script.

A message built around the role's logic, not its title. A head of business development responds once they see how a payment solution affects their own work.

An orchestrator opens access to many merchants at once and decides on entirely different terms.

We repackaged the same offer around each role's motivation, and that changed the response.

A fourth follow-up. Three touches are not enough here.

Returning with a fourth message and a genuinely new angle often opened conversations where the first three met silence.

Events as a warming channel, not just a meeting source

High-risk is built on warm contact, so we used events deliberately, to set meetings and warm the audience at the same time.

We enriched the attendee lists for ICE 2026, AffPapa Madrid, and iFX Expo Cyprus with LinkedIn contacts and approached precisely the people we knew would be there.

That produced up to 15 to 20 held meetings per event, around 70% of them high quality, and the same warming visibly moved deals already in progress.

One move stood out: our account manager on the project found the largest influencer in the niche and designed the mechanics for working with that influencer's contact base so the audience would respond warmly.

Expansion signals instead of formal intent

Classic intent signals do not always fire offshore, so we learned to read the market differently.

When a brand posts about sourcing traffic in a new geo, it is moving in and may need payment infrastructure there.

When it opens roles for particular positions, it is preparing to grow.

We treated both as expansion signals and stepped in exactly when a brand moved into territory where our solution is strong, rather than messaging the new hire.

These methods brought around 10 SQLs into the pipeline.

What the client says

"What mattered most to me as a marketer was how engaged the team stayed. They asked for feedback constantly, during events and after, and reworked the strategy quickly while we tested several hypotheses at once. On a difficult market, that is what maturity looks like.

My first real wow came when Artyom, our account manager, found the biggest influencer in our niche himself and designed the mechanics for working with their contact base so the audience would respond warmly.

The outreach was gentle enough that the connected profiles gave us meetings and, beyond that, a warm audience that brought deals later. Awareness grew noticeably too, because it worked well alongside our own marketing."

— Vitalijs Feldmanis, CEO of Finassets

What to take from this case

In high-risk, cold email is worth testing, yet there is little to build on it, and the data shows that faster than instinct does.

A multi-account LinkedIn setup is a discipline in its own right: warming and limits hold the volume an in-house team usually cannot.

A message works when it is written around the logic of the role rather than the line in a job title.

And on closed markets, events are the warmest channel available, doing far more than filling a calendar.

When this approach does not apply

If the product has no product-market fit yet, if the average deal is too small to justify a long cycle and manual work on decision-makers, or if the audience is already visible through ordinary filters, then multi-account infrastructure and event-based work are overkill.

The approach pays off where the buyer is hidden and the deal is large and slow.

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If you are entering a difficult or closed segment and want to work out how to build outreach around hidden decision-makers, let us talk through your case on a short strategy call.

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FAQ

Why did cold email fail in high-risk crypto payments? Around 2,660 messages produced a reply rate of roughly 0.2% and zero positive responses. High-risk merchants operate under heavy AML and Travel Rule scrutiny and respond to warm personal contact, which is easier to build on LinkedIn. We switched to LinkedIn-first after reading the result as a fact rather than a setback.

How do you reach decision-makers who are not on LinkedIn? The offshore ownership structure keeps the real decision-maker out of view by design.We reach them through second-degree connections and adjacent roles such as business development and orchestrators, with a message assembled around the logic of each specific role rather than a job title.

What is event-based outreach and why does it work? It means working from the attendee lists of industry expos (ICE, AffPapa, iFX Expo) enriched with LinkedIn contacts, approaching people you know will attend. It produced up to 15 to 20 held meetings per event, around 70% of them high quality, and it also warmed live deals already in the pipeline.

How many touches does LinkedIn outreach need in high-risk verticals? Three follow-ups are not enough on this market. A fourth message with a genuinely new angle lifts the response noticeably, because familiarity, not persistence alone, is what earns the reply here.

Why report results in SQLs rather than closed deals? The deal cycle in crypto payment processing runs up to a year, while the campaign has run for eight months. We are inside a single cycle and the work continues, so SQLs and processing volume — $45M — are the honest measures at this stage.

Is regulation a barrier to outbound in this space? It shapes it. Frameworks such as the EU's MiCA regime and the FATF Travel Rule push high-risk operators toward trusted, warm channels and away from anonymous inbound, which is exactly why a relationship-first LinkedIn approach outperforms cold email here.