Fintech Security
Payment fraud, API abuse and regulatory penalties are existential threats to fintech companies.
Sherlock Forensics provides penetration testing and security audits for fintech companies covering PCI DSS compliance, payment processing security, API endpoint hardening, account takeover prevention and regulatory readiness. Standard fintech penetration tests start at $5,000 CAD. Quick audits for early-stage fintech apps are available from $1,500 CAD.
Fintech applications handle money. That makes every vulnerability a direct path to financial loss, regulatory action or both. Payment processors, lending platforms, neobanks and crypto exchanges all face attackers who understand financial APIs better than most developers. We test your payment flows, authentication systems, API integrations and compliance posture before an attacker or a regulator finds the gaps.
Threat Landscape
Attackers target fintech payment flows to manipulate transaction amounts, redirect funds, exploit refund logic or bypass payment verification. Weak server-side validation, predictable transaction IDs and insufficient fraud detection create opportunities for financial theft at scale. We test every step of your payment pipeline from initiation through settlement to identify logic flaws that automated scanners miss.
Fintech platforms expose dozens of API endpoints for payments, account management, KYC verification and partner integrations. Each endpoint is an attack surface. We test for broken authentication, broken object-level authorization, excessive data exposure, mass assignment, injection vulnerabilities and rate limiting failures. A single misconfigured API endpoint can expose account balances, transaction histories or personal financial data for your entire user base.
Account takeover (ATO) attacks use credential stuffing, phishing, SIM swapping and session hijacking to gain unauthorized access to customer accounts. Once inside, attackers initiate transfers, change linked accounts or exfiltrate personal financial data. We test your authentication stack including MFA implementation, session management, password reset flows and account recovery procedures to identify weaknesses that enable ATO.
PCI DSS non-compliance can result in fines ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 per month, increased transaction fees and potential loss of the ability to process card payments. FINTRAC reporting failures carry their own penalties. Provincial privacy legislation adds another layer of obligation. We assess your compliance posture and identify gaps before your next audit or before a breach forces disclosure to regulators.
Our Approach
We trace every transaction path through your application from user initiation to processor settlement. This includes testing for amount manipulation, currency conversion exploits, race conditions in concurrent transactions, refund abuse and webhook spoofing. Our testers understand Stripe, Square, Adyen and direct bank API integrations.
Your APIs are your primary attack surface. We test every endpoint for authentication bypass, authorization flaws, injection vulnerabilities, rate limiting gaps and data exposure. We pay special attention to partner-facing APIs and internal microservice communication where trust assumptions create exploitable gaps.
We test your entire authentication lifecycle including registration, login, MFA enrollment, password reset, session management and account recovery. For fintech, weak authentication is not just a security issue, it is a direct path to financial loss and regulatory action.
We assess your cardholder data environment against PCI DSS requirements, identify your actual scope (which is often broader than expected) and test the technical controls that support compliance. Our reports map findings to specific PCI DSS requirements so your QSA can reference them directly during your annual assessment.
Compliance
| Regulation | Requirement |
|---|---|
| PCI DSS | Annual penetration testing and vulnerability scanning for any entity that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data |
| PIPEDA | Safeguard personal information with security appropriate to the sensitivity of the data |
| FINTRAC | Anti-money laundering compliance including transaction monitoring and suspicious activity reporting |
| BC PIPA | Provincial privacy obligations for organizations collecting personal information in British Columbia |
From the Field
A Vancouver-based payment processing startup engaged us for a pre-launch security assessment of their mobile payment application. During testing we identified a broken object-level authorization vulnerability in their transaction history API that allowed any authenticated user to view transaction records belonging to other users by modifying the account identifier in the request. We also found that their webhook endpoint accepted unsigned payloads, meaning an attacker could forge payment confirmation events to credit accounts without actual payment. Both issues were remediated before launch, preventing what would have been a reportable breach under PIPEDA within the first month of operation.
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Standard penetration tests from $5,000 CAD. PCI DSS alignment included.
Order OnlineTell us about your payment platform, your compliance requirements and your timeline. We will scope an engagement that addresses your regulatory obligations and your real-world risk.
Call 604.229.1994