Marco Tropeano moved to Luxembourg to join Satispay in 2022. Today, he is responsible for Compliance at Satispay Invest. In this article, he explains why he chose to work inside the business rather than advise it from the outside, what it means to build a compliance function from scratch, and how compliance can support growth without compromising customer trust.
How would you introduce yourself, and how would you explain compliance to someone outside finance?
I'm Marco, responsible for Compliance in Satispay Invest. I'm originally from Pordenone, in Italy, and I moved to Luxembourg, and to Satispay, in 2022.
The way I usually explain my job outside of work is simple: financial regulation exists because someone is trusting a company with their finances. My team and I make sure Satispay Invest earns that trust every single day, in the way our regulators expect us to.
Concretely, that means ensuring the investment services we offer meet the requirements set both by our supervisor in Luxembourg, the CSSF, and by the European institutions. This helps keep our services and products fair, clear and not misleading in the eyes of our customers.
“Financial regulation exists because someone is trusting a company with their finances.”
What made you choose a role inside a company instead of the traditional legal path?
As soon as I finished law school, I knew I didn't want to follow the classic post-university route into a law firm. I wanted to be inside a company, close to the decisions, rather than advising on them from the outside.
Compliance struck me immediately as the ideal place to put legal knowledge to work in a business context. You're not writing opinions, you're helping build something. And since I've always been fascinated by finance, financial compliance turned out to be a perfect match: the rigour of the law applied to an industry that never stands still.
“You're not writing opinions, you're helping build something.”
You joined Satispay from a more traditional environment. What felt different here?
I think anyone who joins Satispay, whatever their background, quickly realises that things work in a genuinely unique way here. The first feeling, and to me still the most important one, is the sense of ownership the company hands you. That ownership also came with real trust from managers and stakeholders: the freedom to make calls myself, which isn't always a given in more rigid, traditional environments. Then there's the extra-mile culture, and the awareness that you're contributing to a project with enormous potential.
Looking back, that was exactly what I was searching for at that point in my career, together with the chance to live and work outside Italy.
During my first year at Satispay, I was given a review of our capital requirements obligation, one of the most delicate areas we work on. I approached it like a first-year assignment: do the work carefully, hand it to your manager, let his name go on it. Then a meeting appeared in my calendar. Me, presenting my analysis to one of Satispay's founders. That event changed how I understood my job. There was no filter between my work and the people who would act on it. Every piece of work here is meant to have concrete impact, and it gets discussed directly with founders and, at times, investors. You don't hand your work over. You carry it.
What was the most challenging part of joining at that moment, and what did it teach you?
The first challenge was simply finding my feet in an environment and an industry that were new to me: fast-moving and demanding. At that point, Compliance already had an established AML/CTF function, but the regulatory compliance team had just been created, so together with my colleagues it really was a matter of starting from zero and learning a great deal on our own.
That turned out to be the most valuable thing that could have happened to me. Building something from scratch teaches you to make decisions without a playbook, and that's the experience that has carried me through the years since and allowed me to take on progressively greater responsibility.
“Building something from scratch teaches you to make decisions without a playbook.”
What does becoming responsible for Compliance at Satispay Invest mean to you personally?
It's the most significant milestone of my career so far, and I'll admit I'm surprised to have reached it this early.
But I try to look at it as a starting point rather than a destination. Satispay placed a lot of trust in me, and my goal now is to repay it.
For people who do not work in compliance, what does the role actually involve day to day?
The best part of the role is precisely that the day-to-day changes every day. There are, of course, more regular activities: handling risk alerts, running specific controls. But underneath all of that, there's one thing that doesn't change: staying compliant is a daily job, not a one-time achievement. Beyond that, my work depends entirely on which project we want to launch, what questions our customers are asking, and which new regulations happen to land in a given period.
As for leading compliance for Satispay Invest specifically, I'd say the defining feature of the job is making complex decisions in a short amount of time. Beyond any individual task, that's the real work, and the hardest part of it. It means constantly balancing compliance risk against business objectives, and being willing to take a clear position rather than hiding behind ambiguity.
“Making complex decisions in a short amount of time… that's the real work.”
Satispay has been expanding across BNPL, Investments and Cards. How does compliance help the company grow while keeping it safe?
I think this is a really important question, because compliance is often perceived as a potential blocker. The truth is that all of us in compliance at Satispay work hard to be a support to the business rather than a burden on it.
Our biggest impact isn't in changing a product to make it compliant. It's in finding a way to make the exact product the business envisions compliant from the start, always, of course, within certain non-negotiable pillars: Satispay's integrity, and the protection of our customers.
“Our biggest impact isn't in changing a product to make it compliant. It's in finding a way to make the product the business wants to launch compliant as it is.”
