Pear is an early-stage venture fund founded by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson. Their co-founding managers have historically seeded very early stage tech start-ups such as Doordash, Guardant Health, Gusto, Viz.ai, Dropbox, Lending Club, Vanta, Zoosk, Addepar, Path and many others. Their motto is simple: they invest in exceptional founders who are building amazing companies. They utilize every resource they have to assist their founders and entrepreneurs shape the future.

Pear VC

Greycroft is a venture capital firm that focuses on technology start-ups and investments in the Internet and mobile markets. With offices in two of the most important business hubs in the world, New York and Los Angeles Greycroft uniquely positioned to serve entrepreneurs who have chosen us as their partners. The firm leverages an extensive network of media and technology industry connections to help entrepreneurs gain visibility, build strategic relationships, bring their products to market, and build successful businesses.  Greycroft manages in excess of $1 billion and has made over 200 investments since its inception in leading companies including Acorns, App Annie, Bird, Botkeeper, Bright Health, Boxed, Braintree, Buddy Media, Everything But The House, Extreme Reach, Huffington Post, Icertis, JW Player, Maker Studios, Plated, Scopely, Shipt, TheRealReal, Thrive Market, Trunk Club, Venmo, WideOrbit, and Yeahka. Greycroft has adopted the Diversity Term Sheet Rider.

Greycroft

Great Oaks is an early-stage venture investment firm that invests in seed and series a investments in tech-based startups. It was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in New York.

Great Oaks Venture Capital

Clocktower Technology Ventures invests in the insurance, payments, personal finance, lending, credit, and asset management sectors. The firm’s expertise investing across financial services and its related ecosystem of global institutional allocators, policymakers, and hedge fund managers have created a community that offers a distinct value-add to portfolio companies. Since launching, Clocktower Technology Ventures has invested in 96 fintech companies in North America, Europe, and Latin America. It was founded in 2015 and headquartered in Santa Monica, California.

Clocktower Technology Ventures

Hanover Technology Investment Management invest in transformative early-stage technology companies in the first stages of growth.

Hanover Technology Investment Management

Accomplice is a seed-led venture capital firm that invests in technology startup companies. Its specialties are cybersecurity, eSports, data analytics, SMB class software, emerging hardware platforms, and marketplaces.  Through platforms like AngelList, Boston Syndicates, and Maiden Lane, Accomplice harnesses the community to empower and fund the best founders. It has pioneered a community approach through platforms like Spearhead, BOSS, Rev, and TUGG. A majority of Accomplice’s investments are in Boston, with others throughout the U.S., Canada, and the E.U. Formerly known as Atlas Venture, the firm announced in October 2014 that it was splitting its technology and life sciences franchises. The technology group was renamed Accomplice; the life sciences group retained the name Atlas Venture.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Accomplice is one of the most active early-stage firms in New England.

Accomplice

Drive by DraftKings is a multi-stage venture capital firm investing in SportsTech and Entertainment. Our mission is to push the frontier of new markets and categories revolutionizing sports, gaming and media. Founding partners include DraftKings, General Catalyst, Accomplice and Boston Seed Capital.

Drive by DraftKings

Activant is a global investment firm that partners with high-growth companies that are transforming commerce. The firm was founded in 2015 by Steve Sarracino and has offices in Greenwich, Connecticut and Berlin, Germany.

Activant Capital

Boston Celtics is a professional basketball team and a 17-Time world champion. Walter Brown, president of the Boston Garden-Arena Corporation. During the 1946-47 season, the team played the bulk of its home games at the renowned Boston Garden and a few at Boston Arena.

Boston Celtics

The Phoenix Suns is an American professional basketball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. The Suns compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division, and are the only team in their division not based in California. The Suns play their home games at the Talking Stick Resort Arena. The Suns are the only one of Arizona's professional sports franchises which uses ''Phoenix'' instead of ''Arizona'' as its geographical identifier.

Phoenix Suns

Investing, Mentoring, and Fueling the Future of Entrepreneurship

Team Ignite Ventures

Cardless

Cardless provides a platform for businesses to launch and manage integrated credit card experiences. The service includes application processing, customer support, and account management, ensuring a seamless experience for users.

Cardless offers infrastructure for enterprises to issue physical and digital credit cards. The platform lets users build credit card experiences within their respective mobile apps and websites. It builds credit card application solutions including the application flow, prefilled customer profiles, and in-built screening and underwriting.

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

Ascenda Partners with Cardless to Transform Co-Brand Landscape and Enable New Loyalty Opportunities

American Express

The agreement empowers some of the country's most celebrated brands – including travel providers and retailers – to seamlessly launch digital-first cards leveraging the Cardless platform, backed by benefits, offers, and security of the American Express network.

Cardless offers infrastructure for enterprises to issue physical and digital credit cards. The platform lets users build credit card experiences within their respective mobile apps and websites. It builds credit card application solutions including the application flow, prefilled customer profiles, and in-built screening and underwriting. Cardless offers a range of core solutions to create credit card programs, including program management, security, fraud detection, rewards, and compliance, among others. The platform also offers decisioning solutions that leverage the user’s customer data and Cardless’s algorithms and data analytics. Meanwhile, Cardless enables credit card lending by linking users with issuers on the platform or lets users leverage their own balance sheets. Key customers and partnerships Cardless has also entered several partnerships to enable users to issue co-branded credit card products. Partners in this regard include LATAM Airlines, Simon Property Group, American Express, Manchester United, and Liverpool Football Club.Funding and financialsCardless secured a USD 75 million three-year credit facility from i80 Group in May 2023 to fund customer receivables and growth.

Cross River Bank provides a white-label banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for enterprises, combining banking services, payments, and marketplace lending infrastructure to build fintechs. Its solutions comprise demand deposits, savings accounts, credit and debit cards, and payment clearing services, including automated clearing house (ACH) and real-time payments. The company also provides banking and payment infrastructure for the crypto industry, including risk management services for its crypto clients.Cross River Bank has expanded its operations by acquiring Betterfin, a platform offering lending-as-a-service (LaaS) solutions, in November 2021. Through the acquisition, Cross River Bank leveraged Betterfin’s software to digitize parts of the small-business lending process (such as origination and underwriting).&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp; As of November 2024, Cross River had over 80 clients, including lenders such as Affirm, Best Egg, and Upstart, neobanks such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/220119">Revolut</a>, and blockchain-based payment processing platform GreenBox. The platform reportedly originated over USD 24 billion in loans per annum, around 10x the value of loans it originated in 2015.As of November 2024, the company had over 500 employees and had entered more than 80 partnerships.&nbsp;In September 2024, Cross River Bank partnered with Forward, an embedded payments company, to offer payouts-as-service solutions featuring same-day automated clearing house (ACH) payouts through Forward's proprietary API technology.&nbsp;Cross River Bank also teamed up with UK-based BaaS provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/421515">Railsr</a> in January 2019 to launch a common API for their platforms to be used globally.The company partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1643">American Express</a> (Amex) to enable FinTechs to issue credit cards through Cross River Bank, on the Amex network, while also providing select Amex benefits to the FinTechs.&nbsp;

Cross River Bank

Synctera was co-founded in 2020 by Peter Hazlehurst, the former head of Uber Money, who previously led the development of Google Wallet. The company offers an API-based infrastructure platform for community and regional banks to find and partner with FinTechs. This enables FinTechs to leverage the former’s licenses to embed FDIC-insured mobile checking, debit cards, savings accounts, and payment innovations, among other features. The API platform offered to the banks will then be sold to the FinTechs to code on. Although the end customers interact with the FinTechs, they legally belong to the bank.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8117">Synctera mainly charges the banks </a>based on the interchange fees they earn (half of the interchange fees, as of January 2022) from the services provided. It does not charge them an initial amount to use the platform. Moreover, the platform also embeds fraud-as-a-service and charges FinTechs on a per transaction basis (4 cents per transaction) should they choose to use it. It subsequently shares that revenue 50/50 with the banks.The company launched the “t-minus10” project in January 2022, which offers a live sandbox for FinTechs to build apps, test, and go to market, enhancing their access to banking partners. It subsequently launched a “Smart Charge Card” (APIs to build, launch, and issue charge cards) and “White-label Banking App” (a codebase for developers to build embedded banking products or neobank apps) infrastructure in October 2022.Key customers and partnershipsIn February 2022, Lineage Bank (a community bank in Tennessee) and GoGetr (FinTech aiming to promote health and wealth management) became the first companies to launch a banking solution using the Synctera platform. As of March 2023, the platform was working with around 50 fintechs, of which 14 were live (including Wayapay and Float). Synctera reportedly had over 20 implementations set for launch in the following two months.Synctera announced a new card issuing and management infrastructure offering (Card-as-a-Service), in July 2021, which it developed in partnership with Mastercard and leading card issuing infrastructure disruptor, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/64287">Marqeta</a>.In August 2024, Synctera partnered with<a href="https://thepaypers.com/payments-general/synctera-partners-marqeta-to-introduce-fleet-cards--1269833"> Marqeta&nbsp;</a>to develop a fleet card solution that helps companies create and manage their own fleet card and banking products.

Synctera

Based in the UK, Weavr, formerly known as Open Payments Cloud, was spun out of payment provider Ixaris in 2019. Weavr offers the infrastructure for enterprises to embed banking services across various industries, including education, fitness, logistics, etc. Weavr’s “Meta” platform combines multiple banking and payments partners in one platform through application programming interfaces (APIs). Using the APIs, enterprises can embed virtual banking services such as card payments, fund transfers, and international banking accounts.Weavr expanded its operations to Singapore in November 2022, as part of its global expansion plans.In March 2023, the company acquired Comma Payments in a primarily equity-based transaction to integrate the latter’s technology. The integration will allow customers to transition from making payments via existing bank accounts to using Weavr-provided accounts with enhanced controls and payment options.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2023, Weavr had served over 1,500 enterprises, including Wectory, AllGravy, Corplife, Finway, Thanks Ben, and MySkillCamp.&nbsp;In October 2019, Weavr partnered with payment service providers Global Processing Services (GPS), Paynetics, and iDenfy to enable developers to create and run sophisticated and streamlined payment experiences for their European customers through Weavr.In June 2023, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.weavr.io/blog/weavr-and-visa-to-deliver-embedded-finance-to-the-global-stage/">partnered with Visa</a> to integrate its financial plug-ins with Visa's payment capabilities to create embedded finance solutions that are easy to deploy and cost-effective.

Weavr

MX offers an open finance portal, data connectivity application programming interface (API), and MX platform API for banks, credit unions, and other financial service providers. The company’s solutions allow its clients to utilize financial data to reduce fraud, approve loans faster, and improve their customer experiences. In addition to APIs and connections, MX also offers a range of capabilities, including data aggregation, analytics, financial feed insights, wealth and investment services, and verification services.MX looks to enable banks and financial institutions to launch next-generation services and apps that automate and personalize financial experiences.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2021, the company noted that it worked with more than 1800 banks, credit unions, and FinTech companies, and its platform reached over 200 million end-users. Moreover, it also powered 43 of the top 50 digital banks as of the same period.&nbsp;As of November 2024, the company maintained connections with more than 13,000 financial institutions and FinTechs. Moreover, the company had processed transactions worth USD 170 billion, averaging around USD 150 million per day.In November 2024, the company partnered with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pymnts.com/news/banking/2024/american-express-forms-data-sharing-partnership-with-mx/">American Express</a> to enable the latter’s customers to securely connect their accounts with third-party financial institutions and FinTech apps through MX's platform.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8753?industryIds=53">February 2022, MX partnered</a> with&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/361160">Rize</a>, to enable users to access Rize’s banking infrastructure to build, launch, and scale financial products through a single API, thereby reducing the development time and cost.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Bankable is a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) infrastructure provider allowing financial institutions and corporations to utilize its API to integrate banking services. It provides a platform for its enterprise customers to offer modular banking services, including ledger management (process data from multiple banks to support cash management for global corporate affairs), digital banking, payment cards, and e-wallets. The company expanded its platform by <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19662">acquiring Arex Markets </a>in June 2023, to embed working capital solutions (such as flexible invoice financing, corporate credit cards, lodged cars, and revolving credit).The company has a global presence, with operations spanning from the US to the Middle East as of January 2021. Bankable noted that the expansion of its global footprint also helps its European and US FinTech clients expand their operations internationally.Key customers and partnershipsIn January 2020, the company partnered with the diversified FinTech infrastructure provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/85350">Plaid </a>, which enabled Bankable’s customers to use Plaid’s tech to connect to more than 15,000 banks in the US and Europe.

Bankable

Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate banking services such as opening and maintaining accounts, facilitating card payments, etc.


Platforms that enable FinTechs to integrate a range of payment-related services such as one-time payments, subscriptions, and receipt management for domestic and cross-border transactions.


Companies that enable organizations to embed anti-money laundering (AML), identity verification, and know-your-customer (KYC) solutions.


Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate lending services,  by typically applying AI/ML technology to a spending analysis to analyze creditworthiness.

Companies providing APIs and integrations for FinTechs to access securities markets, facilitate transactions and clearing, and provide insights to help end-users manage their finances.

May specialize in promoting inclusiveness in financial services, primarily in the investment and lending spaces

AI/ML can improve the quality of their offerings, such as using AI/ML to reduce biases

Used for payment completions, accessing banking and transaction data, and providing financial insights, among others

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

<div>
 Cardless, a company providing credit card issuing infrastructure, has garnered USD 30 million in growth funding. The funding round was spearheaded by Activant Capital, with contributions from Mischief, Industry Ventures, Thayer Ventures, Assurant, and Amex Ventures. The new capital injection pushes the company's total equity funding beyond USD 90 million.
 The newly acquired funds are earmarked for several key undertakings. Foremost among these are the creation of co-branded credit card and loyalty products, bolstering the staffing for engineering and operations, and branching out into the retail, ecommerce, and small to medium business sectors.
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The FinTech infrastructure industry has recently seen an infusion of funding. Cardless joins Cellpoint Digital, which raised USD 30 million, <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/35871"> Satispay, </a> which secured USD 64 million, and <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/35771"> LendAPI, </a> which raised USD 3.2 million.

Cardless

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