Pliant Raises $80M Series C to Open B2B Payments to AI Agents
Berlin-based B2B payments company Pliant has raised an $80 million Series C to expand in the United States and Canada and to open its payment infrastructure to AI agents. Seaya Nova and Speedinvest co-led the oversubscribed round, which was announced on 4 November 2026.
Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners and Molten Ventures also took part. Pliant says it has doubled its business in each of the last three years and recently passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), less than six years after it was founded. The company has more than 300 employees across eight offices.
Deal summary
Company | Pliant |
Headquarters | Berlin, Germany |
Founded | 2020 |
Sector | Fintech, B2B payments |
Round | Series C (oversubscribed) |
Amount | $80M |
Co-leads | Seaya Nova, Speedinvest |
Other investors | Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners, Molten Ventures |
Revenue | Over $100M ARR |
Team | 300+ employees, 8 offices |
Co-founders | Malte Rau (CEO), Fabian Terner |
Announced | 4 November 2026 |
What Pliant does
Pliant is a modular B2B payments platform. Businesses use it directly to pay for things, and banks, fintechs and software companies use it to build their own commercial payment products on top of Pliant's infrastructure.
Its products fall into three groups:
Group | What it includes |
Payments | Commercial cards, business accounts, FX and global transfers, credit and financing |
Automation | Spend management and approval workflows, accounts payable, payment APIs, accounting integrations |
Programs (for partners) | White-label apps and UI components, partner APIs, program management, compliance and enablement services |
The card range is wide: physical, premium, virtual, single-use, travel purchasing, fleet, benefit and insurance claim cards. Pliant issues them in 13 currencies across 32 countries under its European e-money licence, and serves the UK and US through regulated partners. It is a principal member of both Visa and Mastercard, which means it connects to the card networks directly rather than through a sponsor bank.
Pliant serves more than 5,000 businesses and over 35 partners across Europe and the US, according to its July 2026 update. Customers include travel, insurance and AI-native companies. The company says it processes billions of dollars in payment volume each year, and holds PCI DSS and ISO 27001 security certifications.
Funding history
The Series C is Pliant's seventh funding announcement since 2021. Its Series B in April 2025 brought total funding to more than $100 million, so the new round takes total funding past $180 million. Pliant has also used debt: in January 2024 it announced a €100 million debt facility alongside a Series A extension. (For background on how startups plan rounds like these, see our fundraising strategy page.)
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The round sizes have grown steadily, from a $6.5 million seed in August 2021 to $80 million today. PayPal Ventures led a Series A extension of more than €18 million in April 2024, taking total Series A financing past €50 million.
Why AI agents need payment rails
The headline feature of this round is Pliant's push into what the industry calls agentic payments: letting AI agents start and complete payments on a company's behalf.
Pliant is doing this in two ways:
Its own agents. Pliant uses AI agents inside its product to automate recurring finance work.
Outside agents. Third-party agents, including Claude, ChatGPT and companies' own AI automations, can connect to Pliant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for linking AI models to software tools. Once connected, an agent can build payment steps into a business process.
The point Pliant stresses is control. Its API-first platform gives agents access to regulated payment infrastructure with permissions, spending controls and an audit trail built in. That matters in B2B, where a payment usually needs an approver, a budget and a record for the accounts team.
Pliant is not alone in this. In April 2025, Visa announced Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard announced Agent Pay, both programmes to let AI agents make purchases within limits set by the user, TechCrunch reported. Those launches focused mainly on consumer shopping. Pliant is aiming at the business side: corporate cards, supplier payments and company spending.
"As AI changes how companies move money, the licensed infrastructure underneath becomes more important, not less," said Vinoth Jayakumar, a general partner at Seaya Nova.
The push into North America
The first use Pliant lists for the new money is growth in the United States and Canada. Pliant has been laying the groundwork for over a year:
Date | Step |
Apr 2025 | Raised a $40M Series B, with US expansion as a stated goal |
Late 2025 | Began an initial US rollout and onboarded early customers |
Jul 2026 | Announced Coastal as its US sponsor bank |
Aug 2026 | Launched commercial credit cards for US businesses on the Visa network, with issuer processing by Thredd |
Nov 2026 | Raised $80M Series C to grow in the US and Canada |
The sponsor bank matters because Pliant's own licence is European. In the US, a fintech card issuer typically works through a partner bank that holds the charter. Coastal, part of Nasdaq-listed Coastal Financial Corporation, fills that role for Pliant. Thredd, an issuer processing platform, runs the card processing behind the programme.
"This partnership marks an important step in establishing our long-term presence in the United States," Rau said when the Coastal deal was announced in July.
Canada is new in this announcement. Pliant has not yet said which partners it will use there or when it expects to launch. The release also says the funding will help prepare entry into further international markets, without naming them.
Who backed the round
Investor | Role in the round |
Seaya Nova | Co-lead |
Speedinvest | Co-lead |
Illuminate Financial | Participant |
Motive Partners | Participant |
Molten Ventures | Participant |
Speedinvest is a Vienna-based early-stage venture firm with a long track record in European fintech. Seaya is a Madrid-based venture group, and Vinoth Jayakumar is a general partner at its Seaya Nova fund. Illuminate Financial and Motive Partners both specialise in financial services and fintech infrastructure.
Pliant did not disclose a valuation or how much each investor contributed. The company describes the round as oversubscribed, meaning investors offered more money than it set out to raise.
Earlier backers include PayPal Ventures, which led a Series A extension of more than €18 million in April 2024.
What to watch next
US traction. Pliant's US credit card programme went live on Visa in August 2026. Customer numbers and payment volume from the US will show whether the European model carries across the Atlantic.
Canada. No partner, licence route or launch date has been announced yet.
Agent adoption. It is still early for AI agents making business payments. Watch for named customers using MCP-connected agents in live payment workflows, and for how Pliant handles errors or disputes caused by an agent.
Competition. The corporate card and spend management market is crowded, and the card networks themselves are building agent payment programmes. Pliant's pitch rests on being the licensed, controlled layer underneath.
Growth rate. Pliant says it has doubled its business three years running. Keeping that pace from a $100M+ ARR base would be a much bigger task than doing it from a small one.
Valuation and next round. Pliant has not disclosed a valuation for this round, so it is not yet clear how investors priced its growth.
Related reading on StartupBooted
Sources
PYMNTS: Pliant raises $80 million to open B2B payments to AI agents (4 Nov 2026)
Business Wire: Pliant partners with Coastal to power U.S. expansion (14 Jul 2026)
FinTech Global: Thredd powers Pliant's US expansion with Visa card launch (6 Aug 2026)
TechCrunch: Visa and Mastercard unveil AI-powered shopping (30 Apr 2025)