• Reset raised $6 million in seed funding from credit union customers and partners to expand its embedded earned wage access platform for credit unions and community banks.
• The company positions earned wage access as a tool to deepen relationships and grow deposits, reporting that cardholders increase deposits by 27%, maintain 36% higher balances, and generate 20% more interchange revenue.
• Credit unions increasingly view earned wage access as competitive infrastructure to defend primary financial relationships against digital banks and neobanks.

Embedded earned wage access platform Reset unveiled today that it has raised $6 million in seed funding. The investment, which comes from credit union customers and strategic partners in the credit union and community banking space, boosts Reset’s total funding to more than $8 million.

Reset will use the funds to expand its sales and implementation capacity, deepen product development, and accelerate existing deployments.

California-based Reset, which aims to serve credit unions and community banks, embeds its technology directly into financial institutions’ existing technology stacks to enable members to access their earned wages on a daily basis, fee-free, via a card issued by the credit union or community bank.

“When your customers lead your funding round, there is no clearer market signal,” said Reset CEO and Co-founder Matt Dicou. “These credit unions aren’t just writing a check. They’re making a decision about where they want to take their members, their institutions, and the credit union industry. They see that Chime and other neobanks are successfully recruiting people away from credit unions today. Our credit union partners already have trusted member relationships. We give them what they need to remain the primary financial home.”

Reset anticipates that the earned wage card will help financial institutions grow direct deposits, since the more a member deposits, the more real-time funds they can access. The company said that cardholders increase deposits held at their credit union by 27% and maintain checking account balances 36% higher than before switching cards.

In addition to the earned wage feature, Reset also helps credit unions generate credit interchange revenue on cardholder’s everyday spend. The company said that its cardholders generate 20% more in credit interchange revenue for their institution.

“When a credit union invests in a fintech, it sends a message: we believe in this enough to put our name on it. Reset is solving a real problem for working members, and it’s doing it in a way that makes the credit union stronger in the process,” said Stephanie Curtis, Chief Member Experience Officer at VyStar Credit Union.

Rather than viewing earned wage access as simply another product offering, many credit unions increasingly see these tools as infrastructure to defend primary financial relationships, capture direct deposits, and compete against digital banks. As neobanks continue using faster access to money as a customer acquisition tool, features like earned wage access may become table stakes rather than differentiators.

Georgia’s Own Credit Union’s investment in Reset highlights this shift from product experimentation toward competitive infrastructure. “Our members are already looking for this, and until now, they’ve had to turn to other options,” said Georgia’s Own Credit Union CTO Kevan Williamson. “Reset levels the playing field for our members. We invested because we’ve seen what it does for members’ financial stability, and because we believe credit unions should be the ones offering it.”

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

• Ramp raised $750 million at a $44 billion valuation as it expands beyond corporate cards and expense management.
• The company is betting AI token spend will become a major business cost category requiring new financial infrastructure.
• Ramp launched Stack, an AI-native accounting platform, as it pushes deeper into automation, accounting, and enterprise finance.

Corporate card and expense management platform Ramp is on a roll this week. In addition to launching Stack, an AI-native platform for accountants, the New York-based company also raised $750 million at a $44 billion valuation.

The $750 million boosts the company’s total funds to $3.75 billion, following its most recent raise of $300 million in November of last year. Investors in this week’s round include new contributors Goldman Sachs Alternatives, D.E. Shaw & Co., Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Generation Investment Management, Insight Partners, and BroadLight Capital, as well as previous investors Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, D1 Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price, General Catalyst, Alpha Wave Global, 137 Ventures, Thrive Capital, Coatue, Sands Capital, Khosla Ventures, 1789 Capital, Avenir Growth, BoxGroup, 8VC, Pinegrove Venture Partners, Definition Capital, and Stripes.

The investment comes as Ramp positions itself as financial infrastructure for AI spending by expanding into managing one of the fastest-growing costs in business: tokens.

“For 500 years, business ran on two pillars of spend: people and vendors. In the last 24 months, a third arrived—intelligence, paid by the token and invisible to every system we’ve built to manage cost. Ramp is the infrastructure for the third pillar,” said Ramp Co-Founder and CEO Eric Glyman.

As businesses embed AI into workflows, employees and agents are generating growing volumes of token-based costs across models, copilots, and automated workflows. Ramp is betting companies will increasingly need tools to monitor, control, and optimize those costs just as they do traditional employee and vendor spending.

The round also comes days after Ramp launched Stack, a tool that allows customers to use agents to do reconciliations, update schedules, post journal entries, and create flux analyses. This creates value for accountants, as it has pre-built integrations that connect to every system their clients use, offers a full audit trail on every action, and provides an underlying model that handles a wide range of accounting tasks.

Some analysts claim that Ramp is overvalued at $44 billion, as it well exceeds competitor Brex’s valuation of $5.15 billion when it was acquired by Capital One earlier this year. It also exceeds PayPal’s valuation of nearly $38 billion.

However, Ramp is defending its value based on its past platform growth and current trajectory. In the past few months alone, Ramp has launched more than 70 products and major features. In addition to token spend management and Stack, the company released budget tools, procurement agents, accounting agents, and customized tools for startups. Also, Ramp closed two acquisitions and announced geographical expansions into the UK and Europe.

“We’re growing as fast as we were three years ago, at roughly twenty times the size,” said Glyman. “And that’s because finance is going through the biggest structural change since the spreadsheet. Every company needs infrastructure to navigate an AI economy, from a CFO in London to an accounting firm in Wichita. While we’re growing fast, we still only serve a fraction of the market. There’s a lot more work to do.”

Whether Ramp’s valuation proves justified remains to be seen. But the company’s recent product launches and messaging suggest it is attempting something larger than expense management. Rather than positioning itself as a corporate card company, Ramp is betting that businesses entering an AI economy will need new financial infrastructure to manage not only employees and vendors, but also increasingly autonomous systems and the costs they generate.

• Gradient Labs raised $26 million in Series A funding to expand its vertical AI platform, bringing its total funding to $42.6 million.
• The company will use the funds to build autonomous banking tools designed to help financial institutions automate customer operations.
• The funding shows that banks are shifting from using AI as a bolt-on solution toward using AI agents to autonomously execute operational tasks directly within financial systems.

Conversational AI platform Gradient Labs is on a mission to build AI agents that will help banks run on autopilot. The UK-based company has added $26 million to its Series A round, boosting its total funding to $42.6 million.

The investment was led by new investors Octopus Ventures and CommerzVentures, with additional backing from Redpoint Ventures and Exceptional Capital. Gradient Labs noted that the diverse group of investors is a strong validation for the company, which will use the funds to build autonomous banking tools that help banks deploy AI agents that reduce the time and resources they spend dealing with operational complexity.

Founded in 2023, Gradient Labs enables banks to embed AI agents directly into their systems to automate customer operations and complex workflows. By moving beyond rule-based automation, the company helps financial institutions reduce operational burden, improve customer experience, and prepare for an AI-first future. The company boosted its revenue by 900% last year, and currently counts 32 million end users after adding Current, Stash, and Rho to its existing client base that includes Wise, Zego, Monzo, Pockit, and others.

Gradient Labs is building on the concept of vertical AI, which is AI built specifically for one industry rather than for general-purpose. The company offers a Lending Agent that automates the borrower lifecycle, from a missed payment to outbound collections calls, to an agreed repayment plan; a Disputes Agent that handles everything from intake to chargeback; and a KYB Agent that runs identity and document checks.

The company argues that this domain specialization is what differentiates vertical AI from general-purpose AI tools. “Each agent includes the guardrails, compliance checks, and test scenarios for its domain, from FCA Consumer Duty to the EU AI Act,” said Gradient Labs CEO Dimitri Masin. “This is why so many organizations trust us to automate their long-running processes, and why we’re doubling down even further on domain-specific AI agents for financial services.”

Gradient Labs’ funding shows that banks are increasing their interest in deploying AI-powered solutions that are more integrated into their systems instead of just bolted on. Banks initially deployed AI to assist employees with customer service and internal workflows, but they are now increasingly exploring how AI can execute operational tasks autonomously.

• Spain-based Didit raised an additional $6 million in Seed funding to expand its programmable identity and fraud infrastructure globally, bringing its total funding to $7.5 million.
• Didit offers developers API-first tools to verify users, businesses, and online interactions, using AI to analyze more than 200 signals including biometric liveness, deepfakes, and behavioral activity.
• The funding highlights growing demand for identity and fraud tools built for the AI era, as businesses face rising threats from generative AI, synthetic identities, and automated fraud attacks.

Spain-based Didit just brought in an additional $6 million for its identity verification network, boosting its total Seed funding to $7.5 million.

Investors in today’s round include Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Orange Collective, Founders Future, Phosphor Capital, SaaSholic, and Rebel Fund, alongside angel investors Tomer London, Taro Fukuyama, and others. Didit will use the investment to scale globally, expand its open infrastructure toward fully programmable identity and fraud coverage, and recruit new employees.

Didit was founded in 2023 to build a programmable identity infrastructure for the internet. The platform offers a developer-first way to verify people, businesses, and automated digital interactions like logging into an account, approving a transaction, or granting permissions.

The platform connects to a network of global government data sources and leverages AI to analyze more than 200 data points, such as document authenticity, biometric liveness, injection attack detection, deepfake analysis, and behavioral signals from every interaction. The company, which counts more than 1,500 customers, serves organizations across more than 220 countries and territories.

Didit reports plenty of demand for its identity verification network, saying that it is an untapped market. The company reports that 80% of its customers had not previously used an identity verification provider.

“No one was building for what was actually happening,” said Didit Founder and CEO Alberto Rosas. “Fraud kept getting smarter, regulators kept getting stricter, and millions of new businesses suddenly needed to verify their users—but every existing provider couldn’t catch the new fraud, had painful onboarding, and hid pricing behind a sales call. So we built the opposite: one API for identity and fraud, public per-module pricing, and an integration so simple that any developer can ship it in five minutes—or any AI coding agent like Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor can ship it in a single prompt.”

Didit differentiates itself from other identity verification providers, viewing itself as programmable identity infrastructure. “What we’re really building is the trust layer for the internet,” added Rosas. In the long term, the company wants to be an identity wallet that allows people to verify once and reuse their identity everywhere.

The funding comes as identity verification providers face a rapidly changing threat landscape driven by generative AI, deepfakes, synthetic identities, and automated fraud attacks. At the same time, developers increasingly expect identity tools to be API-first, priced transparently, and easy to integrate into digital onboarding and transaction workflows.

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva

• Embedded BNPL provider equipifi has raised $34 million in Series B funding to help banks and credit unions offer pay-over-time options directly within their own platforms.
• equipifi’s infrastructure enables consumers to access BNPL through their existing banking app and debit card without opening a new account, filling out an application, or using a third-party provider.
• equipifi’s growth reflects a broader shift in BNPL from a standalone fintech product into embedded financial infrastructure.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) infrastructure company equipifi has raised $34 million in Series B funding. The new round boosts the Arizona-based company’s total funding to $49 million.

The investment was led by Left Lane, with participation from existing investors Curql, PHX Ventures, New Stack Ventures, SixThirty Fund, Baleon Capital, Rise of the Rest, and SaaS Ventures. New strategic partners, SWBC and the Bankers Helping Bankers Fund, also contributed.

equipifi was founded in 2021 to offer consumers access to pay-over-time solutions from their preferred banking provider, not through a third party. The company’s solution helps banks and credit unions compete in an era when consumers have begun to expect BNPL as an option and crave flexibility without the need for a credit card. equipifi powers BNPL for millions of checking accounts with its tool that natively embeds BNPL options inside the bank’s own platform without requiring the user to fill out an application or undergo a credit check.

“A consumer opens their banking app,” the company explained on its website. “There’s a flexible payment option waiting for them. On the debit card already in their wallet. No new account. No application. No third-party service. They select their preferred term, tap accept, and they’re done. The institution just created a loan in real time, kept the relationship at the top, and gave the consumer something they didn’t think their bank could do.”

equipifi views its embedded BNPL offering as an infrastructure play. The company calls it “infrastructure for modern credit” that places flexible payments options inside financial institutions’ existing platforms. equipifi plans to use today’s $34 million round to bring flexible payments to every financial institution in the country.

The BNPL trend is interesting because when it first emerged over a decade ago, it wasn’t necessarily something customers were looking for. Now, however, BNPL tools have almost become table stakes. equipifi has proven that BNPL is no longer just a standalone fintech product competing against banks. Instead, it can work as embedded infrastructure that banks themselves want to own and integrate directly into their existing customer relationships. In this case, equipifi is positioning itself less as a consumer brand and more as an infrastructure provider powering the next generation of flexible payments behind the scenes.

• Versana has raised $43 million, bringing its total raised to $125 million, with backing from major banks and private credit players.
• The company is building a shared, standardized data layer for the $9 trillion syndicated loan and private credit markets that replaces manual, inconsistent workflows with a single source of truth.
• The new round brings on strategic investors like Fitch Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Motive Partners, and Apollo.

New York-based Versana announced today that it raised $43 million to support its infrastructure that brings transparency to syndicated loans and private credit.

BNP Paribas led the round, with participation from new strategic investors Fitch Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Motive Partners, and Apollo. Existing shareholders—including Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo—also made follow-on investments.

Today’s investment, which Versana will use to expand and grow globally, brings the company’s total funding to over $125 million.

“We’re thrilled that BNP Paribas, Fitch Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Motive Partners and Apollo have joined as strategic financing partners,” said Versana Founder CEO Cynthia Sachs. “This is truly a landmark moment, reflecting clear alignment across two very similar asset classes, BSL and private credit, and the need for modern digital infrastructure and data on one centralized platform. Together, with ongoing support from our existing investors, these new commitments strengthen our global position to accelerate platform growth, product innovation and digital data expansion.”

Versana was founded in 2021 to build a shared data platform for the operationally complex $9 trillion broadly syndicated loan (BSL) and private credit markets. In these markets, a single loan is funded by multiple lenders that each maintain their own records across disconnected systems. As a result, the syndicated loan market often requires manual reconciliation to sort through inconsistent data and offers limited visibility into loan positions, payments, and terms.

Versana creates a standardized, real-time data layer that serves as a single source of truth for all participants in a loan. The platform ingests data from lead banks and distributes it across lenders, investors, and service providers to reduce reliance on spreadsheets and email-based workflows.

Versana is out to solve fragmented, inconsistent data, a core problem in credit markets. With backing from both major banks and private credit players, the company is positioning itself as a data layer across traditionally siloed parts of the market.

As a new strategic investor, Fitch Ventures will help Versana expand its product-market fit into the pre-trade, credit decision-making process valued by portfolio managers and credit analysts. “We see meaningful opportunity to connect our complementary datasets to provide a more comprehensive and consistent view across loan data, including books and records, terms and conditions, covenants and related commentary,” said Fitch Managing Director Steven Miller.

Also joining as a strategic investor, Apollo will help Versana expand its capabilities by strengthening its connectivity with the buyside and new technologies enabling the loan market ecosystem. “We believe in Versana’s mission to modernize the broadly syndicated loan market,” said Apollo Managing Director Jennifer Lin. “Improving transparency and efficiency in BSL operations is important for the entire market, and we look forward to partnering with Versana as the platform continues to grow.”

• Round has raised $6 million and announced the launch of agentic workflow and autonomous payroll tools to automate treasury, AP, and payroll.
• The company combines AI-driven automation with owned payment infrastructure to fully execute finance teams’ money movement commands.
• By sitting in the flow of funds, Round introduces new competition for banks, treasury management system providers, and fintechs.

Treasury management company Round has closed $6 million in seed funding this week, boosting its total funding to $8.1 million. The London-based fintech is also unveiling two new products: Agentic Workflow Builder and Autonomous Payroll. 

Today’s round was led by Alstin Capital. Existing investors including Passion Capital, along with new investors Backed VC and Love Ventures, as well as angel investors, also contributed. Uniquely, Round’s own clients also invested. Around 10% of the company’s customer base contributed to today’s round.

“We are building for the finance team of the future, one that understands the importance of automation to keep up with the pace of modern companies. AI tools are rapidly being deployed across the industry and finance teams do not need to be left behind,” said Round Cofounder Hayyaan Ahmad.

The company will use today’s funding to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and go-to-market teams, deepen integrations across banks and accounting systems, and scale its existing infrastructure. Round also has plans to launch community-focused events such as hackathons, hands-on workshops, and webinars.

Round’s new Agentic Workflow Builder, which is currently in early access, builds a workflow based on a natural language description. It allows finance teams to run workflows autonomously that previously required an employee. The Agentic Workflow Builder can run 24/7 and notify teams via Slack, WhatsApp, or email if something needs attention.

Similarly, Autonomous Payroll essentially helps payroll run itself, autonomously pulling funds and executing the payment on schedule. It eliminates the need for finance teams to log into multiple systems to make payroll each month.

Treasury, payroll, and accounts payable have historically been fragmented across banks, ERP systems, and manual workflows. By combining agentic AI with owned payment infrastructure, Round is aiming to collapse those layers into a single, autonomous system.

Round was founded in 2023 to reduce the manual work involved in treasury management by automating workflows. The company automates treasury, accounts payable, and payroll to save finance teams the manual, repetitive work involved in moving funds around to optimize yield.

Round differentiates itself from other automated workflow platforms because it owns and manages the infrastructure involved, such as wallets and payment rails. Clients can leverage that infrastructure, along with Round’s machine learning and intelligence to set rules for approval thresholds, payment schedules, and cash minimums, to ensure payroll obligations are met, and that idle cash is invested appropriately. Since launching its first automated workflows less than a year ago, Round has processed over $500 million.

With Round owning the infrastructure, banks, legacy treasury providers, and even fintechs face a new type of competition. Traditional treasury management systems such as Kyriba offer visibility and controls, but often rely on integrations with external banks and require manual execution. Newer fintechs like Ramp, Brex, and Airbase offer spend management and accounts payable tools, but do not offer full autonomous fund movement.

Moving forward, Round’s challenge will be client trust and regulatory oversight. While finance teams may be willing to automate workflows, they may be less willing to fully automate money movement, especially when it comes to payroll.

Photo by Jan van der Wolf