$80m · Series C · Fintech · Berlin, Germany
Berlin-based Pliant has raised an $80m Series C led by Seaya Nova and Speedinvest, with Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners and Molten Ventures participating. The company will use the capital to expand in the US and Canada, enter more international markets and deepen the payment infrastructure it exposes to AI agents.
Payment permissions become part of the product
Pliant combines commercial card issuing, payment accounts, foreign exchange and spend management behind an API-first platform. Businesses use it for their own payment workflows, while banks, fintechs and software companies use the infrastructure to offer commercial payment products without building every regulated component themselves.
The agentic layer extends that model. Pliant says its own agents automate recurring finance work, while third-party systems can connect through Model Context Protocol and initiate payment workflows within defined permissions. That creates a harder product requirement than simply letting software call an API: every transaction needs identity, limits, controls and an audit trail, because the infrastructure provider remains accountable when software moves money.
This is where Pliant’s existing payment licences and network relationships matter commercially. The company is a principal member of Visa and Mastercard and says it issues commercial cards in 13 currencies across 32 countries through its European e-money licence and regulated partners in the UK and US. Those capabilities give customers a regulated execution layer, but expansion still requires local partners, compliance work and reliable controls around each new market and use case.
North American growth meets an infrastructure bet
Pliant reports more than $100m in annual recurring revenue after three consecutive years of doubling its business. It employs more than 300 people across eight offices and processes billions of dollars in annual payment volume across Europe and North America. Those company-reported figures show meaningful scale; the Series C now has to convert that base into durable distribution among banks, software platforms and companies with complex payment flows.
North America is both a large market and a test of the platform strategy. Pliant launched in the US through sponsor-bank partner Coastal and is also expanding in Canada. Winning embedded-payment customers can produce high transaction volume, but it raises the cost of onboarding, monitoring and supporting partners whose end users sit behind another company’s interface.
The AI roadmap adds a second execution test. Agent access may make payment infrastructure more useful, yet customers will judge it on controlled outcomes rather than on the protocol connection itself. Pliant’s advantage will depend on whether it can turn its licences, card-network access and modular APIs into a dependable permissions layer that lets agents act without weakening oversight.
Related reading
Sources checked:
Pliant Series C announcement · Business Wire release · Axios reporting · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
