Seaya Nova and Speedinvest lead the oversubscribed round as Pliant opens its commercial payments infrastructure to a new generation of AI-powered payment infrastructure and accelerates expansion across North America

BERLIN & NEW YORK: Pliant, a global fintech specializing in highly modular B2B payment solutions, today announced an $80 million Series C funding round led by Seaya Nova and Speedinvest, with participation from Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners and Molten Ventures. The investment will support Pliant’s continued expansion in the United States and Canada, prepare its entry into further international markets, and accelerate its AI roadmap as businesses connect AI agents directly to their financial infrastructure.

The funding follows three consecutive years in which Pliant has doubled its business and comes shortly after the company surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). Pliant employs more than 300 people across eight offices and processes billions of dollars in annual payment volume for businesses and partners across Europe and North America. Its customers span travel, insurance and AI-native companies, as well as banks, fintechs and software platforms building their own commercial payment offerings.

Pliant’s platform is built for a world in which AI increasingly runs business payments. The platform’s own AI agents help customers automate recurring finance work at scale. Third-party agents, from assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to a company's own AI automations, connect to Pliant via Model Context Protocol (MCP) and embed payment workflows into a wide range of business processes. The new capital will go toward deepening the company’s capabilities across agentic payments and workflows.

“We built Pliant as an API-first, modular B2B payments platform from day one, and we have adopted AI deeply, in our product and in how we run the company,” said Malte Rau, CEO and co-founder of Pliant. “Whether an established business wants AI to automate its payment processes with the right guardrails, or an AI-native company needs a licensed partner that moves as fast as it does, Pliant is built for that. This investment will help us take that foundation further, opening more of our infrastructure directly to AI agents and expanding into new markets as we build the payment platform for the next generation of businesses.”

“Every wave of software has made the application layer cheaper and the infrastructure underneath more valuable, and AI is no exception,” said Vinoth Jayakumar, General Partner at Seaya Nova. “When agents move money, someone still has to be licensed, auditable and liable, and that is the layer Pliant owns. Malte, Fabian and the team have built principal-member card issuing, payment accounts and FX into a single modular platform that businesses, banks and now AI agents can build on. We back infrastructure companies with network effects in regulated markets, and Pliant is a textbook example. We are proud to lead this round and support the team’s expansion across North America and into new markets.”

Seaya Nova is backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF) through the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), alongside other institutional investors.

About Pliant
Pliant is a modular B2B payments platform combining commercial card issuing, payment accounts, FX and spend management for businesses and AI agents.

Businesses across travel, e-commerce, insurance and AI-native technology use Pliant to manage complex payment workflows, while fintechs, software platforms and banks use its infrastructure to build and operate their own commercial payment offerings.

Pliant's API-first platform also enables AI agents and applications to access regulated payment infrastructure with permissions, controls and auditability built in.

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Berlin, Pliant serves businesses and partners across Europe and North America. A principal member of Visa and Mastercard, Pliant issues commercial cards in 13 currencies across 32 countries under its European e-money license and through regulated partners in the UK and US. Learn more at www.getpliant.com.

Fonte: Business Wire