Banking Rewards Those With Patience: New Funding, Main Street Bank, and What's Next for Synctera

TLDR

• New funding of $24.5M, bringing total funding to $126.7M
• More banks are getting back into the game with BaaS, and a multi-bank platform is built for it
• Main Street Bank has joined the Synctera network
• Cable, which we acquired in April, tests every compliance control continuously and sits at the center of how we build
• 20 clients have signed since the start of the year
• Synctera Labs programs start launching in February 2027

Banking is hard.

In most software businesses, speed wins. In banking, it's staying power.

"Move fast and break things" is a fine motto for a photo app. It's a poor one when the thing you might break is someone's money. You can't mess with people's money. The past few years showed the whole industry what happens when a platform can't carry the weight of the people relying on it. Customers felt it. Banks felt it. Regulators definitely felt it.

I've been around this industry long enough to see the lesson repeat. Trust is built slowly and spent quickly. Almost every decision we make as a company comes back to that.

It's the thinking behind today's news. Synctera has raised $24.5M in new funding, bringing our total to $126.7M. I'm grateful to the investors who backed us, and to the banks and FinTechs who trust us with their business. Here's what it means, and where we're headed.

Money is a tool

One of the questions I get a lot is "what's your strategy for fundraising?" Early founders I meet are looking for help or a plan, and experienced folks wonder "was it hard? Did you auction it?..." Our strategy has been to raise "on demand," or to use a FinTech term, just in time (JIT) funding. We've done it in steps rather than in one enormous round. I don't think of it as a philosophy. Each time, we raised what the next stretch of work needed, showed what we did with it, and earned the next conversation.

It keeps us honest, and it keeps the money doing a job.

It isn't the only way to build a company, but I suspect we'll see more of it. Big money tends to chase whatever is frothy. Crypto had its turn, then NFTs, and AI has it now. Something else will be next (Defense?). Those cycles are wonderful for the people inside them and hard on everyone else. I can't predict the next one. I'd just rather not need to. A company that raises what the work needs can keep building in any season, and in a business where proof takes time, that matters.

There's one prerequisite to this strategy: make sure your investors are aligned and supportive, so you don't end up trying to "tap your credit line" only to discover it's sold out. I'm super grateful for all of our investors who have been with us through thick (2026, no regulators!) and thin (thanks very little, Synapse).

Why staying power matters

Banks and FinTechs build on a platform for years. A bank puts its name and its reputation behind every program. A FinTech builds its whole product on top. Both always ask us the same quiet question.

Will you still be here?

A stronger balance sheet helps answer it. Thus the raise we're announcing today.

None of this matters if you don't perform the daily job of balancing and managing risk and compliance for ourselves, our FinTechs, our Banks and, most importantly, their consumers. Compliance isn't the enemy of embedded finance. It's what lets it last.

We acquired Cable in April for that reason.

Banks have long checked compliance by sampling. Pull a few transactions, test them, and hope the rest look the same. Cable tests everything, continuously, and shows whether a control works in practice, not just whether it exists. It gives a bank real visibility into its programs instead of asking it to take our word for it. Behind every program is a consumer's paycheck, savings, or rent, and that's who all of this protects. Banking carries real risk, and the systems that manage it are hard to build. Ultimately, that's the moat, and in the near term it's relatively "un-ai-able."

A software company, not a bank

People sometimes ask why we don't just buy a bank or get a charter. I think about my time at Uber and the rise and fall of the taxi medallion. A New York medallion once cost more than a million dollars. Today it's a small fraction of that. The fixed asset lost its value, and the software connecting both sides gained it.

We'd rather build the platform that banks and FinTechs rely on than own a bank ourselves. We're a software company, and we're building it like one.

More banks are getting back into the game

Two years ago, banks asked me whether to be in this business at all. Many stayed out of the game because of the perceived risks and noise created by Synapse.

Now they ask how to do it well. It's no longer "should we," but "help me win."

That's good news for the whole category. Banks answer for what happens in a FinTech program, so I love seeing them come back to the table. There is actually a right way to do this and a faster way. Some companies are chasing charters or buying banks. I understand the appeal, and I could be wrong, but a bank and a software company are different businesses. Under one roof, both get slower, and the bank stops keeping the platform honest. Put every program behind a single charter, and one hard look from a regulator puts them all in question.

So we built Synctera for many banks, which I think is the stronger, smarter alternative. The risk is shared, each bank answers for its own programs, and the consumers behind every program stay protected. If you're choosing a platform, ask whose charter it is, and what happens to everyone else if that bank has a bad day.

Banks are good at being banks. My bet is that the next chapter of banking gets built this way, with banks doing what they do best and software carrying the weight around them.

Our newest bank, and what's next

First, the news. Main Street Bank, out of Massachusetts, has joined the Synctera network. Welcome. It's a big step for a bank to put its name behind a new platform.

I think the CEO of Main Street Bank, Walter J. Dwyer, IV, put it perfectly:

"We wanted a partner that treats compliance as part of the product, not a box to check."

Two more banks are in the final stages, and we'll announce them shortly.

Synctera Labs, which we introduced in October, is a launch platform for FinTechs with a new embedded finance idea. It puts real accounts and real cards in front of real customers, with oversight and compliance built in, for less up front than a custom program. We've already seen fast interest, with 12 paid applications in the first two weeks.

We'll share more very soon and start publishing who's doing what. Programs start going live in February 2027.

New FinTechs and more

We've signed 20 clients in 2026 in categories like financial services, property management, and SMB lenders. These folks range in size from the "smaller" FinTechs up to big publicly traded companies. It's really nice to see such diversity in who we're signing, and I'm proud of the team for that.

We've also doubled our GMV and interchange year over year, and we're quite proud of that too.

Still here

Thank you to our investors, including NAventures. Welcome to Multiplier Capital, our newest investor. Synctera is one of your first FinTech bets, and we'll work hard to earn it.

No victory lap. Just the work, done carefully, for a long time. We'll be here next year and the year after.

Slow and steady, as always.

Tx

P