straddle
Strategy
Where we're going we don't need roads
The digital economy needs a secure, interoperable technology layer to power account-to-account (”A2A”) payments
Businesses and developers should be able to build modern bank payment experiences on a single platform that just works. But there’s never been a “Visa” for bank payments.
Straddle is building a full-stack payment platform that connects the application layer to banking rails and everything in between. Our unified API abstracts away the complexity of fragmented payment ecosystems, enabling businesses to seamlessly accept payments, onboard users, and manage fraud and compliance – all powered by an identity-first approach.
We're not just building pipes - we're reshaping the future of money movement by enabling any company to embed sophisticated payment functionality into their product with just a few lines of code. Welcome to the new era of programmable payments.
Market Landscape
The global digital payments market is massive and growing rapidly, expected to reach $20 trillion by 2026. But behind this growth story lies a fragmented maze of legacy systems, disparate data models, and competing standards that lead to high costs and fraud rates, slow settlement times, and a subpar user experience.
Consider a few data points:
35% of all businesses using ACH payments in 2023 were subject to targeted fraud attack(s) and experienced losses.
Yet the macro trends are clear. Businesses and consumers increasingly demand faster, more secure digital payment methods. Open banking has reached critical mass, with over 87% of US consumers now sharing account data, unlocking new possibilities. And the continued growth of embedded finance, with software platforms increasingly integrating payments, only raises the stakes for a better solution.
Why have payments remained stuck in the past? In large part because identity and account data have remained trapped in silos. Without a way to instantly verify account ownership, balance, and transaction risk, payments remain slow, expensive, and fraud-prone.
So while card networks have continued to dominate despite sky-high fees, due to their superior connectivity and risk tools, change is coming. The Fed's upcoming FedNow rail promises ubiquitous real-time bank transfers. One-click account funding powered by open banking is enabling seamless onboarding. And a new wave of innovators are hard at work rebuilding payments from the ground up.
Straddle aims to lead this transformation by building a new type of payment operating system: an integrated platform that links identity, accounts, and payments to enable secure, lightning-fast money movement at a fraction of today's costs. The opportunity is massive - and the time is now.
Our Product
Straddle provides a complete payments stack that seamlessly connects robust identity verification, open banking APIs, fraud tools, and multi-rail payment operations behind a single, simple API. Our flagship Pay by Bank product has several key components:
Identity First: Onboard and verify individual or business customers in less than a second using Straddle ID, a graph-defined identity engine. Real-time identity verification without requiring a low-conversion “selfie.”
Powered by Open Banking: Connect customer identity to open banking data via Bridge, Straddle's “no-code” widget. Or, bring your own token from names you know like Mastercard (Finicity), Plaid, and MX.
Secure Payments: All payments are protected with built-in balance confirmation and real-time fraud detection through Watchtower, Straddle's transaction monitoring risk engine.
Move Money Faster: Built-in balance and risk scores enable 24-hr direct debits, with payouts via dynamic multi-rail orchestration across ACH, RTP, and FedNow (coming soon).
Compliant by Default: Integrated KYC, watchlist screening, and transaction monitoring ensure robust compliance without the engineering overhead.
Developer-Friendly: A single, secure API stack that turns complex infrastructure into easy-to-implement code.
Pay by Bank is powered by two key technologies:
Embed: Our end-to-end payment facilitation platform allows software companies, marketplaces, and traditional Payfacs to embed identity-powered payments in their products with no additional compliance burden or liabilities.
Core to Straddle's value proposition is our identity-first approach. By anchoring each Paykey to a robustly verified, real-world identity, Straddle is able to streamline account connectivity, mitigate fraud, and support irrevocable "push" payment models with confidence. We've also built a powerful real-time transaction risk model trained on tens of millions of data points to minimize losses.
But Straddle's true power stems from the integration of these capabilities. By unifying identity data with real-time account connectivity and a smart payment routing engine, Straddle is able to deliver an end-to-end payment experience that is orders of magnitude faster, more secure, and lower-cost than piecing together disparate providers. It's the power of the full stack.
Where others see risk, we see opportunity.
Our Strategy
If you can solve identity in payments, the rest is just accounting.
Straddle's core strategic insight is that an integrated payment platform anchored on identity unlocks superior speed, security, and cost efficiency for account-to-account payments. While many companies are attempting to improve one slice of the stack, we believe only a unified approach can fix today's siloed mess.
The Challenge
The payments landscape is fragmented, complex, and rife with trade-offs. Businesses are forced to choose between speed, affordability, and security when moving money, due to the siloed nature of payment systems and the lack of a unified view of customer identity and financial data. This "Payments Trilemma" stifles innovation, limits growth, and creates unnecessary friction in the flow of commerce.
The Guiding Policy
Straddle's guiding policy is to solve the Payments Trilemma by creating a unified, identity-first payment platform that enables fast, affordable, and secure transactions across multiple rails and use cases. We will achieve this by:
How?
By executing on these coherent actions in service of our guiding policy, Straddle will position itself as the leading platform for identity-first, programmable payments, driving a step-change in how businesses and consumers transact in the digital economy.
Importantly, this full-stack approach presents a step-function improvement over the status quo that competitors will be hard-pressed to match as long as they remain trapped in a particular layer of the stack - whether that's processors, fraud providers, banking APIs, or card networks themselves. We aim to shift the basis of competition.
Of course, owning more of the stack is not without its challenges. It requires more upfront investment, a broader range of expertise, and a tolerance for complexity. But in the long run we believe vertical integration is the only way to deliver a truly differentiated payment experience, while capturing more of the economics.
The prize is a $100B+ market opportunity. With card fees under pressure, the continued growth of account-to-account payments buoyed by open-banking standards, and the rise of embedded finance, we believe an identity-powered, bank-centric payment operating system can become the new standard for businesses globally.
Why Now
Several converging market trends make now the ideal time for Straddle's unified payment platform:
Open banking is here. With over 87% of US consumers now using services powered by open banking APIs, secure real-time account connectivity is finally a mainstream reality. This sets the stage for one-click bank payments to rival cards.
Faster payments reaching scale. Visa and Mastercard have dominated digital commerce for decades by offering instant authorization. With the RTP network already live and FedNow recently launched, ubiquitous real-time bank transfers will soon be a reality - but only scalable with robust identity-powered risk management of the kind Straddle provides.
Embedded finance takes off. The next wave of fintech innovation will be driven by non-financial companies embedding payments and banking services within their core products, from software platforms to marketplaces and beyond. Straddle's compliance-first payment facilitation platform is built for this world.
Mounting cost pressures. With inflation squeezing margins across the economy, the "tax" levied by card networks' high fixed costs + variable fees is becoming increasingly unpalatable, especially as ACH volumes continue to grow rapidly. We've reached a breaking point.
Taken together, these trends create both a burning platform for change and a major market opening for a new way forward. But the window to lead the transformation is now. Incumbents are mobilizing their defenses and upstarts are staking their claims. The race is on.
Straddle aims to lead the pack with the most complete solution spanning identity, connectivity, intelligent routing, and multi-rail money movement. We've assembled a world-class team with deep expertise across banking, fraud, and API platforms. And we're moving with the speed and agility of a startup, while partnering with the largest financial institutions.
The next generation of companies will be built on programmable payments. The Straddled operating system will power them. Join us in building the future of money movement.
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