Straddle 101 - Internal

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TL;DR

straddle in 60 seconds

Straddle is the all-in-one platform for building better bank payments - with open banking, identity verification, and money movement combined into the first “compliant by default” API for account-to-account payments.

$6T in internet ACH payments need to be faster. $100B in “instant” payments need to be safer.

The ACH network was built in the 70s and still acts like it

New “instant payment” rails have seen huge early demand but have limited reach due to slow adoption by banks and major fraud and compliance concerns

Nevertheless there has been an explosion in bank payment volume over the last ~5 years

Widespread open-banking adoption (87% of US consumers) brings the first way to use “cash” online since the debit card

There are still a ton of headwinds facing A2A like speed, fraud, fragmentation, and compliance

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These are real!

The future of payments looks different from today

Payments need to be fast and smart, but also affordable

Users and developers need secure, reliable API channels like open banking to connect to their accounts

Routing to appropriate payment rail or financial institution needs to be abstracted from end-users and developers

Next-gen platforms will be inherently compliant and only sophisticated companies will need to build in-house models

Money moving faster means fraud happens faster; stop looking as fraud detection and identity resolution as separate to payments

Value-added services like fraud, connectivity, and risk tools will be built-in by default

This requires a focus on both infrastructure and the operating and user experience layers that sit on top of these rails. Simplicity for the end user is vital, and the best infrastructure will be invisible; payments will just work.

-Visa, The Future of Money Movement

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thesis + strategy

The world has evolved, but account-based payments still suck. Businesses and developers are left with the sluggish pace of traditional methods like ACH, established in the 70s, and the extreme fraud risks associated with modern real-time payment rails. Oh, and the fact that they are entirely separate payment systems supported by banks seemingly at random.

These issues are not just minor inconveniences; they’re a barrier to growth. This is bad.

Today’s businesses operate in real-time and demand payment systems that match this pace. The need for an improved payment infrastructure is clear – one that can handle the speed of the digital economy without compromising security or efficiency. Developers need solutions that can seamlessly integrate into their fast-paced environment. A platform that...just works.

That’s why Straddle exists. We are building the payments infrastructure to power the next generation of companies, all built on modern banking rails.

By linking identity to payments, we ensure both speed and security by default.

Straddle Pay by Bank is a unified API flow that enables developers to build faster, easier, and more secure experiences wherever they get paid.

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.

"Almost no companies should be building in-house bank payment flows now that Straddle exists." - Walt Cox, Valley National Bank

Pay by Bank is powered by two key technologies:

Bridge: A comprehensive suite of account connectivity endpoints that facilitates secure connections between users and their financial accounts. Bridge offers:

A drop-in open banking widget that connects to 90% of US bank accounts with a simple code snippet.

Support for existing third-party tokens from providers like Plaid, MX, Flinks, and Finicity (Mastercard).

API-based bank account verification for "out of network" banks, eliminating the need for onerous micro-deposits.

Paykeys: An evolution of traditional payment tokenization, Paykeys create a secure link between a user's verified identity and their chosen payment method. Paykeys offer:

The first identity-linked payment method since the debit card

Built-in compliance and fraud detection, by connecting verified customer identities to open banking data via LSTM machine learning models

Reusability for subscriptions, recurring invoice payments, and — one day — portability.

With Straddle, applications and developers can build on tomorrow’s payment stack, today.

Straddle is modernizing bank account payments by creating a unified platform that supports secure, instant, and interoperable account-to-account (A2A) transactions. Despite the legacy payment rails’ inefficiencies, such as slow ACH transfers and vulnerability to fraud, there's a growing demand for better bank payment solutions, evidenced by the acceleration of ACH payment activities and growing adoption of instant payment rails like RTP and FedNow. Open banking has provided the first significant advancement in accessing cash accounts since debit cards, but challenges persist, including fragmented integrations, long settlement times, and regulatory hurdles.

Straddle is building infrastructure that prioritizes speed, connectivity, compliance, and security, aiming to outperform single connectivity providers with its comprehensive bank payment focus, developer-friendly API, and strategic partnerships for embedded distribution. The platform combines identity verification, open banking, fraud detection, and multi-rail payments into a seamless experience, offering a payments that are faster than ACH, cheaper than debit cards, and “compliant by default.” All in a single API.

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