Unbundling the Modern Payments Stack
Shamir Karkal, co-founder and CEO of Sila, on the modern payments stack
Customer migration here is a signal that payments infrastructure stops being a starter tool once real volume arrives. Sila positioned itself as the narrower, more durable layer for ACH, ledgering, KYC, and KYB, while Synapse represented the broader all in one model and Dwolla was seen as an earlier ACH abstraction. The switching matters because the customers willing to move are usually already live, which means more volume and a much longer, harder implementation.
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Synapse sat on the all in one side of the market, bundling accounts, cards, payments, lending, and compliance into one stack. Sila argued that customers eventually outgrow that convenience and start replacing generalist platforms with specialist tools for each job.
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Dwolla fits the older point solution model, making ACH easier to launch, while Sila combined ACH with ledgering and compliance workflows. That gave customers a more complete money movement layer without asking them to buy a full banking platform.
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The economics of migration explain why these wins matter. New fintechs can launch on one provider in weeks, but moving an existing program can take 12 to 18 months because balances, customer accounts, and bank operations have to shift quietly in the background.
Going forward, the market keeps splitting in two. Early stage teams will still choose the fastest bundled product, but scaled programs will keep unbundling toward best of breed components. That trend favors providers that own one critical workflow deeply and can plug cleanly into the rest of the stack.