Payments Infrastructure for App Builders
Shamir Karkal, co-founder and CEO of Sila, on the modern payments stack
This is a long tail infrastructure market, not a neobank market. Most companies do not want to become financial companies, they want to add one money movement job inside an existing workflow, like collecting rent, paying contractors, moving marketplace payouts, or adding wallet top ups. The hard part is that a simple payment button can drag the app into KYC, AML, bank partnerships, ledgering, and funds flow compliance, which is why developer friendly infrastructure sits in the middle.
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The closest analog is Twilio, not Chase. Just as most developers used Twilio to add text messages instead of building a telecom company, most embedded finance customers use BaaS and payment APIs to add one financial function, not launch a standalone bank product.
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The buyer is often a software company, marketplace, or vertical app with an existing user base. They embed payments because it makes the core product work better, not because finance is the headline product. That is why the customer set is far larger than the neobank set.
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This also explains why point solutions survive next to full suites. Early all in one providers made launch easier, but as customers scale they often want best of breed pieces for ACH, issuing, KYC, and ledgering, because each has edge cases that become operational bottlenecks.
The market keeps moving toward software products that quietly absorb payments, payouts, cards, and stored balances into everyday workflows. The winners will be the infrastructure providers that make those flows feel like a few API calls up front, then carry the compliance and operations load as customers scale.