Outsourced Bank Operations for Startups
Shamir Karkal, co-founder and CEO of Sila, on the modern payments stack
The real product is not just money movement, it is outsourced bank operations for startups that are not ready to build a compliance team. Sila sits between the fintech and Evolve, collects the customer information, runs KYC and KYB checks, handles onboarding workflows, and gives the bank a cleaner, more standardized program to supervise. That makes launch much faster for small customers, and it turns compliance labor into a core part of the software offering.
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This is the classic middleware model in BaaS. Sponsor banks like Evolve hold the regulated accounts, but the platform becomes the operating layer that developers actually touch. That is why many fintech builders know Synapse, Sila, or Stripe, while barely interacting with the bank underneath.
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Sila was explicit about choosing depth over breadth. It focused on KYC, KYB, ACH, ledgers, and crypto payments, then partnered for cards, bill pay, and data aggregation. That let it own the riskiest onboarding and funds flow steps without trying to build every banking feature itself.
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The tradeoff is that the middleware layer also absorbs operational and regulatory pressure. The Synapse collapse and the June 11, 2024 Federal Reserve cease and desist order against Evolve showed how fragile these bank platform relationships can become when ledgers, oversight, or reconciliation break down.
The market is heading toward fewer fintechs talking directly to sponsor banks, and more of the compliance stack being packaged into APIs, operations teams, and prebuilt workflows. The winners will be the providers that make launch feel simple at the start, then keep controls tight enough to survive bank scrutiny as customers scale.