Pliant Raises $80 Million Series C Funding to Open B2B Payments to AI Agents

Pliant, a Berlin-based fintech specializing in modular B2B payment solutions, raised $80 million in a Series C funding round to expand across North America and open its payment infrastructure to AI agents, the company said in a press release on November 4.

The oversubscribed round was led by Seaya Nova and Speedinvest, with participation from Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners and Molten Ventures. According to the release, the capital will support continued expansion in the United States and Canada, prepare its entry into further international markets, and accelerate its AI roadmap as businesses connect AI agents directly to their financial infrastructure.

“We built Pliant as an API-first, modular B2B payments platform from day one, and we have adopted AI deeply, in our product and in how we run the company,” said Malte Rau, CEO and co-founder of Pliant.

The raise lands on firm commercial ground. The funding follows three consecutive years in which Pliant has doubled its business and comes shortly after the company surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Pliant employs more than 300 people across eight offices and processes billions of dollars in annual payment volume for businesses and partners across Europe and North America. A principal member of Visa and Mastercard, Pliant issues commercial cards in 13 currencies across 32 countries under its European e-money license and through regulated partners in the UK and US.

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The AI angle sits at the center of the announcement. Pliant’s platform combines commercial card issuing, payment accounts, FX and spend management for businesses and AI agents. Outside agents, from assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to a company’s own AI automations, connect to Pliant via Model Context Protocol (MCP) and embed payment workflows into a wide range of business processes. The company said the new capital will go toward deepening its capabilities across agentic payments and workflows, with permissions, controls, and auditability built into those connections.

Rau tied the positioning to the kind of customer Pliant wants to serve. “Whether an established business wants AI to automate its payment processes with the right guardrails, or an AI-native company needs a licensed partner that moves as fast as it does, Pliant is built for that,” Rau said.

For the lead investor, the regulated layer is the point. “Pliant has solved some of the most complex challenges in commercial payments, and as AI changes how companies move money, the licensed infrastructure underneath becomes more important, not less,” said Vinoth Jayakumar, General Partner at Seaya Nova.

Founded in 2020, Pliant now turns toward North America and deeper agent integrations as finance teams begin letting AI assistants prepare and route payments within human-set limits.

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