Germany-based B2B payments company Pliant has raised USD 80 million in a Series C funding round led by Seaya Nova and Speedinvest, with participation from Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners, and Molten Ventures. The company will use the funding to continue its expansion in the US and Canada, prepare its entry into further international markets, and develop its AI capabilities as businesses connect AI agents to their financial infrastructure.
Growth across Europe and North America
The round follows three consecutive years in which Pliant has doubled its business, and comes shortly after the company passed USD 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 in Europe and North America. Its customers include travel, insurance, and AI-native companies, as well as banks, fintechs, and software platforms building their own commercial payment offerings.
Pliant has been building its North American business over the past year. In April 2025, it raised USD 40 million in a Series B round to fund its US market entry, and in July 2026 it launched a US commercial credit programme with Thredd, backed by Coastal.
Opening payment infrastructure to AI agents
Pliant's own AI agents help customers automate recurring finance tasks, while third-party agents, including assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT and companies' own AI automations, can connect to Pliant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to embed payment workflows into business processes. Malte Rau, CEO and Co-founder of Pliant, said the company was built as an API-based, modular B2B payments platform and that the investment will help it open more of its infrastructure directly to AI agents.
Vinoth Jayakumar, General Partner at Seaya Nova, said that as AI agents begin to move money, a licensed, auditable, and accountable provider is still required underneath. He added that Pliant has combined principal-member card issuing, payment accounts, and foreign exchange into a single modular platform that businesses, banks, and AI agents can build on, and that the investment will support the team's expansion across North America and into new markets.
