Why we invested in Pliant

Pliant is powering digital B2B payments with a modern multi-tenant credit card platform

By Ashish Aggarwal

We are excited to join Malte Rau and Fabian Terner in their journey at Pliant to modernize business-to-business (B2B) payments.

The market for B2B payments is large - and only continues to grow. Goldman Sachs estimates that B2B volumes will reach $200 trillion by 2028, five times the size of business-to-consumer (B2C) volumes. While this is a nice large headline figure, the addressable B2B volumes via cards is expected to be $20 trillion according to Visa estimates.

Founded in 2020, Pliant started selling its B2B credit card product directly, and was focused on targeting mid-market and enterprise clients, agnostic of the existing financial processes or software used within the finance function. This broad coverage in Pliant's early days allowed them to gather feedback on the card's features and usage behaviour that were common denominators across industries.

Today, Pliant has scaled to more than 2,000 active clients, with more than 50% of new clients being onboarded via partners. These partners are often already selling software to the CFO office, allowing them to generate high-margin incremental revenues by embedding a credit card product (co-brand or white label) to participate in the flows. Additionally, Pliant will soon launch their first bank partnership, which has the potential to further drive significant growth.

In the background, what allows this flexibility is the modern credit card stack that Pliant has built from scratch. Pliant has built its entire infrastructure in a modular way to support international expansion. The platform also allows clients (especially those in regulated industries and/or with balance sheets) to use their own license and funds, while leveraging Pliant as the credit card ledger and card program manager.

Pliant's revenues more than doubled in the last year, and their velocity is continuing this year. At PayPal Ventures, we're looking forward to working alongside the Pliant team as they scale internationally and continue to deliver a best-in-class credit card stack. Congratulations again to the entire Pliant team!

If you're looking to learn more about how Pliant's credit card platform can support your business: https://www.getpliant.com/en/book-demo/

If you're interested in career opportunities at Pliant: https://www.getpliant.com/en/careers/