How CapitalOS is building the financial layer for vertical software

CapitalOS enables software platforms to embed cards, bill pay, and wallets for their users and AI agents, while handling the complex infrastructure behind them, including underwriting, risk, compliance, and capital.

By Ryan Weber

For decades, businesses across the physical economy - from plumbers and electricians to property managers and hotel operators - have used personal cards and reimbursements because there was no easy way to delegate financial decisions without giving away too much spending power and taking on risk.

For decades, business owners working as plumbers, electricians and other field-service technicians paid for expenses they incurred on the job with personal cards. Employees also face friction when paying for work-related expenses, often paying out of pocket and seeking reimbursement. Both are messy, inefficient workflows that are still all too common. The spending became a nightmare to track, analyze and reconcile. Books close late, and the business loses precious time and money.

A survey of construction-company employees found that 43% of respondents said workers used personal cash or cards for job expenses and were later reimbursed. A separate survey of employees with company credit cards found that one in five often or always used their own money for work purchases, while another third did so sometimes.

These workarounds reflect a wider gap between the financial operations many businesses could run and those they have the time and expertise to manage. Small decisions about when to pay a bill, how to fund a purchase or how quickly to recover an expense can add up to meaningful differences in cash flow and margins.

CapitalOS is changing that by allowing software to do the work of a finance team, not just serve it. It's letting the platforms businesses already use offer company cards, spending controls and expense tracking directly within that software. The idea builds on a broader shift: Vertical software companies that have traditionally helped businesses manage day-to-day operations are now able to carry out financial operations within those same platforms.

"The platforms these businesses already run on are the natural place to close that gap - they own the customer relationship and the business workflows that run on them every day," said Nir Dremer, founder and CEO of the four-year-old company. "Providing financial operations means taking on everything underneath: integrating with the banking system, standing up risk, compliance and underwriting … that work sits outside most platforms' core competency, which is why most never take it on."

CapitalOS is scaling remarkably quickly: it now powers roughly 10 times the transaction volume it did 18 months ago. Its infrastructure is being used to serve tens of thousands of businesses.

For businesses, the payoff is money as much as time. Spend controls make delegation safe, every charge arrives already attributed to the work it belongs to, and reconciliation that used to take days now takes minutes. The financial decisions underneath, when to pay, how to fund it, how quickly to recover a cost, add up. CapitalOS data shows businesses savings of 3%-5% on the spend that runs through it, which on thin margins this is very impactful. CapitalOS puts what once took a finance team into the hands of businesses that never had one, through the software they already run on.

For businesses, the payoff is as much about money as time. Spend controls make delegation safe, every charge arrives already attributed to the work it belongs to, and reconciliation that used to take days now takes minutes. The financial decisions underneath - when to pay, how to fund it and how quickly to recover a cost - add up. CapitalOS data shows businesses save 3%-5% on the spending that runs through it, which is very impactful on thin margins. The company puts what once took a finance team into the hands of businesses that never had one, through the software they already run on.

An overlooked market

Dremer saw the opportunity during roles as a GM/VP at two prominent fintech firms: payments giant Stripe and finance-automation platform Tipalti. Dremer saw that spend management is transforming mid-market and enterprise, but nobody is addressing small businesses, which need it even more.

"The 'aha moment' came upon realizing that there's a massive market that is untapped," Dremer said. "Acquiring very small businesses one at a time is expensive, and products designed for the CFO office do not suit businesses that are less sophisticated financially. Furthermore, these businesses expect the software to play the role of the CFO instead of providing sophisticated tools for a CFO."

Small businesses are hard to reach one at a time. Vertical software platforms are the way in, and not only for distribution. They already run the workflows where financial decisions get made: which job a purchase belongs to, which invoice is unpaid, which vendor pays a discount for paying early.

CapitalOS puts financial operations inside the software these businesses already use, with compliance, risk, and money movement handled underneath. One platform integration reaches thousands of businesses instead of acquiring them one at a time.

While larger businesses have finance teams that can configure existing software to support their needs, smaller firms often lack that expertise and capacity.

From cards to money orchestration

CapitalOS started with the hardest piece: cards and spend management. It then launched bill pay this year. Wallets are the next layer, with receivables coming soon. Those four building blocks cover most of a business's financial lifecycle. That is what CapitalOS defines as money orchestration: not a single financial product, but running the decisions and money movement across all of them.

Deciding when to pay a bill, what to put on a card and where cash should sit: that is the job of a finance team, and few small businesses are staffed to do it well.

Doing that job, Drember argues, takes three things. "Context is understanding how the business actually runs. Judgment is reasoning over that context to reach the right financial decision. Execution is acting in the financial system," he said.

CapitalOS applied that model first to spend management. Its software partners control the customer experience and tailor it to their users' workflows, while CapitalOS handles underwriting, compliance, risk and capital management.

Customers soon wanted to manage more than card expenses. CapitalOS added bill pay so businesses could manage all expenses in one place, and wallets to hold funds until they are needed for payments or disbursement.

CapitalOS calls this approach money orchestration: an "abstraction layer" that connects four main building blocks: bills, cards, wallets and receivables. CapitalOS handles the financial decisions and movement of money beneath those building blocks, while allowing software providers to assemble the right products for their users.

This removes the need for software providers to master the financial system themselves. As a result, they can launch financial products in weeks instead of spending years building the underlying infrastructure.

Guesty: simplifying property expense management

Guesty's property-management customers used physical cards or paid out of pocket for cleaning supplies, emergency repairs and other expenses. Fronting those expenses tied up working capital, while manual reconciliation created a heavy administrative burden.

Guesty used CapitalOS to launch the Guesty Card and route each purchase into its accounting system as it occurred. Transactions, receipts and memos can be matched to the correct property, reducing the month-end scramble. Guesty reports an 85% retention rate within its card ecosystem and said the integration saves property managers hundreds of hours each month.

"CapitalOS gave us the robust, ready-to-deploy infrastructure we needed to deliver a card experience 10x better than a traditional banking platform, embedding it directly into our users' daily operations," said Jonathan Ferber, Guesty's head of business programs operations.

Beam: protecting contractor margins

Beam, a construction-management platform for contractors, saw a similar hurdle among its users. Crews often used personal cards to buy materials and supplies. Meanwhile, office teams manually entered receipts into accounting software or chased them down at the end of the month. If an expense was assigned to the wrong project or missed entirely, owners wouldn't have an accurate view of job costs and could lose reimbursable expenses.

Beam integrated CapitalOS-powered cards into its workflow in about a week. Each purchase is now tagged to the correct construction project in real time and contractors get a live view of costs. Beam's customers save five to eight hours a week on expense tracking and avoid or recover about 5% of project costs per job, according to the company.

"Our contractors are saving 5-8 hours every week on expense tracking alone," Beam founder and CEO Adam Eagle said. "That's time they can spend on the job site instead of chasing down receipts."

Workiz: controlling field-service spending

Workiz is a field-service management platform used by HVAC, plumbing and electrical contractors. Although its software has helped more than 110,000 service professionals schedule jobs, invoice customers and accept payments, it didn't give them the same control over money going out. Technicians and office staff used personal cards, checks and supply-house accounts to cover fuel, parts and subcontractor costs.

Workiz embedded CapitalOS-powered cards, job-level controls and credit into its platform in one week. A quarter of new users adopt spend management at signup and customers reported an average 5% reduction in project costs, the company said.

Investor backing and competitive positioning

Great North Ventures invested in CapitalOS because it fits our embedded finance thesis: financial products are being built directly into the software platforms businesses already use.

CapitalOS gives vertical software platforms a way to add financial services and banking without having to build the underlying infrastructure.

What impressed us most about the company was the team's combination of fintech depth, product discipline and ambition. Embedded finance is operationally complex, but Nir and the team have demonstrated an ability to make it accessible to customers while staying focused on the practical needs of vertical software platform users. We were drawn to the team's speed of execution and thoughtful approach to building the infrastructure, partnerships and compliance capabilities required to create a durable company in this category.

CapitalOS is backed by several investors focused on fintech and financial infrastructure, including Group 11, an early investor in Tipalti and Navan, the corporate travel and expense platform that went public in 2025. Upper90 invests through both equity and credit - a model well suited to a company that supports financial products and the capital behind them. CapitalOS's investors also include fintech executives who have held leadership roles at major companies, including Stripe and Affirm.

Itai Tsiddon, a prominent early-stage fintech investor and a general partner at venture capital firm LGVP, recently joined its board. Tsiddon has backed GCash parent Mynt, which filed for an IPO that could raise up to $1.5 billion; fraud-prevention company Forter, which was last valued at $3 billion; and Frame.io, the video-collaboration company Adobe acquired for $1.275 billion.

Scaling the model

Business software is changing from a system of record that tracks what happens to a system of action that carries it out. Financial operations are a natural area for this shift to occur, especially as AI expands the range of decisions software can make without human intervention.

Traditionally, offering financial operations has required building a full suite of financial-services infrastructure spanning risk, compliance, underwriting and money movement. CapitalOS is betting that platforms will prefer one flexible partner that can seamlessly integrate those capabilities.

The result is a win for both businesses and the software providers that serve them. Businesses gain more sophisticated financial capabilities from software that's already part of their workflows. The software providers, in turn, become more valuable to their customers and earn revenue from the financial services they offer.

CapitalOS's next phase involves scaling the model by partnering with larger platforms, including its first public-company customer, while building sales and go-to-market capabilities. It also plans to grow its engineering team.

"What used to require a finance team at a large company can now be built into software a small business already uses," Dremer said. "CapitalOS handles the financial infrastructure underneath, while each platform builds a user experience that makes sense for its industry."

Dremer will be in Minneapolis on Sept. 2 for an invitation-only event hosted by Great North Ventures. Contact the Great North Ventures team for more information.