Traditional business credit card options lack the flexibility needed for companies to effectively issue, manage, and control cards across employees and departments. Companies struggle to integrate card transactions and expense data with their existing financial and accounting systems, resulting in fragmented information and inefficiencies. Without real-time visibility, businesses face risks of overspending, non-compliance, and fraud.
Pliant, a European fintech specialising in B2B payment solutions, addresses these business credit card challenges through comprehensive card management, receipt matching, and seamless accounting integration. Their platform lets businesses instantly issue physical and virtual credit cards, implement detailed spend controls, automate receipt collection, and integrate with existing financial systems.
Today, Pliant announced a $40 million Series B equity round, led by Illuminate Financial and Speedinvest, with participation from existing investors PayPal Ventures and Motive Ventures. This brings Pliant’s total funding to over $100 million. While the company hasn’t disclosed its current valuation, the investment scale and calibre of backers demonstrate strong market confidence.
Pliant is utilising this new capital to enhance its talent and infrastructure in preparation for global expansion. The team, currently comprising 170 people from 35 nationalities, is expected to expand beyond 200 soon. The company is expanding its partner network, with collaborations like Commerzbank enabling it to reach a broader customer base and support a wider range of payment use cases. As Pliant expands to the U.S., it’s building essential teams, partnerships, and infrastructure from the start.
Breaking free from traditional corporate card limitations
Pliant was founded in 2020 in Berlin, Germany, by Malte Rau and Fabian Terner, both of whom bring extensive experience in fintech and banking. The founders’ backgrounds include building financial products and solving business finance challenges, with Malte Rau’s previous work at Fincompare, Global Growth Capital, Lendico, Auxmoney, Zeb, and KPMG.
Pliant emerged from the founders’ recognition of persistent challenges in traditional corporate credit cards and payment processes. Companies struggled with rigid card management, error-prone expense tracking, poor integration with financial systems, and limited real-time spending control.
They set out to create a modern, scalable, and integrated credit card solution to help businesses grow efficiently. Pliant’s platform enables digital card issuance — both physical and virtual — along with digital expense management and seamless financial data integration, reducing administrative work while increasing transparency.
The company has gained significant traction in travel, cards-as-a-service, and banking sectors, and is now expanding its payment expertise across industries. Their recent acquisition of Austrian Insurtech hi.health allows Pliant to extend its payment solutions to the insurance sector while gaining valuable industry expertise. This acquisition supports their strategy of driving innovation and creating new growth opportunities.
Pliant’s success is evident in its consecutive years of triple-digit revenue growth. Now serving 3,500 businesses across Europe, Pliant aims to simplify business payments through a modern platform that adapts to the needs of fast-growing, global companies.
Behind Pliant: Where advanced features meet business needs
Pliant distinguishes itself in the B2B payments and corporate credit card market through advanced technology, flexibility, and comprehensive integration capabilities. Its user-friendly app and robust APIs enable businesses to manage physical and virtual credit cards at scale. The platform’s white-label solution enables SaaS companies and partners to integrate card issuance directly into their products, eliminating the need for a banking license.
Pliant seamlessly integrates with accounting, invoice management, travel expense, and other financial systems. This eliminates the need for custom card management development or workflow overhauls. The platform automates bookkeeping and reconciliation, providing detailed transaction data for faster monthly closings with fewer errors.
Pliant’s platform delivers real-time transaction monitoring, detailed spend controls, and automated approval workflows. Finance teams can set multi-level rules and limits to prevent overspending and fraud while ensuring compliance. The platform requires receipts for all transactions and automates their collection and reconciliation, streamlining expense reporting and reducing administrative work.
The platform handles all card management digitally, from onboarding to reporting, maximising efficiency. Pliant offers compelling rewards, including up to 1% unlimited cash back, up to 4% on foreign transactions, and additional savings through partner programs. They demonstrate their environmental commitment through features such as automatic CO₂ offsetting for travel expenses.
Pliant offers high credit limits and flexible repayment options — features often lacking in traditional services — supporting both growing startups and established enterprises. With support for 11 currencies and reduced foreign exchange fees, Pliant effectively serves the international business community.
What about competition?
Pliant stands out through its API-first approach, white-label CaaS model, deep integrations, multi-currency support, real-time controls, and sustainability features. Its comprehensive offering, serving both direct business clients and partners through white-label solutions, plus high credit limits, multi-currency support, and value-added benefits, distinguishes it from both traditional and digital-first competitors. Pliant competes with Pleo, Moss, Spendesk, Payhawk, Friday Finance, Lipefi, Wallester, Ramp, SAP Concur, Stampli, BILL Spend & Expense (Divvy), Circula, Coupa, Rippling, Billhop, and Tallie.
“B2B payments remain one of the most underserved and inefficient areas in global finance-still hindered by manual processes, opaque infrastructure, and slow settlement cycles. Pliant’s platform brings a much-needed layer of automation, flexibility, and intelligence to corporate payments, unlocking real value for modern businesses,” said Konstantin Koenig, Principal at Illuminate Financial. “We’re backing a proven leadership team with deep domain expertise and clear product-market fit, and we’re excited to support them as they scale across new markets and categories.”
“Pliant is not just building a 10x better credit card product – they’re building the future infrastructure of corporate payments. We’ve been following Malte, Fabian, and their team for some time and I can’t think of another team that has consistently outperformed their ambitious plans year after year. We’re now proud to co-lead this Series B and partner with such an exceptional group on their journey to become a defining European fintech success story.” — Tom Filip Lesche, Partner at Speedinvest.
