Portland fintech startup Sila raised $13 million from investors that will be used to add talent to the company as well as further build product features.
The round was led by Revolution Ventures and included existing backers Madrona Venture Group, Oregon Venture Fund and Mucker Capital. A number of angel investors also participated such as Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder and chairman of London-based fintech Wise.
Sila is a fintech infrastructure company started by Simple co-founder Shamir Karkal and several others. The company is building an application programming interface layer that can be used by other companies to digitize payments.
Sila’s APIs help developers verify identities, link payments, deposit and credit accounts and transfer money. It’s all done in regulatory-compliant ways. The company bridges the needs of new fintech companies and the legacy infrastructure used by financial institutions.
The entire system is built on top of a Sila-issued token based on the Ethereum blockchain and tied to the U.S. dollar. Developers can use Sila to build payment and fintech products and convert dollars to tokens, then move those tokens without delays from older banking infrastructure technology.
“Sila’s mission has always been to make money programmable,” said Karkal, who is the company’s CEO, in a written statement. “Access to the U.S. banking system, especially for innovators and entrepreneurs, is extremely complex and prohibitive. The Sila Money API platform provides easy, scalable, and compliant money storage and money transfer.”
Sila, founded in 2018, has 41 employees and it is hiring. The startup is looking for engineers, sales, product and customer experience talent. The company has doubled its headcount this year.
Customers include Charlie, a fintech startup that helps people pay down credit cards; FunnelDash, a credit card for digital ad spending; and Fabrica, a fintech for online real estate transactions. Each of these customers are in markets that Sila has found particularly promising: real estate, insurance, digital assets and regulated investment products.
“Led by a seasoned leadership team including one of the original fintech pioneers, Sila is the go-to platform for integrating regulatory-compliant payment capabilities into products. By tying together the disparate, archaic services currently required to transfer funds and ensuring compliance within a complex regulatory landscape, the Sila platform makes it simple and seamless to move money,” said Clara Sieg, Partner at Revolution Ventures .
As part of this deal, Sieg is joining the Sila board. To date, Sila has raised more than $20 million.
