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I

Increase

FINANCE
Velocity2.5

Banking-as-a-service platform offering APIs for ACH, wires, checks, cards, and real-time payments

Increase enriches card transactions with Spade merchant data between its quarterly letters.

banking-as-a-servicepaymentscomplianceapifintech-infrastructure
◆Current state
A standalone update joins the quarterly newsletters: card transactions now carry a Spade enrichment record with the merchant's name, legal name, logo, website, phone number, store location and an industry category up to four levels deep. The last three quarters moved past core payment rails into managed compliance, entity onboarding sessions, 3D Secure, push provisioning and IP-restricted API keys. SDK coverage has widened to C#, PHP and Ruby, and the documentation was reworked to be readable by LLMs.
◆Where it's heading
The arc runs from moving money to operating a bank program end to end. Early quarters added rails (FedNow, Push-to-Card, check transfers); recent ones add the compliance, onboarding and dispute machinery a customer would otherwise build or buy separately. Q2 2026 adds blockchain transfers alongside managed compliance, and flags cross-border payments and lending APIs as next.
◆Prediction
Expect the cross-border payments and lending APIs named in the Q2 2026 letter to ship as the next quarter's headline, extending the same pattern of absorbing adjacent financial products into the core API.

◆Recent moves

  1. 1mo ago

    Increase adds real-time merchant data from Spade to card transactions

    Card transactions gain a Spade enrichment record with merchant identity, location and a four-level category. It fits the pattern of absorbing data a customer would otherwise buy separately, this time for the card products built on Increase.

  2. 3mo ago

    Managed compliance and blockchain transfers land in Q2

    ⚡ SPARK

    The clearest directional quarter in the set: managed compliance turns a customer obligation into an Increase product, and blockchain transfers add a settlement rail that sits outside the ACH/FedNow world the rest of the API is built on.

  3. 6mo ago

    Entity onboarding, 3D Secure and IP-restricted keys

    A quarter focused on the edges of a bank program rather than the money movement itself: onboarding sessions, card authentication, push provisioning and event polling. IP-restricted API keys and a C# SDK broaden who can safely integrate.

  4. 10mo ago

    FedNow, Push-to-Card and a Cards Disputes API

    Rail expansion plus the dispute handling that comes with issuing cards. The LLM-readable documentation noted here is an early sign of the agent-facing posture the later quarters build on.

  5. 1y ago

    Event log filtering and check transfer work

    Operational tooling — filtering the API event log, a better events page — against continued check transfer refinement. Consistent with the pattern of hardening existing rails between larger additions.

  6. 1y ago

    File links, check deposit images, Apple Pay history

    Surface-level additions that make the API usable for end-user-facing products: retrievable check images and Apple Pay transaction history are things a customer's own app needs to display.