Increase, the banking infrastructure and API provider used by Gusto, Ramp and Stripe, has launched Increase Bank, an FDIC-member banking institution designed to provide technology companies with programmable banking infrastructure.
The new bank combines regulated banking services with Increase’s technology stack, connecting fintech clients directly to payment networks including the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House and Visa. Increase’s technology functions as the system of record for balances and transactions, reconciling against the Federal Reserve in real time. Increase said banking products are offered through Increase Bank and its partner banks, Grasshopper Bank, N.A., First Internet Bank of Indiana, and Core Bank, all FDIC members, while technology services run through the separate, non-bank entity Increase Technologies.
Increase has programmability at core
Increase built its core banking technology in-house rather than layering software on top of a legacy bank processor. In the announcement post, CEO Darragh Buckley said the company built its own API-first core technology from scratch, describing everything as programmable with minimal human intervention even for edge cases. Increase also said its APIs pass through high-fidelity data straight from the underlying payment rails, making as few decisions on clients’ behalf as possible — an approach it believes sets the main difference between routing through a bank’s existing infrastructure and controlling the core banking stack directly.
Increase founder Darragh Buckley said, “This is a bank built by a team of product-obsessed operators for ambitious companies that are just as obsessed with building the best possible products for their customers. It is programmable at scale and designed for reliability, speed, and flexibility.”
Ramp co-CEO Karim Atiyeh added, “Increase provides the banking infrastructure we need to do just that. From the ability to open accounts synchronously, fully featured for every payment rail, from day one to the pace they ship new features, Increase just gets it.”
BaaS Model Pressures
The launch timing follows two years of regulatory pressure on the BaaS model, triggered largely by the 2024 collapse of middleware provider Synapse Financial Technologies. That failure froze thousands of customer accounts and left tens of millions of dollars in deposits unreconciled, prompting lawsuits between partner banks and fintech intermediaries over responsibility for missing customer funds. Litigation activity around Synapse has continued into 2026, with disputes underscoring how intermediary platforms can become focal points for liability allocation between banks and fintechs.
What direct FDIC membership changes
Under the prior pass-through model, a fintech’s customer deposits were typically insured through a partner bank several steps removed from the software layer the customer actually used. However, that exact arrangement was scrutinized in the Synapse case.
Consumers in these arrangements often interact exclusively with the fintech interface, unaware of the underlying bank relationship, which has exposed both parties to claims over misleading FDIC-insurance marketing.
By becoming the FDIC-member institution itself, Increase shortens that chain for clients like Stripe, Ramp and Gusto: deposit insurance now attaches closer to the infrastructure layer rather than passing through a separate, arm’s-length bank partner. Whether this resolves the liability-allocation disputes that followed Synapse or simply relocates them is likely to draw scrutiny as more infrastructure providers weigh the same charter question.
