For most digital businesses, moving money is still a problem of stitching together legacy banking rails, manual reconciliation, and slow onboarding. Myles Stephenson, the CEO and co-founder of Modulr, has spent the last decade building a developer-first API to replace that patchwork. His company’s bet is that the future of B2B payments isn’t a new bank, but a programmable layer that sits between platforms and the existing financial system.
Modulr provides what it calls a Payments as a Service platform. Through a set of APIs, businesses can embed and automate payment accounts, card issuing, and fund disbursement directly into their own products. The core value proposition is operational speed and automation for companies processing high volumes of complex transactions, from payroll providers to online marketplaces [Modulr, retrieved 2026]. The company reports it now assists with more than £100 billion in transactions annually for clients including Revolut, Sage, and Liberis [ukprivatecapital.co.uk, retrieved 2026].
The API Wedge Into Embedded Finance
Modulr’s product is a classic wedge. Instead of trying to replace a bank’s core ledger, it uses its status as a UK- and EU-regulated Electronic Money Institution to offer a layer of abstraction. Developers can programmatically create accounts, initiate Faster Payments or SEPA transfers, and issue virtual or physical cards, all while Modulr handles the regulatory compliance and bank connectivity underneath [Modulr, retrieved 2026].
This positions the company squarely in the embedded finance race, where software platforms seek to own more of their users’ financial experience. For a company like Sage, integrating Modulr’s APIs means its accounting software can not only track invoices but also collect and pay them instantly. The wedge is the developer experience: a documented API that promises to reduce months of banking integration work to weeks.
A Founding Team Built on Prior Exits
The founding team brings a specific kind of credibility to this bet. CEO Myles Stephenson and COO Martin Threakall previously co-founded CorporatePay, a corporate prepaid card business that was acquired by WEX Inc. in 2012 [Finextra, Mar 2012]. Their third co-founder, CTO Ritesh Tendulkar, came from senior technology roles in the payments sector [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024]. This background gives them a clear read on both the enterprise sales motion and the technical complexity of building compliant payment infrastructure.
Stephenson’s role as Deputy Chair of The Payments Association also signals a deep integration into the regulatory and industry fabric of UK finance, a non-trivial advantage when your product is permissioned money movement [Forbes, Apr 2019]. The senior team has been bolstered by hires like CFO John Irwin, formerly of Worldpay, indicating a focus on scaling the financial operations of the business itself [Modulr team, retrieved 2026].
Funding and the Path to Scale
Modulr has raised significant capital to fund its infrastructure build-out and customer acquisition. A $108 million Series C round in 2022 was led by General Atlantic, with participation from existing investors like Blenheim Chalcot and Highland Europe [Crunchbase, 2022]. This followed an $11.9 million extension from PayPal Ventures in late 2020, a strategic investor that underscores the company’s focus on the payments ecosystem [Business Insider, Nov 2020]. In total, the company has disclosed raising roughly $200 million.
2020 Extension | 11.9 | M USD
2022 Series C | 108 | M USD
Total Disclosed | ~200 | M USD
The capital has fueled growth, including the acquisition of accounts payable provider Nook to deepen its capabilities in business spending automation [embeddedfinancereview.com, retrieved 2026]. The company now has offices in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Amsterdam, serving a UK and EU client base.
The Competitive Gridlock
Modulr does not operate in a green field. It faces competition from several angles, each with different strengths. The competitive set is a mix of specialist fintechs, banking-as-a-service players, and large financial infrastructure giants.
| Competitor | Primary Angle | Modulr’s Counter |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Dominant developer mindshare for online payments. | Deeper specialization in B2B & embedded accounts, UK/EU regulatory licensing. |
| Plaid | Leader in bank account connectivity (data). | Focus on moving money (payments) and creating accounts, not just reading data. |
| Marqeta | Global card issuing platform. | Tighter integration of accounts, payments, and cards in a single API for the European market. |
| Solaris, Treezor | European banking-as-a-service platforms. | Position as a pure-play payments automation layer, potentially more agnostic. |
| Traditional Banks | Incumbent trust and balance sheets. | Superior developer experience, speed, and automation for digital-native platforms. |
Modulr’s answer to this gridlock is focus. It is not trying to be a global card issuer like Marqeta or a universal data layer like Plaid. Its positioning is as the automation engine for complex B2B payment flows within digital platforms, with a regulatory footprint tailored to Europe.
Technical Breakdown and Scale Risks
From an infrastructure perspective, Modulr’s platform is a distributed system managing three core resources: ledger entries (customer balances), payment instructions (to various rail networks), and compliance states (KYC/AML checks). The technical challenge is guaranteeing idempotency and consistency across these domains while maintaining sub-second API latency for critical paths like balance checks.
The real test at scale won’t be pure transaction volume, but fault tolerance during network outages. If the UK’s Faster Payments system experiences a delay, how does the API gracefully degrade without breaking a client’s automated payroll run? The system’s design needs to handle partial failures in external banking rails without creating reconciliation nightmares for customers. A second, more subtle risk is schema evolution. As the company adds new payment methods, card types, and compliance rules, the API surface must expand without breaking backward compatibility for thousands of integrated client applications. A poorly managed versioning strategy could stall adoption as the platform grows more complex.
The Next Twelve Months
The roadmap ahead likely involves geographic and product expansion. With a strong base in the UK and EU, logical next steps could include securing licenses or partnerships to serve customers in other regions. The product itself may expand further into working capital and lending, using the rich transaction data flowing across its platform to underwrite credit. The company’s trajectory suggests another funding round could materialize in the next 12-18 months to fuel this expansion, especially if it pursues deeper inroads into large enterprise segments.
For now, Modulr’s position is defined by its traction. Processing over £100 billion annually is a signal that its API-first approach is resonating with a market tired of financial plumbing. The question is whether it can maintain that focus and technical edge as the embedded finance landscape gets more crowded and the expectations of its largest customers grow even more demanding.
Sources
- [Modulr, retrieved 2026] Company website and product descriptions | https://www.modulrfinance.com
- [ukprivatecapital.co.uk, retrieved 2026] Article on Modulr's transaction volume | https://ukprivatecapital.co.uk
- [Finextra, Mar 2012] WEX acquires CorporatePay | https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/43768/wex-acquires-uk-prepaid-card-provider-corporatepay
- [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] Founder profiles | https://www.crunchbase.com
- [Forbes, Apr 2019] B2B Payments Are Changing | https://www.forbes.com/sites/ginaclarke/2019/04/25/b2b-payments-are-changing-heres-why/
- [Modulr team, retrieved 2026] Company team page | https://www.modulrfinance.com/the-team
- [Crunchbase, 2022] Modulr Series C funding | https://www.crunchbase.com
- [Business Insider, Nov 2020] Modulr raises funding extension from PayPal Ventures | https://www.businessinsider.com/modulr-buzzy-london-fintech-raises-fresh-funding-from-paypal-ventures-2020-11
- [embeddedfinancereview.com, retrieved 2026] Modulr acquires Nook | https://embeddedfinancereview.com