Berlin-based Pliant, which offers a B2B corporate credit card service that integrates with accounting software, raised a $28M Series A led by SBI Investment
Omar Faridi / Crowdfund Insider :
Context & Ripple Effects
Pliant's €18M seed round led by Alstin Capital at the end of 2021 put the Berlin startup in the city's busy B2B-payments lane alongside Billie, which had just raised a €30M Series B followed by a $100M Series C at a $640M valuation. This $28M Series A, led by Japan's SBI Investment rather than a European fund, marks the transition point in that arc — new capital, new geography of backer.
The raise also sits mid-way along Pliant's own funding staircase: it precedes the company's later $40M Series B co-led by Illuminate Financial and Speedinvest, which suggests the Series A bought the scale-up phase its product roadmap needed — physical plus virtual cards tied into accounting automation.
First-order effects
- SBI Investment taking the lead role brings an Asian strategic investor onto Pliant's cap table for the first time, alongside earlier backers from the Alstin-led seed, and funds expansion of the card-plus-accounting-integration product between seed and Series B.
Second-order effects
- Pliant's accounting-software integration raises the bar for adjacent Berlin B2B finance players like Billie, whose invoicing and buy-now-pay-later offering competes for the same corporate finance workflows, while US player Plastiq's card-for-any-payments model shows the broader market both are circling.
Third-order effects
- If successive rounds keep validating the model, corporate spending consolidates around platforms that bundle card issuing with automated reconciliation — shifting procurement decisions from individual card programs to whichever stack owns the accounting integration.
The trend: B2B spend-management fintechs are climbing steadily larger funding rounds by embedding credit cards directly into accounting software, drawing international lead investors into Berlin's payments cluster.