Increase Bank Explained [What It Changes]

TL;DR

• Increase Bank is an FDIC-member bank that Stripe’s first employee now owns, built so software companies can talk directly to Fed, Visa, and real-time payment rails instead of waiting on a partner bank’s ticket queue.

• As of July 29, 2026, Increase folded Twin City Bank of Longview, Washington into that stack and kept the community branch, while the same core already moves more than $500 billion a year for names such as Gusto, Ramp, and Stripe.

• A two-truck HVAC shop, a ten-person agency, or a solo clinic will not open an Increase Bank account tomorrow; they will feel it when payroll, card payouts, and invoice deposits start returning machine-readable status instead of silence.

• The constraint that broke is the last mile: rails such as Fedwire and RTP already work; the hand-off from software instruction to bank acknowledgment did not.

Key Takeaways

• Increase Bank is a regulated bank plus an API-first core, not a new payment network.

• Direct Fed, Clearing House, and Visa access matters because it removes a sponsor-bank hop that used to hide failures.

• Twin City was a single-branch community bank with about $114.6 million in assets; the software layer on top already moves hundreds of billions.

• Partner banks (Grasshopper, First Internet Bank of Indiana, Core Bank) remain in the mix for customers that must stay multi-bank.

• Small operators should watch status webhooks on payroll and payouts, not the charter itself.

What Increase Bank is

Increase Bank is a chartered, FDIC-member bank whose core is written as software, so fintechs and software platforms can open accounts, move money, and issue cards by talking to machines instead of emailing a bank operations desk.

That sentence is the whole product. The rest is plumbing.

If you run a two-truck HVAC shop, you already live this last mile even if you have never heard of a Fed master account. Friday payroll leaves your software, sits in a bank file, and you only learn a tech failed when a tech calls from the job site. A ten-person marketing agency that pays contractors on Visa push-to-card or ACH hits the same wall: the instruction went out, the bank said nothing, and a freelancer pings Slack. A solo clinic reconciling insurance deposits against yesterday’s appointments is doing the same job with a paper trail. Increase Bank exists because those software companies — payroll, spend, billing — were stuck waiting on banks built for a different client.

Increase’s own announcement puts the founding story in one line: “Increase Bank is the bank I needed at Stripe.” Founder Darragh Buckley was Stripe’s first employee, left, and in 2020 started Increase as the technology layer between banks and fintechs. On July 29, 2026 he named the bank.

The Increase homepage now banners “Introducing Increase Bank, Member FDIC” next to rails that already include ACH, wires, FedNow, Real-Time Payments, checks, push-to-card, Swift, and blockchain. That is the entity the SERP did not have a plain-English page for. This is that page.

What shipped on July 29, 2026

The public launch is dated July 29, 2026. A Business Wire release carried on Yahoo Finance said Increase Bank gives fintechs “a regulated banking partner purpose-built for how modern companies operate: programmable, direct, and built to scale,” and that Increase’s infrastructure already lets Gusto, Ramp, and Stripe “move, store, and lend hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Banking Dive reported the corporate path: Buckley acquired Twin City Bancorp, the holding company for Twin City Bank, about a year earlier, then rebranded it as Increase Bank after regulators approved the name and business-plan changes. He declined to share a purchase price. Jon Jones is president and CEO of Increase Bank; Buckley remains founder of Increase.

The Irish Times and Retail Banker International both place the bank in Longview, Washington, between Seattle and Portland, and both record Buckley’s line that it is time to “tie those things more tightly together” — the software company and the regulated bank — rather than keep depending on partner banks for the last regulated hop.

This is not a de novo charter from a blank sheet. It is a converted community bank with a Fed master account, FDIC membership, and an exam history, now running under a new name and a software core.

How the last mile actually works

A software company that wants to pay people, hold balances, or issue cards cannot talk to Fedwire or Visa by itself. A bank sits in the middle. For a decade the standard pattern was banking-as-a-service: a fintech rented access through a sponsor bank, shared revenue, and hoped the bank’s operations team would treat a failed wire as a programmable event instead of an email.

PYMNTS interviewed Buckley on that exact pain. Sending a wire was rarely the hard part. Handling the exception was. A failed wire arrived as an email that needed a human. That is workable at dozens of transactions and painful at thousands. Partner banks, he said, “were built for a different kind of client.”

The mechanism Increase Bank adds is status. As a payroll file moves, the stack confirms receipt, submission to the Federal Reserve, and the Fed’s acceptance. The next signal is not a support ticket from someone who did not get paid. PYMNTS also records continuous test transactions that watch connections to the Federal Reserve, Visa, and other networks so the operator sees a rail problem before a customer does.

Fedwire Funds Service is the same-day, final settlement rail banks already use for mission-critical payments. Visa is the card network. The Clearing House RTP network and the FedNow Service are the 24/7 instant rails. Increase Bank does not replace those tunnels. It makes the station announcements machine-readable.

Buckley’s public-transit analogy in the PYMNTS interview is the right picture: the tunnels stay; riders feel better schedules and clearer explanations when something goes wrong.

Why the constraint broke now

Fintechs have been buying or partnering with small banks for years because charters are slow and expensive. TechCrunch documented the first public step in July 2025: Buckley bought a stake in Twin City Bank large enough to trigger a Federal Reserve disclosure (over 10 percent), and said then that Twin City “is, and will remain, a community-focused bank.” He also said sponsor banking “requires very specific capability and capacity to supervise partners safely and soundly.”

A year later the name on the door changed and the bank is explicitly a regulated partner for fintech clients. Banking Dive quotes Buckley saying the move was a long time coming and not necessarily a reaction to the latest supervisory mood: he started Increase in 2020 to marry a bank and a technology company.

Two other facts made the last mile more expensive to leave broken. First, according to the Yahoo Finance release, the fintech industry generated over $650 billion in revenue in 2025 and was growing about 21 percent year over year. Second, instant rails finally have real volume. According to The Clearing House, the RTP network processed 142 million transactions totaling $576 billion in Q2 2026 alone.

When software companies are that large and rails settle in seconds, an email-shaped exception process is the bottleneck.

Who owns what, and who still partners

The regulatory paper trail is public. According to a Federal Reserve H.2 filing for the week ending April 26, 2025, Darragh Buckley of Bend, Oregon filed to acquire 100% of the voting shares of Twin City Bancorp, Inc. and thereby Twin City Bank, both of Longview, Washington. According to the Board’s delegated-authority actions for the week ending June 14, 2025, that change in bank control was permitted on June 13, 2025.

Banking Dive adds the size of the chassis: according to Banking Dive, Twin City had about $114.6 million in assets as of March 31, citing the bank’s call report. Single branch. Tidy, in Buckley’s words, and relatively close to Bend.

Increase did not dump its sponsor-bank roster. The same Banking Dive piece and the Increase site footer still list Grasshopper Bank, N.A., First Internet Bank of Indiana, and Core Bank as partner banks, each Member FDIC. Buckley told Banking Dive many users “fundamentally need to be multi-bank, either for operational reasons or even their own corporate governance reasons.”

FDIC deposit insurance still does the same job it has done since 1933: it covers deposits at insured banks to at least $250,000 per depositor, per ownership category. Increase Bank is in that system. The software company Increase Technologies, Inc. is a non-bank, as the site itself discloses.

The competitive set is not Chase. It is other platform banks. The Irish Times names Lead Bank and Column, the nationally chartered bank William Hockey built after Plaid, as the space Increase just entered. Column’s own homepage states it moves $4.5T+ in annual transaction volume on a core it also built from scratch. That is the peer, not the community-bank peer.

The rails under the bank

Increase Bank’s pitch is “direct connections to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, and Visa,” language that appears in the Yahoo release, Banking Dive, and CFOtech. Direct means the bank holds the master-account and network memberships; the software core is the system of record and reconciles to the Fed in real time.

Those rails are no longer theoretical. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, FedNow had 1,725 participating banks and credit unions as of the first quarter of 2026 — 19.7 percent of U.S. financial institutions — and was doing 2.73 million transactions for $271.25 billion per quarter, at an average of $99,414. RTP, in the same brief, processed 128 million transactions for $480 billion in Q1 2026 at an average of $3,750.

U.S. Bank separately notes the Fed announced FedNow participation had surpassed 1,700 institutions by April 2026, that both rails now support a $10 million cap (RTP’s latest lift was February 2025), and that RTP now averages more than 1.5 million payments per day in 2026.

The Richmond brief also records the honest U.S. lag: combined RTP and FedNow volume was only 0.12 monthly fast-payment transactions per capita as of Q1 2026, versus 35 in Thailand and 27 in Brazil. Americans already have “instant-feel” options (Zelle, Visa Direct, wallets) that post immediately and settle later. That is why a programmable bank’s value is not “we invented speed.” It is “we tell you, in an API, whether the fast rail actually accepted the file.”

Scale of the software layer versus the bank

According to Increase’s launch post, companies like Gusto, Ramp, and Stripe already rely on Increase core technology to process more than $500B annually. The Increase homepage prints the same $500B+ annualized volume next to 99.9999% historical uptime and 9M+ API calls per day.

According to Forbes (profile last updated February 19, 2026), Increase became profitable in 2025, monthly payment volume tripled over the past year, and deposits grew fourfold, with the company still self-funded.

Buckley’s LinkedIn launch post repeats the $500B annualized figure and the Stripe origin story in his own words.

USTA analysis

USTA analysis. This comparison uses only figures already cited above.

Input A: Increase’s stated annualized volume of $500 billion (Increase announcement, July 29, 2026).

Input B: Twin City’s $114.6 million in assets as of March 31 (Banking Dive).

$500,000,000,000 ÷ $114,600,000 = 4,363.

The software core already moves about 4,363 times the acquired bank’s asset book each year. That ratio is why owning a $114.6 million community bank can still matter: the charter, the master account, and the exam history are the scarce objects, not the balance sheet. A second check against the rails: $500 billion a year is 87 percent of RTP’s $576 billion in Q2 2026 ($500B ÷ $576B = 0.868). Increase is not the size of the U.S. instant-payment system; it is already in the same conversation as one quarter of it.

That arithmetic is why a clinic’s billing vendor, an HVAC payroll app, or an agency’s contractor-payout tool will eventually sit on this kind of bank even if the shop never sees the name Increase Bank on a statement.

What a small operator should actually do

You do not need to change banks because a Bend engineer bought a Longview charter. You need to notice whether the software you already pay — payroll, invoicing, card deposits, contractor payouts — can show you a rail acknowledgment.

If Friday payroll still ends at “we sent the file,” you are on the old last mile. If the same screen can show received, submitted to the Fed, and accepted, you are on the new one, regardless of which logo sits on the charter.

Teams that already route exception queues through US Tech Automations can treat a bank status webhook as one more step in the same path, not a rebuild. The same pattern shows up in how small firms automate assistant work: the win is a status that a person does not have to chase.

A clinic reconciling deposits can attach Fed or RTP acknowledgements as the source of truth inside a US Tech Automations workflow instead of matching a PDF to a bank portal. That is the same discipline as form-to-CRM automation: capture the event once, pass it downstream.

Agencies that already push intake into a CRM can add payout status on the same spine. The state of small-business automation is full of tools that stop at “sent.” The bank layer is what used to make “sent” a lie.

On https://ustechautomations.com/ that spine is an agentic workflow: watch the event, branch on the status, only page a human when the rail nacks.

Honest limits

Increase Bank is not a consumer neobank. It is not a replacement for Fedwire, RTP, FedNow, or Visa. It does not make ACH instant. It does not raise FDIC limits. It does not mean every Increase customer must leave Grasshopper or First Internet Bank.

Buckley told TechCrunch in 2025 that sponsor banking is a specialized supervisory job. Owning a small bank does not magically create infinite capacity to oversee every fintech partner. Column, Lead, and the remaining sponsor banks still exist. CFOtech is right that the launch is a bid to cut hand-offs, not a claim that hand-offs disappear.

Community deposits in Longview still need a branch and a local book. Buckley and Jones have said that book stays. If the fintech volume ever swamps the community book, examiners will care. That tension is not resolved by an API.

And status data only helps if the software company actually surfaces it to the HVAC owner, the agency bookkeeper, or the clinic office manager. Most will not, at first. The first users are Ramp-class platforms. Downstream SMBs get the benefit only when those platforms stop treating the bank as a black box.

Signal vs Speculation

Demonstrated fact (sourced): On July 29, 2026, Increase launched Increase Bank as an FDIC-member institution built on Twin City Bank. The Federal Reserve permitted Buckley’s acquisition of 100 percent of Twin City Bancorp voting shares on June 13, 2025. The core already reports $500B+ annualized volume for Gusto, Ramp, and Stripe. Direct connections to the Fed, The Clearing House, and Visa are the stated architecture. Partner banks remain. RTP and FedNow now clear hundreds of billions a quarter with $10 million caps.

Our read: If those status APIs stay faithful, then over the next 12–36 months the SMB-visible change will not be a new bank logo. It will be payroll and payout products that stop using “pending” as a euphemism. Shops and clinics will still bank at a community or regional name. The vendor they pay for payroll, insurance billing, or contractor payouts will have a shorter path to a nack, and fewer Friday-night tickets. If examiners tighten sponsor-bank rules further, more infrastructure firms will try the Increase path — buy a small charter, keep the branch, point the core at the Fed — because the $114.6 million balance sheet is cheap compared with the rails it unlocks. If the status layer stays trapped in developer dashboards, nothing changes for the two-truck shop.

Frequently asked questions

What is Increase Bank in one sentence?

Increase Bank is an FDIC-member bank, converted from Twin City Bank, whose API-first core lets software companies move and store money on Fed, Clearing House, and Visa rails with real-time status instead of ticket queues.

Does a small business open an account at Increase Bank?

Not as the default path. The customers named at launch are fintechs and software platforms (Gusto, Ramp, Stripe and peers). A shop or clinic feels Increase Bank when those platforms pay staff, contractors, or vendors with clearer rail acknowledgements.

Is this a new payment network?

No. Fedwire, FedNow, ACH, RTP, and Visa already exist. Increase Bank sits on those rails and exposes them as programmable primitives, which is the same last-mile thesis Buckley gave PYMNTS.

What happened to Twin City Bank’s community customers?

Buckley has said the Longview branch and community banking book remain. Retail Banker International and the Irish Times both record that plan. The fintech platform is an added use of the charter, not a stated replacement of local deposits.

How is this different from Column or a sponsor bank?

A sponsor bank rents the charter to many fintechs and keeps the core. Column is a nationally chartered platform bank that also built its own core. Increase Bank is the third pattern: a converted community bank plus a core Increase already ran for other banks. Multi-bank customers can still use Grasshopper, First Internet Bank, and Core Bank.

When did regulators sign off?

The public H.2 record shows a 100 percent voting-share filing in April 2025 and permission on June 13, 2025. The Increase Bank brand launched July 29, 2026, after name and business-plan approval that Banking Dive reports but does not price.

What should a bookkeeper watch in the next year?

Whether payroll, insurance deposits, and contractor payouts gain a timestamped rail status (received, submitted, accepted, returned) inside the tools you already use. If they do, exception handling can move from inbox to workflow, including on US Tech Automations.

Glossary

• Increase Bank: FDIC-member bank launched July 29, 2026 on the Twin City Bank charter, with an API-first core aimed at fintechs and software companies.

• Master account: A bank’s account at a Federal Reserve Bank; the door to Fedwire, FedACH, and FedNow.

• RTP network: The Clearing House’s 24/7 real-time payment rail, $10 million cap, 100% stated uptime.

• FedNow Service: The Federal Reserve’s instant payment service, live since July 2023, settling in central-bank money.

• Sponsor bank: An FDIC-insured bank that lets a non-bank fintech offer accounts or payments under the bank’s charter.

• System of record: The ledger that is authoritative for balances and transactions; Increase says its core holds this and reconciles to the Fed in real time.

• Last mile: The hop from a software instruction to a bank’s acknowledgment that the rail accepted or rejected it.

• FDIC insurance: Federal coverage of deposits at insured banks, at least $250,000 per depositor, per ownership category, per bank.

The rails were never the mystery. The mystery was who would turn a bank into something a payroll file could query. Increase Bank is one answer, dated July 29, 2026. If you already automate the steps around money movement, wire the status into the workflow rather than waiting for a ticket.