The four-month program provides participants with operational mentorship from Silicon Valley Bank, First Data, and their respective networks. Silicon Valley Bank also welcomed a new head of the program, Armand Patella, founder of Nowsta and a former Commerce.Innovated. graduate.

Commerce.Innovated. launched in 2014, and has worked with 37 commerce, payments, and fintech-focused startups including Alloy, Candex, Domuso, Earny, FutureFuel, QuadPay, Qwil, and Splitwise. Since graduating from the program, more than half of participating companies have raised funding or been acquired.

The five companies selected to participate in the current class provide a variety of solutions for businesses and consumers:

• BridgeCare: AI-powered employee benefits for childcare and education, based in San Jose, California
• FanAI: Audience monetization platform for esports, sports & entertainment, based in Santa Monica, California
• Flow Commerce: A technology platform that simplifies the management of cross-border e-commerce, based in Hoboken New Jersey
• Mudflap: Next-gen payments platform for the trucking industry, based in Palo Alto, California
• Unit21: Detection and investigations platform for anti-money laundering, based in San Francisco, California

“I’m thrilled to join the Silicon Valley Bank team and be a part of Commerce.Innovated.,” said Armand Patella, Head of Commerce.Innovated. at Silicon Valley Bank. “Commerce.Innovated. was extremely helpful for my startup and our payments strategy. It’s a privilege to be in a position to support the growth of other founders, advise on the challenges they face, and provide them with resources to succeed. The companies in the current class are creating solutions that will make a positive impact for multiple industries including HR, esports, ecommerce, trucking and financial services.”

“First Data welcomes the new class of startups, aspiring entrepreneurs, and growing businesses to Commerce.Innovated.,” said Chris Foskett, Head of Corporate and Business Development, and Co-Head of Global Financial Solutions at First Data. “Startups are synonymous with creativity and innovation, and our Class 9 participants have the opportunity to leverage Commerce.Innovated.’s world-class resources to build innovative solutions that bring simplicity and automation to our industry.”

Commerce.Innovated. welcomes new applicants semi-annually and will accept applications for the next class starting later this year.  

In the last few years, fire.com has focused on the business and corporate market, which has seen its number of customers grow to approx. 3,000. Colm Lyon, CEO & Founder of fire.com said “Since the firm has a significant customer base in the UK, along with our business development offices being in Shoreditch, London, we needed to ensure that we could not just continue to scale, but also continue to be a leading player in the open banking ecosystem in all the regions relevant to us.”

In addition, Lyon added that “Over the last two years we have seen real change in the way businesses wish to pay and get paid. Today it’s all about the integrated experience and allowing businesses to create accounts and issue cards via APIs, to enable businesses to process large volumes of incoming or outgoing payments in an automated and fully integrated fashion. So, our API has become almost more relevant than the payment itself, as it provides real time, instant and fully reconcilable data.” Case studies on the fire.com website, include profiles of Grid Finance - a business finance specialist, Accelerated Payments - an invoice financing business and Buymie - an on-demand grocery delivery platform.

Looking to the future, Lyon doesn’t see Brexit getting in the way, “on the contrary, we are now extremely well positioned to help any business or corporate client that needs to pay and get paid in an integrated way and in a post-Brexit world. And with open banking getting closer and closer we see huge benefits coming down the line and our role is to help businesses execute on these changes.”