Banking-as-a-Service
5 technical briefings from 5 companies building banking-as-a-service infrastructure.
Shamir Kharkel
Shamir Karkal, co-founder of Sila and previously Simple and BBVA\'s API platforms, demos the Sila money API — a developer-first platform built around three primitives (users, wallets, transactions) that lets any builder onboard users, run KYC, link bank accounts, and move ACH. The demo app at demo.silamoney.com onboards both individuals and businesses via unique alphanumeric handles; KYC runs asynchronously through Socure/LexisNexis (3–15 seconds typical) with document-upload fallback for IDs or formation docs. Every user gets one wallet by default but can own many (one-to-many), enabling segregated-account patterns. Sila supports three ways to link bank accounts: raw routing+account entry, your own Plaid integration via processor tokens, or Sila\'s managed Plaid instance (Plaid sandbox user_good/pass_good). Same-day ACH pulls $1,234 into the wallet in roughly five minutes in sandbox — deliberately slow so developers don\'t build code expecting real-time settlement. Wallet-to-wallet transfers settle on Sila\'s ledger in seconds; external redeems push ACH out to any linked bank account.
Leah Staniorski
Leah, a client engineer at Unit, walks through the Unit banking-as-a-service platform — the three-part challenge of building banking into a fintech (compliance, technology, bank relationships) and how Unit handles all three so product teams can focus on acquisition and differentiation. The demo covers Unit's two build environments (Sandbox for unbounded prototyping, Pilot for real production with minor limits), generating an API token, submitting a business application through the KYB flow, Unit's optional white-label application form, subscribing to webhooks for real-time events, and issuing a deposit account plus virtual debit card in two API calls. Leah then reveals the full card details using Unit's VGS-backed sensitive-details service and buys a webcam cover on Amazon, closing the loop with the settled-transaction webhook firing back into the dashboard.
Oona Rokyta
Lance is a banking app for the 68M independent workers in the US — sole entrepreneurs ranging from Instacart/Uber/Lyft drivers to lawyers, teachers, and NFT creators. Built on Unit for banking-as-a-service and Abound for tax intelligence, Lance tackles the three hardest parts of freelance finance: setting aside taxes, opting into benefits, and building a cash-flow footprint. Onboarding collects standard KYC/KYB plus filer type, state of residence, and a ballpark annual-income estimate — then recommends an allocation across "stacks" (salary, taxes, main expenses, goals). Stacks are Unit-powered sub-accounts delivered to the freelancer from day one instead of year five. Abound dynamically withholds the right tax from each deposit. On the first payment from a new client or marketplace, Lance prompts the user to classify it as 1099, W-2, or personal, so every subsequent payment from that source is taxed (or not) correctly. Virtual and physical cards drop into Apple Wallet, invoices go out in a few taps, and the home screen shows month-over-month income vs. expenses vs. taxes — plus an Abound-generated Schedule C. Crypto investing and a debt-payoff stack are on the near-term roadmap.
Jeff Kramer
Jeff Kramer, CTO of Transparent Financial Systems, demos Zand — a community-based B2B platform for real-time value transfers running 24/7/365. Zand networks are designed by and for their transactional community: forex and crypto OTC desks, networks of community and regional banks, and more. There is no central issuer, no new currency, no intermediaries — just programmable digital dollars under the community\'s control. Banks do not install new software; Zand only requires three APIs (balance check, transaction history, book transfer), and banks still choose who to bank. The live demo runs against two beta banks through both a wallet UI and Swagger docs: a creation request mints new digital dollars in two steps (request with a nonce, followed by the reserve transfer) — funds remain at the participating bank but move into the shared network reserve. A $10,000 peer-to-peer payment between wallets completes instantly on the Zand ledger with no bank API called; wallet IDs are publicly shareable without granting access. Finally, $1,000 and $100 redemptions destroy the claims and push underlying funds back to the member\'s chosen bank. Jeff positions Zand as a bank-agnostic dollar settlement rail for regional/community banks, a more equitable real-time payment system, and a BSA-compliant digital-dollar platform for fintechs and crypto businesses.
Wade Arnold & Graham McBain
Wade Arnold (ex-Banno, Billgo) and Graham McBain present Moov — a thousand-strong open-source community that has shipped 37 low-level libraries covering the protocols that quietly move money through the US financial system: ACH, wires, image cash letter, Metro 2, IRS FIRE, ISO 20022, and ISO 8583. Wade walks through why none of this was open source before, how the libraries have been battle-tested against the full transaction volumes of Bank of America, PayPal, Square, and Visa, and why the community model beats every fintech writing its own parser from scratch (e.g., Square unifying seven different ACH implementations onto Moov). Graham then demos the Moov ACH library as a Docker image — curl a JSON payload in, get a NACHA-compliant ACH file back — and a WebAssembly-powered in-browser ACH parser that converts ACH to JSON without any data leaving your machine.