Back in March of 2024, the team announced a new round of funding and in that announcement dedicated the year to scaling. 

Just a couple of months after that, I had the privilege of joining Synctera to lead the product and tech team. What drew me to the company was not only does Synctera operate in a problem space that I have conviction in, but there is also an incredible team with the expertise and grit needed to solve the unique challenges that came with scaling financial infrastructure. 

Having previously led the product team at Clover, I learned first-hand what it really takes to make rapid growth feel effortless for our customers and partners. I also saw how critical it is to focus on the foundational banking processes, like fraud monitoring and reconciliation, to keep money moving safely. 

When it comes to people’s money, there is no cutting corners. 

Our growth in 2024 put these foundational processes to the test in the best way possible. Usage on the Synctera Platform dramatically increased thanks to the launch of exciting new customers like Webull and Grabr, as well as our existing customers hitting their next phase of growth like BTG Pactual and Firstcard.

Here’s a glimpse of what we achieved this past year:

• 456% increase in accounts
• 215% increase in deposits
• $219 billion of transaction volume reconciled

As I watched the entire organization rise to the occasion to support this growth and solve the challenges that undoubtedly arose, the conviction I had when I first joined only deepened. The team launched functionality to enable new use cases, as well as, made a whole host of technical improvements to ensure the platform is truly built for scale. While there are too many new features to name in a single post, I wanted to cover some of the most impactful product updates we made in 2024. 

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Expanding product functionality to power even more use cases in 2025

It’s been amazing to have conversations with FinTechs and companies looking to launch innovative and unique embedded finance products. Our team has done a great job of adapting to the trends and demand we are seeing from the market, launching new functionality to bring these use cases to life. 

A couple of my favorite updates:

• Fleet cards: In partnership with Marqeta, we launched a fleet card product that enables freight and logistics companies to build better spend management products for their fleet operators
• Multi-tenancy functionality: We built multi-tenancy into the platform so companies launching products under multiple brands can easily manage and view program data both on a per-brand level and holistically

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Improving reconciliation efficiency through data enhancements 

Reconciliation is at the heart of financial operations. The foundation of any successful reconciliation product is having a system that can ingest and make sense of massive amounts of data. In just the past year, the Synctera Platform reconciled $219 billion from 80+ different transaction sources.

At this scale, automation is key - the vast majority of transactions need to be automatically reconciled and there must be a set of tools that enable folks in payment operations to investigate the few transactions that require manual review. 

We’ve made continuous improvements to how we ingest, store, and use data to make both of these processes more efficient, with ~99% of all transactions today being automatically reconciled. To make this possible we’ve:

• Re-architected our data structure to make it easier for all transaction attributes to be automatically identified and matched
• Observed how data changes through the transaction lifecycle and built intelligence into the platform to more effectively match transactions
• Leveraged data templates to more efficiently ingest transaction files from new sources

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Increasing card transaction processing capacity

For FinTechs and banks powering card programs, every transaction needs to be seamless. 

Behind every swipe, tap, or dip, multiple systems must work together in just a few seconds to ensure success. If even one piece of the process lags or fails, the entire transaction is at risk. 

To increase the number of transactions that the Synctera Platform can process simultaneously, we have significantly optimized transaction workflows by parallelizing key processes that occur. These improvements have resulted in a 1500% higher card transaction processing capacity. 

This increased capacity allows us to onboard larger programs than we could have handled previously, and increases overall platform performance.

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Looking Ahead

The past eight months at Synctera have been full of growth, but I know we’re just getting started. I’m so proud of the team and everything we’ve achieved in 2024. By delivering new features and supporting the growth of our customers and bank partners, we’ve set the stage for even bigger things in 2025. 

Looking ahead, this year our product and tech teams will continue embedding even more compliance and operational efficiencies directly into the platform through better tools, insights, and workflows, while also exploring additional use cases that help our banks and customers unlock new avenues for innovation and growth.

I’m excited for the year ahead and can’t wait to see the new ways the Synctera Platform continues to unlock embedded finance and power financial innovation.