Pliant raises $80M to open B2B payments to AI agents

Pliant, a Berlin B2B payments company, announced an $80 million Series C on November 4 to open its payment infrastructure to AI agents. Seaya Nova and Speedinvest led, with Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners and Molten Ventures participating, per the company's release. The headline feature: third-party agents, from Claude and ChatGPT to your own automations, connect over the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and run payment workflows on licensed rails. Agents paying vendors is no longer a demo. It is a funded product line.

What actually happened

From Pliant's release and TNW's coverage:

• Pliant passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue and says it doubled for three years running.
• The platform covers commercial card issuing, payment accounts, FX and spend management. It is a principal member of Visa and Mastercard and issues cards in 13 currencies across 32 countries.
• The money goes to US and Canada expansion, further markets and the AI roadmap.
• Outside agents reach the platform via MCP, with "permissions, controls and auditability built in," in Pliant's words. Its site lists an Agentic Payments product, cards and accounts for AI agents, as early access.

The release does not publish specific agent spend caps or approval rules. That detail matters more than the round size, and it is the first thing we would ask on a sales call.

PYMNTS notes the prior round was a $40 million Series B in April 2025.

Why it matters for your business

If you run a small operation, the agent paying your bills is coming from two directions. Consumer agents already check out with Stripe Link and Shop Pay. Now card issuers are wiring MCP into the corporate side: supplier invoices, SaaS renewals, ad spend.

MCP access to a payment account is a credential with a balance behind it. Treat it that way before you connect anything:

• One card per agent, per job. A virtual card for the ad-spend agent, another for software renewals. Never your main account.
• Hard limits at the issuer. Per-transaction cap, monthly cap, merchant category lock. The card enforces it even when the prompt is wrong.
• Human approval above a threshold. Agent drafts, human sends, for anything over a number you pick.
• Read the audit trail weekly. If the vendor's log can't tell you which agent spent what and why, don't give it write access.

Sources: Pliant press release, TNW, PYMNTS.