Stripe’s First Employee Launches Increase Bank to Fix Payments’ Last Mile

Darragh Buckley joined Stripe as its first employee in 2010, helping connect the payments startup to banks and financial networks. He founded Increase in 2020 to give software companies, including Stripe, Ramp and Gusto, direct, programmable access to banking infrastructure. The model matters because payroll, money movement and embedded-finance products still depend on legacy systems that can obscure transaction data and separate compliance from engineering. Increase seeks to close that “last mile” by building ledgers, regulatory controls and network data into software.

On July 29, 2026, Increase announced that it had acquired Twin City Bank in Longview, Washington, and renamed it Increase Bank; the purchase price was not disclosed. The FDIC-member lender will retain its branch and community-banking operations while adding an API-first platform for technology companies. Increase said its infrastructure now handles more than $500 billion in annualized transaction volume and over 9 million API calls a day. The bank is intended to bring regulated services and Increase’s technology stack under tighter control, reducing reliance on outside partner banks.