What Formance does

Formance is a Paris-based fintech infrastructure company founded in 2021 that provides an open-source programmable core ledger platform for building financial applications. The platform unifies fiat and digital asset management through a single system of record, enabling fintechs, embedded finance platforms, and regulated financial institutions to build complex financial products without maintaining custom ledger infrastructure. The company's core technology centers on a programmable ledger architecture with Numscript, a domain-specific language for defining financial transaction semantics, complemented by pre-built connectors for banking (Plaid, TrueLayer), blockchain (Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime, Stellar), and payment processors.

The Formance Platform consists of five modular components: Ledger (the core double-entry system), Connectivity (25+ pre-built integrations), Flows (orchestration), Reconciliation (automated matching), and Wallets (multi-asset account management). The platform holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and DORA compliance certifications, enabling sales to regulated financial institutions in the EU and beyond. The company has expanded its capabilities with features like "Agentic Payments," which enables AI agents to reason over financial data and execute autonomous payment workflows.

Formance operates a usage-based pricing model tied to transaction volume processed through the platform, with an open-source core, an enterprise cloud SaaS offering, and self-hosting options for customers with data sovereignty requirements. The company serves a diverse customer base including Liberis (embedded lending), Doctolib (healthcare payments), Payflip (compensation), Shares and Newton (investment/trading), Getmomo (consumer payments), Stables (stablecoins), and Bastion (digital assets). The go-to-market combines open-source product-led growth (via Y Combinator community) with an enterprise field sales motion. As of January 2025, Formance has raised approximately $30.7M in total funding, with a $21M Series A led by PayPal Ventures and Portage Ventures, and maintains a team of 11-50 employees with a US subsidiary (Formance Inc., Delaware).

Name

Formance

Legal name

GOLDILOCKS

Website

https://formance.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2021

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Formance is a Paris-based open-source fintech infrastructure company providing a programmable core ledger platform that unifies fiat and digital assets for fintechs, embedded finance platforms, and regulated financial institutions via usage-based SaaS pricing.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Core Banking Infrastructure

NAICS

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Treasury, Cash Management & Liquidity Tools (Sweeps, Cash Concentration) (FSAGAAAG)

akta.pro secondary industry

Treasury & Risk Management Solutions (FX/MM, hedging, TMS integration) (FSABAIAE)

Keywords

• Programmable ledger software
• Financial infrastructure platform
• Open-source core banking
• Payment orchestration APIs
• Embedded finance tooling

Headquarters

HQ city

Paris

HQ country

France

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Usage-based Ledger Transaction Pricing: Price of Services is proportional to the monthly volume of Ledger Transactions processed by the Solution. Billed according to Particular Conditions with 30-day payment terms.
2. Enterprise SaaS (Cloud Hosting): SaaS service default hosted on AWS. Partners pay for Services as described in Particular Conditions. Alternative self-hosting options available.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Formance provides an open-source, programmable core ledger platform that unifies fiat and digital assets across payment rails and omnibus accounts. The platform serves as the system of record for money movements through modules including Ledger, Connectivity (provider data ingestion), Flows (workflow orchestration), Reconciliation, and Wallets, with a custom DSL called Numscript for modeling complex financial operations. It is sold as a managed cloud SaaS (Formance Cloud) or self-hosted open-source deployment.

Product overview

Formance offers a platform-plus-modules architecture called the Formance Platform — a programmable core ledger that unifies fiat and digital assets. The core product is Formance Ledger, a double-entry accounting database that serves as the system of record for money movements. Surrounding the core ledger are four integrated modules: Connectivity (ingests and normalizes data from PSPs, banks, exchanges, and Open Banking providers), Flows (orchestrates end-to-end money workflows with conditional logic), Reconciliation (matches ledger balances against external cash pools), and Wallets (a white-label wallet service on top of the ledger). A key sub-product is Numscript, Formance's custom DSL for expressing complex money movements. All components are available as open-source packages deployable to the customer's own cloud, with optional managed cloud hosting.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Formance Platform The unified Formance Platform is a programmable core ledger that unifies fiat and digital assets across payment rails and omnibus accounts, combining Ledger, Connectivity, Flows, and Reconciliation into a single open-source infrastructure stack for fintechs and financial applications.
• Formance Ledger A programmable, double-entry accounting database designed for financial applications providing an immutable, tamper-evident transaction log with built-in concurrency control, multi-asset support, multi-ledger architecture, data isolation via buckets, and Numscript scripting for modeling complex money movements.
• Formance Connectivity A module that ingests transactions and account balances across bank accounts, payment rails, wallets, exchanges, and custodians, normalizing each provider's native webhooks, files, and API formats into a single canonical posting schema for cross-provider reconciliation.
• Formance Flows
• Formance Reconciliation A module that compares balances between Formance Ledger and cash pools to verify financial consistency and identify discrepancies, supporting ledger-to-bank balance matching, automated reconciliation reporting, and bi-temporality of funds (transaction vs. settlement timestamps).
• Formance Wallets A fully managed, white-label wallet service built on top of Formance Ledger, providing multi-currency balances and temporary holds capabilities, with an opinionated model implementation enabling wallet features without managing underlying transaction structures.
• Numscript A purpose-built domain-specific language (DSL) for modeling financial operations on the Formance Ledger, enabling atomic, auditable transactions including splits, holds, overdrafts, multi-party flows, and asset coloring, readable by both engineering and finance teams.

Quantifiable outcome

• 0 reconciliation errors across 14 countries for Liberis
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers6 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration24 records

AI capability3 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)coreTechnology or IntegrationDefault cloud hosting provider for Formance Cloud SaaS service. By default, SaaS Service is hosted by Amazon Web Services. Alternative hosting options available for self-hosting.
• StripecoreTechnology or IntegrationPre-built connector for Stripe payment gateway. Enables ingestion of Stripe transactions and account balances into Formance Ledger for reconciliation.
• AdyencoreTechnology or IntegrationPre-built connector for Adyen payment platform. Integrates Adyen transactions and balances into Formance for unified financial visibility.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights7 records

Direct peers

• Unit: Unit is a banking-as-a-service platform with embedded ledger, accounts, cards, and lending infrastructure. Serves similar fintech customers to Formance with API-first banking infrastructure and multi-account balance management.
• Mangopay: Mangopay is a European payment infrastructure provider offering multi-currency wallets, ledger, and orchestration for marketplaces and platforms. Direct peer given European focus, marketplace/payment platform customers, and wallet-as-a-service overlap with Formance Wallets.
• Treasury Prime: Treasury Prime is a banking-as-a-service and ledger infrastructure provider connecting fintechs to sponsor banks. Comparable to Formance in targeting regulated fintechs needing programmable ledger and reconciliation capabilities.
• Increase: Increase is a banking-as-a-service platform with built-in ledger and double-entry accounting APIs for fintechs. Direct competitor offering developer-first infrastructure including balance tracking and transaction APIs comparable to Formance Ledger.
• Finix: Finix is a payments infrastructure provider offering merchant onboarding, ledger, and money movement APIs for software platforms. Directly comparable to Formance in serving embedded finance and marketplace customers with developer-first payment infrastructure.
• Modern Treasury: Modern Treasury is a payments operations platform offering a programmable ledger and real-time reconciliation APIs for fintechs and enterprises. Direct competitor to Formance Ledger and Connectivity modules serving similar developer-led fintech customers.
• Column (Bank): Column is a programmable bank offering API-first platform for fintechs and embedded finance use cases. Comparable to Formance as a regulated, developer-first financial infrastructure provider with ledger capabilities.

Broad incumbents

• Adyen: Adyen is a global payment platform offering reconciliation, balance reporting, and ledger-adjacent reporting tools to enterprise merchants. A broad incumbent listed as a Formance connector partner, competing for the same enterprise reconciliation budgets.
• Stripe (Treasury / Ledger): Stripe is a global payments incumbent with embedded ledger, treasury, and reconciliation capabilities via Stripe Treasury, Stripe Connect, and Sigma. Broad incumbent offering overlapping functionality to Formance's PSP connectors and reconciliation modules as part of a much larger payments stack.

Regional players

• Solaris: Solaris is a European banking-as-a-service platform offering embedded finance, ledger, and compliance infrastructure under BaFin regulation. Strong regional peer for Formance in the DACH/EU market with comparable regulated ledger offerings.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/formancehq
• Xx.com/formancehq

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds5 records

Investors7 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Formance