Fintech One-on-One
Darragh Buckley, CEO of Increase, on Building the Next Generation of Banking Infrastructure
Fintech One-on-One
•December 26, 2025•34 min
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Fintech One-on-One•Dec 26, 2025
Key Takeaways
- •Increase uses Fed API, bypassing individual bank integrations.
- •Specialized niche banks could form around professions, interests.
- •Building compliance into code improves safety and regulatory adherence.
- •Real-time payments enable Saturday car purchases via FedNow.
- •Small team processes over $100B annually using Fed core.
Pulse Analysis
In this episode Darragh Buckley explains how Increase re‑imagines banking infrastructure by connecting directly to the Federal Reserve through a unified API. By operating a "side core" that mirrors traditional core‑bank functions, Increase eliminates the need for separate integrations with each bank, cutting technical friction and accelerating product development for payroll platforms, bill‑pay services, and neobanks. This approach showcases a new paradigm where fintechs can leverage the reliability of the Fed’s network while retaining full control over data and compliance.
Buckley draws on his Stripe experience to illustrate how scaling fintechs requires decoupling business negotiations from engineering work. He describes the early challenge of establishing bank partnerships across borders and how a single technical connection to the Fed can replace dozens of bespoke bank links. The conversation also highlights the importance of embedding compliance, accounting, and regulatory rules directly into the codebase, turning what used to be post‑hoc policy checks into real‑time safeguards. Despite processing over $100 billion annually, Increase operates with fewer than twenty engineers, proving that a lean team can handle massive transaction volumes when built on a robust, API‑first core.
Looking ahead, Buckley envisions a future of specialized financial institutions—banks for dentists, insurance agents, or family‑finance managers—served by the same flexible infrastructure. He shares a real‑time payment story where a customer bought a car on a Saturday using FedNow, illustrating how ubiquitous, low‑cost networks can finally reach everyday consumers. By marrying deep engineering expertise with financial fluency, Increase aims to democratize access to high‑speed payments and empower niche banks to thrive in a rapidly evolving fintech landscape.
Episode Description
Today I'm talking with Darragh Buckley, the CEO and co-founder of Increase. If you've been following fintech for a while, you probably know Darragh as employee number one at Stripe, where he built the team responsible for moving money at a massive scale. At Stripe, he learned a crucial lesson about infrastructure: when you're stuck solving business, technical, and risk problems all at once, you need to drop down a layer. That insight led to Increase, which does something quite novel, instead of connecting to banks one by one, they connect directly to the Federal Reserve itself, operating their own banking core that exposes all this functionality through APIs. With a team of less than 20 people, they're now processing over $100 billion annually.
In this conversation, we dig into the lessons Darragh learned scaling Stripe, why he believes compliance and accounting should be built into engineering from day one rather than bolted on later, his vision for a future where community banks serve specific communities like dentists or families managing elderly parents' finances, and why he's personally investing in community banks across the Pacific Northwest. We also get into real-time payments infrastructure, including a great story about buying a car on a Saturday. Now let's get on with the show.
In the podcast, you will learn:
How Increase was born out of early challenges at Stripe.
What he learned about scaling fintech companies at Stripe.
The advantage of dropping down a layer when building fintech infrastructure.
How Increase is able to connect directly to the Federal Reserve.
The concept of a side core and how it integrates with banking cores.
The different types of companies they work with.
A fun story about paying a car dealer with a real time payment on a Saturday.
The scale that Increase is at today.
Why they decided that now is the time to spread with word about Increase.
Why it matters to build compliance into your product very early.
What lessons compliance can learn from software engineering.
How they are managing real time risk.
Why Darragh has personally invested in several community banks.
What will have changed in financial services if Increase is successful.
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Show Notes
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