Formance Raises $21M Series A to Expand Open-Source Financial Infrastructure to the U.S.

Open-source financial infrastructure provider Formance raised a $21 million Series A funding round co-led by PayPal Ventures and Portage, with participation from Y Combinator, Hoxton Ventures, and Axeleo. As reported by TechCrunch, the funding arrives after the company multiplied its revenue tenfold over the prior 12 months, driven by adoption across vertical SaaS platforms, marketplaces, and fintech companies.

Formance is expanding beyond its core programmable ledger to deliver a modular platform for complex money flows. To support its rapid growth across Europe and North America, the 30-person company is opening a New York office and hiring key commercial and engineering roles.

Building Modular Infrastructure for the Financial Internet

Founded in 2021 by CTO Clément Salaün, Formance began as an open-source ledger—a system of record tracking asset movements in and out of accounts. Building custom ledgers often consumes significant internal engineering resources when companies manage multiple bank accounts, payment processors, and discrete services. Formance provides an open-source, vendor-agnostic foundation that lets engineering teams structure complex fund flows programmatically.

The platform has expanded into five modular products covering payment connectivity, payment orchestration, reconciliation, and mass payouts across providers like Stripe, Adyen, and Mangopay. Speaking to TechCrunch, Clément Salaün noted that Formance aims to serve as the AWS of fintech infrastructure while remaining an independent software layer that does not hold customer funds or process payments directly. Current clients include Booksy, Doctolib, Liberis, Btech, and Shares.

High-Reliability Backend Systems and Engineering Culture

Moving money reliably requires strict system correctness. In a presentation for Moov Financial, Clément Salaün detailed how Formance implements semi-fungible digital ledgers—a concept termed "the color of money"—to preserve fund identity across multiple banking partners such as JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. This architecture allows companies to query and isolate specific transaction flows, such as tracking fraudulent deposits down to individual balances and sales.

To ensure infrastructure stability under production workloads, Formance relies heavily on deterministic simulation testing and automated runtime assertions. In a technical interview with Antithesis, Salaün explained that the engineering team compresses months of production soak testing into automated hourly runs, allowing the company to ship structural architecture updates with high confidence.

Global Growth and Open Roles

With U.S. customers already generating 40% of company revenue, Formance plans to scale its team from 20 to 50 employees by the end of 2025. Commercial hiring is centered in New York to establish its North American field presence, while engineering functions remain distributed across France and the United Kingdom.

To drive market expansion in North America, Formance is hiring a New York-based Senior Account Executive (NYC) ($150,000–$300,000) to execute go-to-market strategy in fintech and crypto while engaging closely with product leadership. The team is also recruiting a Business Development Representative ($95,000–$110,000) in New York to source and qualify new leads, run discovery calls, and craft outbound campaigns targeting SaaS platforms.

On the technical side, Formance is bringing on a Senior Software Engineer (€60,000–€90,000) based in Paris or working remotely in France to build microservices and modern financial backend modules using PostgreSQL and distributed systems. In the UK, the company is adding a remote Solutions Engineer to manage post-sales integration, account expansion, and project milestones alongside customer operations and tech teams.

See all open roles at Formance