After acquiring a small bank in Longview, Washington, a former Stripe employee added banking charter capabilities to his fintech company Increase, aiming to become a "regulated banking partner" for fintech peers.

Increase founder Darragh Buckley acquired Twin City Bancorp, the holding company of Twin City Bank, about a year ago and renamed it Increase Bank after receiving regulatory approval for changes to its name and business plan. Buckley did not disclose the acquisition price.

Increase handles money movement, storage, and card issuance for businesses such as payroll service providers, neobanks, lending services, and payment companies. The company officially unveiled its banking identity on Wednesday, July 29.

Buckley said the move had been long in the making and was not necessarily driven by the banking regulatory environment. He noted that when he founded the company six years ago, his goal was to combine banking with technology companies.

Buckley described Increase as a "lender for ambitious technology companies," and said the bank launch was more about winning new business than expanding existing operations.

"For years, I needed a bank with good product sense," he wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday. "A bank that understood the possibilities of software and didn't want to see those possibilities stifled. Increase Bank is the bank I needed when I was at Stripe."

According to his LinkedIn profile, Buckley worked at Stripe for six years before founding Increase. Increase partners with Stripe as well as fintech companies Ramp and Gusto, which use Increase's technology to process about $500 billion in money movement annually, Buckley wrote.

Increase offers a modern banking core system that connects directly to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, and Visa. According to a press release, the fintech's technology holds the system of record for account balances and transactions and reconciles with the Federal Reserve in real time, enabling fintech companies to control accounts and interact with their bank more quickly.

"Being able to work more closely with a bank, especially one that is culturally similar to us and therefore has a strong product orientation, to provide reliable, transparent, and flexible services to our users is fantastic," Buckley said on Thursday.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco approved Buckley's acquisition of 100% of the voting shares of Twin City Bancorp in June 2025. As of March 31, Twin City Bank, which has a single branch, had assets of approximately $114.6 million.

"I've been investing in banks for several years. Twin City Bank is a neat, profitable bank, and it happens to be relatively close to me," Buckley said.

Jon Jones serves as president and CEO of Increase Bank. Jones previously served as CEO of Washington Business Bank, which was acquired by Sound Credit Union in January 2025. According to his LinkedIn profile, Jones also served on the board of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines for about six years.

Increase also partners with Grasshopper Bank, First Internet Bank in Indiana, and Core Bank, and Buckley said those partnerships remain important.

"Many of our users simply need multi-bank services for operational reasons or even their own corporate governance reasons," he said. "In many cases, the financial services we provide are critical to their business."

Note: This story's headline has been updated to more clearly reflect that Buckley acquired the bank.