Spade

About Spade

Spade is a financial technology company, founded in 2021 by Oban MacTavish, Cooper Hart, and Tess Bloch, that provides real-time transaction enrichment data. The company's API is designed to bring clarity to raw transaction data by matching it with verified merchant identities, including granular details on category and geolocation.

CEO Oban MacTavish's interest in finance began in his teens, leading him to study it at the University of British Columbia. Before Spade, he founded a software platform called Hubly. During the pandemic, his work as a fintech consultant highlighted the widespread industry problem of poor-quality merchant transaction data, which sparked the idea for Spade.

The company operates on a business-to-business model, serving card issuers, neobanks, anti-fraud platforms, and other financial technology firms. Clients like Ramp, Sardine, Unit, and Mercury use Spade's data to improve transaction authorization rates, build card products, and enhance fraud detection. Spade's system works by receiving transaction data from a client, which its API then maps to a real merchant identity, enriches with additional data points, and returns to the client's platform within milliseconds. This process helps clients make more informed payment decisions in real-time. The API processes data in under 50 milliseconds, which is a key advantage for use in the authorization flow where speed is critical.

Spade has secured significant funding to support its growth, including a $5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and a $10 million Series A round led by Flourish Ventures, bringing its total raised capital to over $16 million. The company is SOC 2 certified and operates without handling personally identifiable information (PII), ensuring a high level of security.