A Fragmented Payments Landscape

The global payments ecosystem is deeply fragmented. Banks and fintechs looking to offer customers modern payment options — from real-time bank transfers and digital wallets to local payment schemes — face a patchwork of incompatible rails, costly integration projects, and lengthy compliance processes. Building direct integrations with each alternative payment method can take months of engineering time and significant capital, creating a high barrier that keeps many financial institutions locked into outdated payment infrastructure.

What They're Building

Kashimi provides a unified alternative payment infrastructure API that connects banks and fintechs to a broad range of payment rails through a single integration. Rather than building and maintaining separate connections to each payment network, institutions can plug into Kashimi's API to instantly access multiple alternative payment methods — reducing development time, lowering operational overhead, and accelerating time-to-market for new payment products.

The platform is designed to abstract away the complexity of regional payment schemes and compliance requirements, giving financial institutions a consistent developer experience regardless of which payment method or geography they want to support. Kashimi raised a $1.36M pre-seed round to accelerate product development and expand its network of supported payment rails, with backing from Plug and Play Tech Center.

The Opportunity

Alternative payment methods now account for a growing share of global transaction volume, with consumers and businesses increasingly preferring bank transfers, mobile wallets, and local schemes over traditional card networks. Financial institutions that fail to integrate these options risk losing customers to more agile neobanks and fintechs. Kashimi sits at the intersection of this demand — giving incumbents the infrastructure they need to compete without rebuilding their payment stack from scratch.