Extend

Overview

The Extend in this profile is the New York-based virtual-card fintech founded in 2017 by former American Express and Capital One executives (paywithextend.com) — not any other company that shares the name (Finextra). It provides digital payment infrastructure for financial institutions so they can offer virtual cards to their users, positioning itself as a company that exists to help incumbent banks compete with fintechs rather than to disrupt them (TechCrunch). The company is led by CEO and co-founder Andrew Jamison, with Guillaume Bouvard serving as co-founder, chief operating officer, and chief marketing officer (Payments Dive). By September 2025 it had raised approximately $74 million in total and served more than 10,000 businesses across the U.S. and Canada (Payments Dive).

The anti-fintech fintech

Extend’s founding thesis is the inverse of the typical fintech pitch: instead of peeling customers away from banks, it sells banks the modernization they need to keep them (TechCrunch). The company has integrated directly with major networks and processors — including Global Payments/TSYS, Mastercard, and Visa — to build technology that supports virtual cards on top of the infrastructure banks are already built upon, so card issuers can combine Extend’s offering with their current products with “no technical implementation required,” according to the company (TechCrunch). Crucially, Extend does not underwrite or process transactions itself; it is a distribution and control layer, making basis points on the transactions made on its cards (TechCrunch).

The product lets businesses instantly send virtual credit cards to employees and contractors, each with a unique spending limit and validity period, giving companies control over how much credit is extended, what it can be used for, and by whom (PYMNTS). The pitch to banks is spend control plus visibility: issue and control virtual cards through an app or APIs without ripping out legacy systems (Finextra). By October 2021 Extend had more than 2,000 business customers, was growing 30% month-over-month, and had a processing run rate of close to $2 billion, according to the company (TechCrunch).

Jamison’s background is the origin story. He previously worked at SAP and then at American Express for a number of years, moving from London to the U.S. in 2009 to help the card giant build new digital payment capabilities including virtual cards (TechCrunch). At the time virtual cards were reserved for only the biggest companies and required engineers on both sides; when Marqeta began powering digital cards directly for businesses, Jamison concluded that was the future of card issuance — “and that was the genesis of Extend” (TechCrunch). In September 2021 Extend inked its marquee deal: American Express began offering Extend’s virtual card platform to its millions of U.S. small and mid-sized business card members at no additional cost, letting them access virtual cards through their existing physical cards “in minutes” (TechCrunch). Jamison called it the first time virtual cards had been turned into a feature on an existing piece of plastic rather than a new product in itself (TechCrunch). The following month Extend closed its $40 million Series B led by March Capital, with B Capital, Point72 Ventures, FinTech Collective, Reciprocal Ventures, Wells Fargo, and Pacific Western Bank participating, bringing total raised to $55 million (TechCrunch). March Capital’s Sumant Mandal said he was impressed by Jamison’s decade-plus at Amex and by customers’ reports of frictionless, consumer-grade onboarding in under five minutes (TechCrunch).

The earliest funding came in April 2019: an $11 million Series A led by Point72 Ventures and FinTech Collective, with Reciprocal Ventures and strategic partner City National Bank joining, earmarked for more bank partnerships, app features, open APIs, and hiring across engineering, marketing, and operations (PYMNTS). City National Bank’s head of enterprise cards praised the combination of mobile technology and industry expertise (PYMNTS). City National Bank and PacWest were both customers and investors as of 2021 (TechCrunch).

From virtual cards to expense management

In September 2025 Extend raised $20 million in additional capital — a mix of new venture debt and an equity investment led by B Capital, with March Capital, Point72 Ventures, FinTech Collective, and new investor Commerce Ventures participating (Payments Dive). The round, which brought total raised since the 2017 founding to approximately $74 million, was framed as accelerating Extend’s path to profitability and funding the launch of a paid SaaS offering (Payments Dive). The company was shifting from pure card plumbing toward a fuller spend and expense management platform — tools for approvals, digital receipt capture, and automated reconciliation — while keeping its core promise that businesses do not have to change their existing bank card programs (Payments Dive).

The same month, Extend named its first chief financial officer: Francois Horikawa, who had spent eight years at PayPal — most recently as head of finance for its consumer business unit, covering Venmo, peer-to-peer payments, cards, and small business lending — after five years at American Express (Payments Dive). Horikawa was brought in to help “transform its economic model and diversify its revenue streams,” according to Bouvard (Payments Dive). Extend reported a 35% year-over-year increase in 2024 in the number of businesses using its virtual card platform, serving more than 10,000 businesses across the U.S. and Canada, and in March 2025 entered into a referral agreement with Visa to bring Visa-supported virtual card solutions to middle-market companies (Payments Dive). The tailwind is large: Juniper Research predicted business-to-business virtual card payments would hit $14.6 trillion by 2029, representing 83% of the total global virtual card market (Payments Dive).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim Extend has reached profitability or launched its paid SaaS offering — both were stated plans as of September 2025, not verified outcomes. Customer counts (10,000+ businesses), the 35% growth figure, and the $2 billion processing run rate are the company’s own figures as reported by independent press, not independently audited numbers. The Visa referral agreement and the $20 million round are described as announced in 2025; their current status was not verified. This profile makes no claim about the unrelated product-protection company that shares the Extend name — it covers only the New York virtual-card fintech described above.