Increase Integrates Spade to Deliver Real-Time Merchant Data Enrichment for Card Transactions

Increase has integrated Spade’s real-time merchant data into its card issuance platform, providing developers with enriched transaction records including logos, locations, and granular industry categories. For fintech professionals, this move simplifies the development of sophisticated fraud rules and user-facing spend analytics by removing the ambiguity of traditional merchant descriptors at the point of authorization.

What was announced

The integration allows card transactions on the Increase platform to be matched in real time against Spade’s Merchant Graph. This proprietary database contains verified records for 99.9% of businesses across the United States and Canada. The enrichment process provides a comprehensive data record for each transaction, including the merchant’s clean name, legal name, logo, website, phone number, and physical store location. Furthermore, it offers an industry categorization that goes up to four levels deep, allowing platforms to distinguish between specific business types, such as a coffee shop versus a fine-dining establishment.

The system is designed to handle the "long tail" of commerce, identifying small and local businesses as well as those operating through payment processors like Square. It also flags transactions from delivery apps and marketplaces as third-party services. From a technical perspective, Spade returns this enriched data in under 40 milliseconds with a reported accuracy rate of over 99%. Because the enrichment field is optional, it does not create a dependency that could delay or block an authorization if the data is unavailable. Card programs can leverage this information to reduce "who charged me?" inquiries, build AI-driven spend analytics, and implement location-based fraud rules, such as comparing a cardholder's home address to the store's physical coordinates.

"Increase gives its users direct access to the card network through its API, and now Spade's merchant data travels on that same authorization record. A card program launching on Increase can show cardholders charges they recognize and make authorization decisions on the exact merchant and location from its very first transaction."

Oban MacTavish, Co-Founder and CEO at Spade.

The companies involved

Increase is a banking infrastructure provider that offers direct access to the card networks through its API-first platform. The company was founded by the first employee of Stripe, positioning it as a modern alternative to legacy banking cores and middleware. Increase focuses on providing the underlying financial plumbing for vertical software platforms and fintechs, allowing them to build customized banking and card programs without the friction of traditional financial institutions.

Spade is a specialist in transaction enrichment and merchant data. The company’s primary offering, the Merchant Graph, is a verified record of businesses that links specific store locations to their parent brands and owners. This is particularly relevant in a market where merchant IDs (MIDs) frequently change or appear as cryptic strings on bank statements. By maintaining a current map of these identifiers, Spade enables financial institutions and fintechs to provide clarity to their end-users. The company has established itself as a critical layer in the modern payments stack, focusing on the speed and accuracy required for real-time financial decisioning.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely followed the growth of both companies as they expand their footprints in the embedded finance sector. We previously reported on Stripe’s First Employee Launches Increase Bank to Revolutionize Fintech Infrastructure, which detailed the company's entry into the market. Increase has since been active in the automotive sector, as seen in Tekion Launches Tekion Spend: Embedded Banking for Automotive Dealerships via Increase and Core Bank, and the enterprise space through Vic.ai Partners with Increase to Launch Autonomous API-First Payments for Enterprise AP. Meanwhile, Spade’s technology has gained traction with major incumbents; we covered how FIS Integrates Spade to Provide Real-Time Transaction Clarity for Debit Issuers to improve the experience for traditional banking customers.

What this means

This integration highlights a shift in the industry where raw transaction data is no longer sufficient for competitive card programs. As consumer expectations for "clean" statements rise, the burden falls on infrastructure providers to solve the problem of merchant obfuscation. By embedding this at the authorization level rather than as a post-transaction "cleanup" service, Increase and Spade are moving the needle toward more proactive fraud prevention. Legacy processors that cannot offer sub-50ms enrichment will likely face increasing pressure as fintechs prioritize platforms that can reduce dispute rates and improve user trust through immediate, transparent transaction data.