Last updated: 2026-08-15
Spade is a transaction data enrichment API, founded in 2021, that matches raw card, ACH, and wire strings to verified merchant records in under 50 milliseconds at P99 latency. It covers 99.9% of US and Canadian merchants, replacing generic Merchant Category Codes with proprietary categorization used by Citizens, FIS, Cash App, and Stripe.
About Spade
Spade is a data and AI platform built by Spade Data Inc., founded in 2021 by Oban MacTavish, Cooper Hart, and Tess Bloch, that turns messy card, ACH, and wire transaction strings into structured, verified merchant records. Banks and fintechs receive raw transaction data as inconsistent strings with no reliable way to know who was paid or where; Spade's real-time API resolves that for the large majority of US and Canadian merchant locations. The platform matches each transaction against Spade's proprietary merchant graph rather than relying on generic Merchant Category Codes, returning a clean merchant name, logo, website, exact geolocation down to latitude and longitude, and a Spade-specific category built to catch cases MCC data gets wrong, such as a video-game arcade MCC that is actually a gambling business. Enrichment returns in under 50 milliseconds at P99 latency, a speed the company says beats rival providers by several multiples, and optional add-ons cover recurrence detection (subscription interval and next-payment forecasting), business-age risk signals, and third-party classification for BNPL and delivery intermediaries. Spade sells to card issuers, processors, and banks that need merchant intelligence at authorization time for fraud screening and approval decisions, as well as to consumer fintechs building rewards, budgeting, and spend-analytics features on top of transaction feeds. Customers cited publicly include Citizens, FIS, Cash App, Stripe, Bilt, Coast, and Mercury, and the company reports strong daily transaction volume and year-over-year revenue growth through 2025. Spade does not publish list pricing; the company instead negotiates a usage-based contract for enrichment volume plus a platform fee for automated workflows, and premium add-ons like recurrence and risk insights require a sales conversation at sales@spade.com. It ships as a REST API with an accompanying dashboard, documented at docs.spade.com, and has no consumer-facing web, desktop, or mobile app since it is built to be embedded into a bank's or fintech's own product. Spade raised a Series B round in March 2026 led by Oak HC/FT, with Andreessen Horowitz, Flourish Ventures, Gradient, NAventures, and National Bank of Canada's venture arm participating, following an earlier Series A led by Flourish Ventures in December 2023.
Pricing
No public pricing. Spade negotiates a per-transaction usage contract plus a platform fee for automated workflows; premium add-ons (recurrence detection, risk insights) are billed separately and require a sales quote from sales@spade.com. No self-serve signup or free tier.
Key Features
- Authorization-time merchant enrichment: Returns a clean merchant name, logo, website, and exact geolocation from a raw transaction string, fast enough to run inside a live card-authorization decision.
- Proprietary categorization, not MCC: Classifies merchants using Spade's own category system instead of Merchant Category Codes, catching cases like a gambling business coded as a video-game arcade.
- Broad US and Canada merchant coverage: Matches raw data from card programs, ACH, and wires to verified businesses across nearly all US and Canadian merchant locations.
- Recurrence detection: Flags recurring transactions and returns the payment interval and forecasted date of the next charge as a premium add-on.
- Risk and business-age signals: Adds merchant and location age plus content-based risk classification to support underwriting and fraud-screening decisions.
Pros
- Latency low enough to enrich merchant data inside a live card-authorization decision instead of overnight batch, an approach few enrichment rivals can match.
- Category logic built specifically to fix MCC miscoding, a known source of false risk flags, such as gambling businesses tagged as arcades.
- Raised two funding rounds through Series B (Oak HC/FT, Andreessen Horowitz, Flourish Ventures) and counts Citizens, FIS, Cash App, and Stripe as production customers.
Cons
- No public pricing; every plan requires a sales conversation, which slows evaluation for small fintechs compared to self-serve competitors.
- No self-serve signup or consumer-facing app; it is a backend API only, so there is nothing to try without an integration project.
- Coverage is limited to US and Canadian merchants, so card issuers operating outside North America cannot rely on Spade for enrichment.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Spade cost in 2026?
Spade does not publish list pricing. Access is usage-based, billed on the volume of transactions enriched plus a platform fee for automated workflows, and premium add-ons like recurrence detection and risk insights require a separate quote from the sales team at sales@spade.com.
Is Spade free to use?
Spade has no free tier or self-serve trial. Every integration starts with a sales conversation and a usage-based contract, so there is no way to test the API without engaging Spade's team first.
What are the best alternatives to Spade?
Ntropy offers a more general-purpose bank transaction categorization API used by companies like Mercury and Ramp; Heron Data focuses specifically on SMB lending underwriting for working-capital lenders; and Plaid bundles lighter-weight enrichment (Plaid Enrich) alongside its broader open-banking data aggregation product.
How does Spade compare to Ntropy in 2026?
Spade specializes in real-time, authorization-time enrichment with a claimed sub-50ms P99 latency built for card issuers and processors, while Ntropy focuses on flexible categorization for consumer and business bank feeds used by neobanks like Mercury and Ramp. Choose Spade for latency-sensitive card authorization flows, Ntropy for broader bank-statement categorization.
How do you get started with Spade?
Contact Spade's sales team to scope a usage-based contract, then integrate the REST API documented at docs.spade.com, sending raw transaction strings and receiving enriched merchant, location, and category data back in under 50 milliseconds.
Top Alternatives
- Encord: Pick Spade if you need real-time fintech transaction enrichment; pick Encord if your team labels multimodal training data like images, video, or LiDAR for AI models.
- Cyera: Pick Spade for merchant and transaction enrichment inside a payments flow; pick Cyera if your priority is data security posture management and classification across cloud storage.
- Akkio: Pick Akkio if you want self-serve, no-code predictive analytics with visible pricing; pick Spade if you need a specialized, sales-negotiated API for real-time financial transaction enrichment.