Ex-Stripe employee debuts converted community bank

• Key insight: Fintech entrepreneur Darragh Buckley has re-launched the community bank he bought last year under the name Increase Bank.
• Supporting data: The underlying bank's asset size grew by 48% in the fiscal year after Buckley acquired it for his enterprise payments fintech.
• Expert quote: "The value [for Buckley] comes from obtaining the institutional status and control that Increase could not fully achieve by relying solely on third-party banks." —Bank Slate Consulting's Paul Davis

Darragh Buckley, founder and CEO of payment fintech Increase and one of Stripe's first employees, has officially launched his own bank.

Buckley announced this week that Increase now has its own banking division called Increase Bank. The bank is a rebuilt conversion of Twin City Bank, a Washington-based community bank that Buckley acquired through buying its parent holding company last June.

"Buckley bought a small bank to serve as the regulated chassis of a much larger tech business," Bank Slate Consulting founder Paul Davis told American Banker. "The value comes from obtaining the institutional status and control that Increase could not fully achieve by relying solely on third-party banks."

Fintechs buying banks has been a part of the bank M&A scene for a while, but this deal involved a fintech entrepreneur buying a community bank's regulatory infrastructure for a custom rebuild rather than layering APIs on top of a conventional bank operating model.

"By acquiring Twin City Bank, Buckley obtained an existing charter, FDIC insurance, a regulated legal entity, payment-system access and an institution with an exam history," Davis said. "The acquisition still required extensive scrutiny, but it provided a functioning banking chassis." 

Davis also noted that Twin City Bank was "big enough to have institutional infrastructure but small enough that Buckley didn't inherit a big branch network or legacy balance sheet to unload or unwind."

Buckley initially filed a request to purchase 100% of Twin City Bancorp's voting shares in April of last year, according to Federal Register archives. The deal was subsequently permitted by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco two months later.

Twin City Bank had $70 million in assets under management when Buckley initially filed to acquire it via the holding company share purchase, according to its FDIC call reports. By the time it rebranded to Increase Bank a year later, its asset size had grown 48% to $114.5 million, with the largest single-quarter increase (40%) occurring between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026.

The community bank has one physical branch in Longview, Washington, which continues to do business under the Twin City Bank name according to the branch's website. Banking services at that brick-and-mortar location are now offered by Increase Bank doing business as Twin City Bank.

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After the initial acquisition last summer, according to a company spokesperson, Twin City Bank received subsequent regulatory approvals for a name change and business plan change.

Increase Bank "is a bank built by a team of product-obsessed operators for ambitious companies that are just as obsessed with building the best possible products for their customers," Buckley said in a statement.

Fintech and banking consultant Annie DeStefano told American Banker that as the financial services ecosystem is growing, fintechs are exploring different ways to work with community banks.

"New strategic options and paths will emerge," she said. "There is space for all the model types to work together, but the map will be redrawn [with] new specificity about which models make sense where."

Increase, founded in 2020 by Buckley after his departure from Stripe, offers money movement APIs to fintechs such as Ramp and Stripe. The company's new banking core now offers direct connections to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House and Visa, according to a company statement.

"Increase Bank is the bank I needed at Stripe," Buckley said in a LinkedIn post.

A company spokesperson confirmed with American Banker that Increase gained its own Federal Reserve master account through acquiring Twin City Bank, which has a master account according to Federal Reserve records. Increase's technology maintains the system of record for account balances and transactions and reconciles to the Federal Reserve through the FedNow rail system.

"Increase Bank and our other bank partners each use the Increase banking core to connect directly to the Federal Reserve's payment systems," the spokesperson said.

Increase's current sponsor bank partners include Grasshopper Bank, First Internet Bank of Indiana and Core Bank. Over time, according to Davis, Increase will no longer need to rely exclusively on its sponsor banks as it did before the acquisition.

"It can potentially move faster, retain more of the economics tied to deposits and payments and give customers more confidence that the banking layer is strategically committed to the platform," he said.

Davis also said that even with the new bank launch, Increase doesn't need to fully abandon its partner-bank model.

"It can keep working with outside banks while using Increase Bank as a proprietary channel, giving it diversification and flexibility as the platform grows," he said.