Shared Digital Wallet Developer Braid Shuts Down After Four Years

A founder of Braid, a consumer payments startup, announced the company’s closure, marking the end of its four-year journey to expand the use of shared digital wallets.

Founded in 2019 by Amanda Peyton and Todd Berman, who left in 2020, Braid aimed to make shared wallets more mainstream and provide users with an FDIC-insured, multi-user account for pooling, managing and spending money together, TechCrunch reported Monday (Oct. 9).

Peyton announced the September shutdown of Braid in an Oct. 6 blog post.

The concept behind Braid was to allow users to create cash pools for collective goals and use a branded debit card to spend the money, according to the TechCrunch report. With the potential to reshape how people approach shared finances, Braid attracted attention and secured $10 million in funding from investors like Index Ventures and Accel.

Another investor was Conversion Capital, an early-stage venture capital (VC) firm that has invested in more than 60 startups since its founding in 2015.

However, despite the initial promise, Braid faced challenges that ultimately led to its closure, TechCrunch reported. One of the major setbacks for Braid was an issue with a sponsor bank, which left the company unable to operate effectively for several months. Although a new sponsor bank was eventually found, the company continued to struggle.

Peyton reflected on the experience in the blog post, noting that relying on third-party software did not necessarily help the company move faster or focus on its core offering. Building a multiplayer offering meant that each partner had the potential to cause problems. In time, this led Braid to begin building most of its infrastructure in-house to avoid contractual and technical lock-in.

Despite the closure, Peyton said in the post that she remains optimistic about the future of FinTech. She purchased Braid’s intellectual property in an auction following the shutdown.

“Tolstoy was right: successful companies are all alike; every failed company fails in its own way,” Peyton wrote in the post. “Failure is a cocktail of loneliness, grief and shame, which is why these stories are not told often. But every failure is also a playbook for the next obvious, effortless success, so it’s critical to share.”