# Colin Luce

> Colin Luce is the co-founder and CEO of Basis Theory, a payment-data infrastructure company built around a simple strategic idea: merchants should control their payment credentials instead of surrendering them to a single processor. After business-development roles at Yodlee, Klarna, Uphold and Figure, he started Basis Theory in 2020 with a developer-first tokenization platform, later sharpening its focus on payments, multi-provider flexibility and agentic commerce. The company announced a $33 million Series B led by Costanoa Ventures in October 2025, bringing total reported funding to $50 million.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Basis Theory
- **Organizations:** Basis Theory, Figure, Uphold, Very Good Security, Klarna, Envestnet | Yodlee, SmartBiz Loans
- **Education:** BS, Business Administration, University of Richmond - Robins School of Business, Universidad Blas Pascal
- **Known for:** Co-founded Basis Theory and led it from a broad developer tokenization platform toward payment-data infrastructure., Raised $33 million in Series B funding led by Costanoa Ventures in 2025, bringing Basis Theory's total reported funding to $50 million., Helped launch the Agentic Commerce Consortium in 2025 to advocate for merchant participation and control in emerging commerce protocols.

## Career timeline

- **Before 2014** — Built an early career in financial technology and business development, including work at SmartBiz Loans and Envestnet | Yodlee.
- **2014** — Joined Klarna as part of the early team building the Swedish payments company in the United States.
- **2016** — Was named an honorable mention on Bank Innovation's Innovators to Watch list while leading sales and business development at Klarna.
- **Before 2020** — Held senior business-development roles at Uphold and Figure and served as a consultant and advisor to Very Good Security.
- **2020** — Co-founded Basis Theory during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- **2021** — Basis Theory introduced its tokenization and data-security platform publicly.
- **2022** — Basis Theory reached general availability and announced $17 million in funding.
- **2025-09** — Basis Theory launched the Agentic Commerce Consortium to bring merchants into the design of agentic-commerce infrastructure.
- **2025-10** — Basis Theory announced a $33 million Series B led by Costanoa Ventures, bringing total reported funding to $50 million.
- **2026** — Continued public work on tokenization, merchant control and agentic payments through podcasts, industry events and company initiatives.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Basis Theory and led it from a broad developer tokenization platform toward payment-data infrastructure.
- Raised $33 million in Series B funding led by Costanoa Ventures in 2025, bringing Basis Theory's total reported funding to $50 million.
- Helped launch the Agentic Commerce Consortium in 2025 to advocate for merchant participation and control in emerging commerce protocols.
- Built U.S. market experience at Klarna as an early member of its American team.
- Was listed as an honorable mention in Bank Innovation's 2016 Innovators to Watch.
- Led Basis Theory's interviews with more than 100 developers to shape its security and compliance product design.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Appeared with Basis Theory CTO James Armstead on Lithic's Fintech Layer Cake to discuss tokenization and agentic payments.
- **2025-12** — Discussed the gap between agentic-commerce hype and current transaction reality on Payments FM.
- **2025-10** — Announced Basis Theory's $33 million Series B led by Costanoa Ventures.
- **2025-09** — Introduced the Agentic Commerce Consortium and its inaugural merchant-controlled AI commerce white paper.
- **2025-06** — Joined Tesouro's mid-2025 fintech market update to discuss agentic commerce.

## Links

- Website: https://basistheory.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vaultdaddy
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/basistheory
- GitHub: https://github.com/Basis-Theory

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/colin-luce
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-18