payment-operations
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One is where the money lives, one is how it moves
Mercury is the bank account a startup opens; Modern Treasury is the software layer that pushes payments across it and every other account a company holds. Two of fintech's quiet giants, solving opposite halves of the same problem.
These Fintech Tools Are Not Substitutes
Modern Treasury, Trovata, Highnote, Increase and Column all promise better ways to handle money. The useful question is not which one wins, but which layer of the stack you actually need.
Modern Treasury
Modern Treasury is a San Francisco software company that builds payment operations infrastructure for businesses moving money at scale. Its API-first platform connects directly to banks and unifies ACH, wire, RTP, FedNow, and stablecoin rails behind one developer-friendly interface, with a real-time ledger and automated reconciliation built in. Founded in 2018 by three engineers who lived through the pain firsthand at a mortgage marketplace, the company has powered hundreds of billions of dollars in payments for customers like Gusto, Marqeta, Navan, ClassPass, and Procore.
Matt Marcus
Matt Marcus is the Co-Founder and CEO of Modern Treasury, the San Francisco-based payment operations platform that processes hundreds of billions of dollars annually for companies like Gusto, Navan, and Procore. A Dartmouth computer science grad and former competitive rower, Marcus spent a year at LendingHome building the payment system that processed over $3 billion in mortgage loans - and that experience became the blueprint for Modern Treasury. He co-founded the company in 2018 with Sam Aarons and Dimitri Dadiomov, went through Y Combinator's Summer 2018 batch, and has raised $183M in total funding. In July 2025, he transitioned from CPO to CEO, steering Modern Treasury toward unified fiat and stablecoin payment rails following the acquisition of Beam.