Atomic raises $40 million

Payroll connectivity startup Atomic FI has raised $40 million in Series B funding. The round was co-led by Mercato Partners and Greylock, with participation from Core Innovation Capital, Portage, and ATX Venture Partners. The funding follows a Series A round of $22 million announced in October 2021.

Founded in 2019, Atomic’s payroll APIs enable consumers to connect their payroll accounts to a third-party banking app to set up or switch direct deposit payments and to access financial data for income and employment verifications. In 2021, Atomic reported that payroll connectivity coverage grew to over 75% of the U.S. workforce, reaching 125 million workers and spanning 450+ unique payroll integrations. At year-end, over 17.5 million consumers had entered an Atomic workflow.

The company will invest the proceeds to advance its vision of enabling consumers with limited access to financial services to invest, save, and build wealth by unlocking the power of their paychecks.

“Atomic’s mission to free payroll data serves the entire fintech community. I love the vision to build more on-ramps to financial services and become the dominant infrastructure layer that connects fintech companies and banks to consumers and their paychecks. They have the unique ability to do good for their customers as well as their shareholders at the same time.” – Ryan Sanders, managing director at Mercato Partners’ Traverse Growth Fund.

“When we first invested in Atomic in 2020, we believed that consumer-permissioned access to payroll data could ultimately improve consumers’ financial lives if the right third-party data integrator came along. Today it’s clear, Atomic has created the future of financial services through its unrelenting focus on the data trapped in all of our paychecks.” – Josh Mcfarland, partner at Greylock.