SolvaPay Raises €2.4M to Build Payment Infrastructure for the Agentic Economy

€2.4M Pre-Seed Round Closed

SolvaPay raises €2.4m for agentic payment layer

Stockholm-based AI payments platform SolvaPay has closed a €2.4m pre-seed funding round to develop the world's first payment infrastructure purpose-built for the agentic economy.

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On April 15, 2026, Stockholm-based SolvaPay announced the close of a €2.4M ($2.8M) pre-seed round. The round was led by European fintech VC firm Redstone and Silicon Valley-based MS&AD Ventures, with additional participation from Antler and Greens Ventures.

The company's mission: building payment infrastructure for the agentic economy. The capital will be directed toward accelerating the development of machine-native payment rails and agentic revenue infrastructure.

Founded in 2025, SolvaPay's team includes co-founders Ingemar Svensson, CEO Viggo Stenseth, and Tommy Berglind, bringing over five decades of combined experience across financial services and technology companies including Spotify, FIS, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, and Handelsbanken.

Why Payments Need an "Agent-Native" Layer

"Every major technological shift has needed a financial layer before it could become a real economy. The internet needed it. E-commerce needed it. Now, we've reached the same point with the agentic economy." That's how CEO Stenseth framed the opportunity in Tech.eu's coverage.

The core problem is structural. Today's payment systems were designed for humans operating through browsers and apps. They cannot accommodate AI agents that autonomously discover services, negotiate terms, and execute payments across platforms. Fragmented digital ecosystems create walls that prevent agents from transacting freely.

Stenseth told TechFundingNews that "our architecture is built around API-driven, LLM-ready surfaces that allow agents to pay other agents and services without requiring a conversational or intent-driven UX designed for people." The distinction from conventional payment APIs lies in covering the full cycle from service discovery through consumption to payment, all through interfaces that LLMs can natively understand.

The Product — One Integration, Access to the Entire Agent Economy

Based on publicly available information, here is what SolvaPay's product architecture looks like.

SaaS providers, API developers, and digital service companies can make their products discoverable, accessible, and payable across AI ecosystems like Claude and ChatGPT — as well as future agent environments — through a single SolvaPay integration. The infrastructure is designed to integrate natively into agent workflows, APIs, and applications, minimizing friction between decision and transaction.

The company argues that early adoption creates competitive advantage. As agent-driven commerce accelerates, services that are invisible to agents risk losing transaction opportunities entirely.

A Booming Market for Agent Payment Startups

SolvaPay's raise did not happen in isolation. Just one day earlier, UK-based Ralio closed a $2.5M pre-seed to build trust infrastructure sitting between AI agents and payment rails — providing guardrails, identity verification, and audit tooling before any funds move.

According to Sifted's analysis, agentic payment startups represent a fundamentally different breed of fintech. J.P. Morgan's Roy Asiedu notes that "what matters now is no longer who builds the most elegant user experience but who provides programmable rails, policy-driven permissions and infrastructure capable of operating safely at scale." The shift is away from consumer products and toward autonomous financial infrastructure itself.

Players like Basis Theory, Nekuda, and Skyfire have collectively raised nearly $50M for agent transaction infrastructure. European AI agent startups have already raised over one billion euros across 54 deals in 2026, approaching the six billion euros raised in all of 2025.

Implications for E-Commerce Businesses

The buildout of payment infrastructure for the agent economy is shifting from a distant future to a present-day reality that demands preparation.

The most direct impact: AI agents discovering and purchasing products will create a channel entirely separate from traditional search and advertising. If platforms like SolvaPay gain traction, agents will be able to compare and purchase services directly through APIs. Whether your products and APIs are "discoverable" by agents could become a new competitive dimension.

Regulatory uncertainty remains a concern, however. Existing payment regulations assume a human initiates transactions. Questions of liability, consent, and fraud become more complex when software agents act independently. J.P. Morgan expects clearer rules around agent permissions, accountability, and governance to emerge within a few years, but caution is warranted at this stage.

Summary

SolvaPay's €2.4M raise is modest in dollar terms, but it is emblematic of a broader trend: VC capital is flowing into the thesis that the agent economy needs its own dedicated payment layer. With Ralio, Basis Theory, Skyfire, and others raising in the same space, 2026 is shaping up as the founding year for agentic payment infrastructure.

This domain — where incumbents like Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe intersect with specialized startups like SolvaPay — represents a critical bottleneck for the future of agentic commerce. For e-commerce businesses, now is the time to start thinking about how your APIs and products will be "discovered" in the emerging agent economy.