“Can a consumer-permissioned alternative financial data aggregator — specifically for BNPL — become the infrastructure layer that banks and fintechs use to underwrite and manage buy now pay later obligations?”
Founded in 2016 as a bank-fee negotiation tool, Cushion evolved into a broader consumer financial management app that monitored bank transactions. It pivoted again around 2021–2022 to position itself as the 'Plaid for BNPL' — an alternative financial data aggregator that parsed users' emails to track and manage Buy Now Pay Later loans. Despite raising $21.6M and building proprietary BNPL data infrastructure processing 30M+ emails and $300M+ in BNPL loans, the company could not achieve the scale or monetization needed to survive, and wound down at end of 2024.
Cushion discloses Patriot Bank as its banking provider, according to the Embedded Finance Index 2026.
Cushion does not disclose a bank charter of its own; its banking services are provided through Patriot Bank.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 2 layers in Cushion's stack: Banking / BaaS (Patriot Bank); Lending (BNPL data aggregation and Bank fee negotiation / refund recovery).
Cushion was founded by Paul Kesserwani and is founded in 2016, headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA.
Cushion has raised $21.6M in total (latest round: Series A, May 2022; valuation: $82.4M post-money (2022)).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Cushion and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.