“Can a tours-and-activities operating system monetize payments at scale by riding Stripe's rails rather than building its own?”
Xola was founded in 2011 as a B2B booking and marketing platform for tours, attractions, and activity operators — a vertical that lagged flights/hotels/cars in real-time reservation tech. Its embedded finance footprint is deliberately thin: payments are routed through Stripe (primary) and Authorize.net/Cybersource as fallback, and lending is a passthrough to Stripe Capital. The company has stayed focused on vertical workflow depth (POS, waivers, resource management, OTA distribution) rather than becoming a financial platform.
Xola processes payments through Stripe, Authorize.net and Cybersource.
Xola's lending and capital products are provided by Stripe Capital.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 2 layers in Xola's stack: Payments / PSP (Stripe, Authorize.net and Cybersource); Lending (Stripe Capital and Stripe Capital (embedded, US only)).
Xola was founded by J. Scott Zimmerman and Anush Ramani and is founded in 2011, headquartered in San Francisco, CA (with Houston, TX office).
Xola has raised $6.8M (as of 2016) in total (latest round: Series A, 2016).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Xola 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.