“Can a DTC children's audio hardware brand build a content and community flywheel that sustains global scale without a screen?”
Founded in 2015 by two fathers concerned about screen time, Yoto developed a screen-free connected audio player for children controlled by physical NFC-like cards. After a successful 2019 Kickstarter, the company scaled rapidly—doubling each year from 2020—expanding from a UK-only product to multi-market operations in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and France. The embedded finance stack evolved to match: Tipalti was brought in to automate a previously manual AP process covering 1,200 global suppliers and 500 monthly invoices, while Celigo was used to integrate Shopify, NetSuite, Stripe, and PayPal for global e-commerce operations. Yoto remains a hardware/content DTC brand with no financial services product of its own.
Yoto uses Tipalti for FX and cross-border payouts.
Yoto integrates with Shopify, Mintsoft, Shiphero, Amazon, PayPal, Stripe and eBay.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 5 layers in Yoto's stack: Payments / PSP (Stripe, PayPal and Shop Pay); Unified APIs (Celigo); FX & payouts (Tipalti); Accounting (Shopify, Mintsoft, Shiphero, Amazon and 3 others); Spend / AP (tipalti).
Yoto was founded by Ben Drury and Filip Denker and is founded in 2015, headquartered in London, England, UK.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Yoto 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.