Weavr bought payments app Comma and shut it eight months later to go API-only

Weavr is a London-based embedded-finance provider letting software companies plug payments and banking into their products.

That payments belong inside software, not in standalone apps: Comma's app dies so its open-banking rails become an API other software companies embed.

Comma, founded in the UK in 2019, built an open-banking payments app won by a few hundred SME customers; Weavr, a pureplay embedded-finance provider that does not do direct-to-consumer, bought it in March 2023.

About 15 of Weavr's 110 staff worked on Comma. Weavr contemplated teaming with a third party to keep the app running standalone but ruled it out on time constraints partly dictated by supplier contracts. CEO Alex Mifsud: customers really liked it — if it had been a crap product, the decision would have been a no-brainer.

The app closes for all customers on 30 November 2023 with no job losses. Founder Tom Beckenham said the move would leave accounting-sector customers disappointed: 'it's a choice we had to make.' The technology becomes an embedded API inside Weavr's platform.

Weavr's model cannot support end customers directly, so a well-loved consumer app was structurally orphaned the day it was acquired.

The product was good — which made the call harder, not easier: about 15 of 110 staff and a few hundred paying SMEs rode on it.

Reuse beats sunset: the same rails ship as an API feature inside Weavr's platform instead of being wound down with the brand.

Acquiring a consumer-facing product when your model is B2B infrastructure ends one way: kill the app, keep the rails. Better to decide fast than half-support a product your model cannot serve.

The app shut as announced on 30 November 2023 with no job losses, and its technology folded into Weavr's embedded-finance offering. Mifsud said embedded finance was at the 'first step of 100 steps'.