Pre-seed
Vortex
Vortex is the US payfac for products where AI agents need to move money.
We run payments, billing, and tax — merchants stay the seller of record, and tax is calculate-and-collect so they file.
Example: a US merchant charges a customer. Vortex takes the payment on Finix, calculates and collects sales tax on the invoice, and the merchant remits.
Who
Shlomo Kabareti. Second-time founder. The bet is him.
Years in merchant services — payfacs, ISOs, restaurant POS. Not a tourist wrapping Stripe.
QA to sole PM and third-in-command at a restaurant POS startup in 15 months. First company at month 19.
Plasma was a bootstrapped restaurant POS built for payfacs, ISOs, and the merchants on those rails. Merchants ran on it — including AI agents for ops, months before incumbents shipped the same thing. He sunset the company to go after the bigger market — payments for the agent economy.
01
QA → ops
YC robotics
02
Sole PM
Restaurant POS
03
Plasma
POS + agents
04
Vortex
Payments
Problem
Before — Stripe, Adyen, and the rest assume a human is the economic actor.
Now — Same rails. A chatbot bolted on. Chargebacks, disputes, and recon still need a team.
Agents can talk about money. They cannot own the stack.
Before
Humans
You run ops
Stripe
Billing
Tax
Now
Bolted on
Chatbot
Stripe
Billing
Tax
Solution
Vortex starts from a different premise: agents will move, hold, reconcile, and dispute money at scale.
Two layers of primitives. One platform.
Agents run the infrastructure. Agents inside products get the building blocks they need.
Platform
Vortex
Platform primitives
Agents operate the stack
Chargebacks · disputes · recon · compliance
Product primitives
Agents spend inside products
Cards · wallets · billing · metering
Why now
Agents are becoming economic actors. The rails they inherit were not designed for them.
A costume on Stripe can accept a card. It cannot give an agent the primitives to run financial ops, or to be a first-class payer inside a product.
That stack has to be rebuilt. Incumbents will not do it first.
Too early
Chatbots on Stripe
Now
Agent-native rails
Too late
Incumbent costumes
Payfac
Most new payment companies are Stripe with a costume.
Vortex is the payfac. Finix is the US rail. Merchants stay seller of record. The public brand is Vortex — not the sponsor behind it. EU acquiring is partner-track, not live.
This is a full payments, billing, tax, and ops stack. We are not MOR.
Tax
Stripe Tax Basic analog: calculate-and-collect. We quote and collect the tax line. The merchant files and remits. We do not take tax liability.
Clearvo is Vortex Tax. Platform Clearvo account plus one Clearvo entity per merchant — origin, registrations, liability. Organization XIII is Vortex’s own tax entity, not a proxy seller.
USA first. Not e-invoicing. Not Peppol. Not MOR.
Clearvo account
Vortex (payfac)
XIII
Vortex
Merchant
Their nexus
Merchant
Their nexus
Business model
Take-rate on money moved. Same motion Stripe used to become a business — volume, not seats.
Not this
SaaS seats. Recurring software.
Not this
Inference bills. Metered chat.
This
%
Take-rate on volume. Can stand alone.
Market
Who buys: teams shipping products where agents need to move money.
USA first. Merchant stays seller of record. Europe is a later rail, not the launch.
Agent products
Developers
US merchants
Vortex Payments rails
More volume · same primitives
What’s real
Not production-ready. That is the honest present tense.
The company is already one thing: Vortex Payments. The slope is the decisions that are hard to reverse — Worker + Postgres, Finix US payfac, Clearvo tax with one entity per merchant, proprietary platform.
What exists is the core design and the first primitives. Forecasts come after that.
Not this
Invented traction
Users we cannot defend in the room.
This
Slope
Design locked · rails chosen
Early. Building. Repeatable in one sentence.
The ask
Pre-seed: $1M on a SAFE.
Founding team. A Brooklyn workspace. Partnership costs. Then seed.
Team
Founding team
Engineer. Merchant ops. First merchants.
Workspace
Brooklyn studio
One room. Three days a week in it.
Partnerships
Partnership costs
Rails, tax, evidence, insurance.