A group of U.S. senators has called on Synapse’s owners, as well as its bank and fintech partners, to promptly restore customer access to their funds. In a letter made public on Monday, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, along with Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and John Fetterman (D-PA), addressed concerns over customers’ inability to access their money since mid-May.
The letter, directed to W. Scott Stafford, president and CEO of Evolve Bank & Trust, also implicated Synapse’s major investors and partners. The recipients included former Synapse CEO Sankaet Pathak, venture firms Andreessen Horowitz, Core Innovation Capital, and Trinity Ventures, as well as American Bank, AMG National Trust, Trust and Lineage Bank, and fintech companies Copper, Juno, Mercury, Yieldstreet, and Yotta.
Synapse, based in San Francisco, offered a banking-as-a-service platform allowing fintechs to embed banking services into their products. This service enabled features like instant payments for payroll software providers and specialized credit/debit card offerings. Previously, Synapse acted as an intermediary between Evolve Bank & Trust and business banking startup Mercury. However, both Evolve and Mercury decided to eliminate Synapse as the middleman, opting to work directly with each other from last year.
The senators’ letter emphasizes the responsibility of both Synapse’s partners and investors in resolving the issue of missing customer funds, urging immediate action to restore access to customers’ money.