Column

What is Column?

Column is a nationally chartered bank (Column NA, Member FDIC) that offers banking infrastructure through APIs. Developers and fintechs use it to build and fund financial products directly on a bank's own core.

Key features of Column

• Payments: ACH, wire, international wire, realtime, checks, book transfers and stablecoins.
• Bank accounts: checking, savings, trust, subledger, clearing and sweep accounts, FDIC-insured.
• Card programs: debit, credit and prepaid card issuing.
• Lending: loan origination, loan purchase and debt financing.
• Direct network access: connections to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, Swift and card networks.
• Sandbox and docs: test environment with public documentation.

How Column works

Teams create a sandbox account, build against the Column API, and move to production once approved as a program. Column runs its own core and ledger and connects directly to payment networks, so payments settle without a middle bank. The vendor claims $4.5T+ in annual transaction volume and 99.999% uptime.

Who uses Column?

Fintechs, neobanks and platforms building payments, lending or card products use it. The vendor names Brex, Mercury, Ramp and Best Egg as case studies.

Column pricing

Column does not publish pricing. The site directs visitors to contact sales or open a sandbox account.

Column integrations

Column does not publish a connector list on its homepage. It exposes a REST API and connects directly to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, Swift and card networks.

Column alternatives

Increase is another API-first bank infrastructure provider with a similar developer focus. Unit and Moov offer banking-as-a-service and payments APIs through partner banks. Modern Treasury is a payment operations layer that often sits on top of a bank like Column rather than replacing it.