Kipp, a fintech company that connects card issuers with merchants to approve more transactions, has been acquired by an investor group led by The Lifetime Value Company (LTVCo) and its founders. Kipp announced the deal from New York on October 29, 2026.
The parties did not disclose the price or other financial terms. Kipp said the new owners would give it long-term financial backing to grow in the US, invest in its technology and sign more partnerships with issuers and merchants.
Kipp will keep running as an independent company under its co-founders, chief executive Chanan Lavi and chief technology officer Nir Levy. Alongside the deal it named three payments industry veterans to leadership and advisory roles.
What Kipp built
Kipp targets a narrow but costly problem: card payments that fail because the cardholder lacks sufficient funds or is over the credit limit. For a merchant, such a decline means a lost sale. For the bank that issued the card, it means lost interchange fees and the risk that the customer reaches for a different card next time.
The company's platform sits between the two sides. When an issuer is about to turn down a transaction for insufficient funds, Kipp checks whether the merchant is willing to pay a set premium to have it approved. The issuer decides which transactions and customer segments qualify and what premium it requires to take on the extra risk, and the consumer pays no additional fee.
Kipp says it is not a payment processor but a real-time decisioning layer. Merchants do not need to do any technical integration, and issuers can connect through their processor or directly. Depending on the merchant, the company says it has recovered 20% to 50% of transactions that would otherwise have been declined.
Kipp's website lists debit and credit card use cases for issuers, issuer processors and merchants. It shows a testimonial from Tel Aviv-listed card issuer Isracard and says the company took part in FIS's fintech accelerator and Mastercard's Start Path programme in 2024.
“Our focus now is expanding our US issuer and merchant network and bringing more transactions onto the platform.”
Why LTVCo is buying
LTVCo runs a group of data-driven consumer brands, including the public records search service BeenVerified, vehicle history service Bumper and real estate data site Ownerly. Kipp said that as a merchant, LTVCo has seen first-hand the revenue and customer relationships lost to declined payments. Finovate noted that the deal gives LTVCo a foothold in payments.
LTVCo chief executive and co-founder Josh Levy said every unnecessary decline costs a merchant a sale and costs an issuer the chance to stay a customer's preferred card. He said the group plans to build Kipp for the long term and fund its technology, network growth and partner support.
Lavi said Kipp's priority now is to add US issuers and merchants to its network and bring more transactions onto the platform.
New leadership and the funding
Kipp appointed Jeff Stiefler, a former president of American Express, former chairman of Vantiv and lead independent director of FIS, as executive chairman. Adam Coyle, formerly chief strategy officer at Worldpay and head of strategy and corporate development at Vantiv, joins as strategic advisor. Randy Christofferson, a former president of First USA and of American Express Relationship Services, joins the board.
Finovate reported that Kipp was founded in 2021. Startup databases list a single $5 million seed round, announced in March 2021, and no later rounds. The announcement did not name Kipp's earlier investors, give a headcount or say whether they kept any stake.
Fighting declines in card payments
Kipp's pitch rests on the idea that both sides of a failed payment lose out. In its announcement it described insufficient-funds declines as an expensive problem: the merchant loses the sale and is left with an annoyed customer, while the issuer gives up interchange revenue and may lose its place as the cardholder's first-choice card if the shopper switches to another way to pay.
Declines for insufficient funds sit in a gap between issuers, which carry the credit risk, and merchants, which lose the sale. Kipp's approach creates a price signal, letting a merchant decide that a sale is worth paying extra for and letting the issuer decide whether that payment justifies the risk. With the new owners, Kipp says it will concentrate on getting more US banks and retailers onto that network.
The company did not give figures for how many issuers or merchants currently use its network, or for the volume of transactions it handles, and the announcement set no timeline for its US expansion.
