APIs · head to head
Increase vs Skyflow

Increase
APIs
Direct banking API for ACH, wires, real-time payments, accounts and cards
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -

Skyflow
APIs
Data privacy vault that holds sensitive records outside your own systems
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Each has a real cost: Increase the published per transaction rates exclude a monthly platform fee that Increase states varies by use case, so the transparent price page cannot produce a total cost and the material part of the deal is still negotiated privately.; Skyflow reported contracts near 195,000 US dollars a year with a platform fee before usage put this out of reach of early stage companies, which are precisely the ones whose architecture is still cheap to change.
- They diverge on capability: Increase covers ACH origination and receipt, Skyflow covers Tokenised storage.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Increase and Skyflow actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (APIs).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Increase
- ACH origination and receipt
- Domestic wires
- Real-time payments
- Bank accounts
- Cards
- Cheques
- Sandbox and simulations
- Audit and reconciliation data
Only in Skyflow
- Tokenised storage
- Polymorphic encryption
- Field level access policies
- Data residency
- Secure functions
- PCI scope reduction
- Detokenisation gateway
- Audit trail
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Increase
- A payroll or treasury product that needs to originate same-day ACH and wires under its own control rather than through a payment processornot Skyflow
- A marketplace that must hold seller balances in ledgered accounts with real account and routing numbersnot Skyflow
- A fintech that wants FedNow and RTP payouts so recipients are paid outside banking hoursnot Skyflow
- An engineering team that needs the underlying return codes and settlement timing visible in order to build correct reconciliation and retry logicnot Skyflow
Skyflow
- A fintech that wants card and bank account data out of its own infrastructure so its application servers leave PCI DSS assessment scopenot Increase
- A company entering India or the EU with data localisation obligations that would otherwise require standing up regional databases and operationsnot Increase
- A health technology business that needs protected health information isolated from the analytics stack while still supporting aggregate reportingnot Increase
- An engineering team that wants support agents to see masked identifiers and payment services to see real ones, enforced centrally rather than in every servicenot Increase
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Increase
- The published per transaction rates exclude a monthly platform fee that Increase states varies by use case, so the transparent price page cannot produce a total cost and the material part of the deal is still negotiated privately.
- Free allowances are deliberately small at ten account numbers and five physical cards, so any programme issuing accounts or cards at volume moves to quoted pricing almost immediately.
- Banking is provided through partner banks, so programme approval, compliance obligations and the ability to launch at all depend on a bank relationship you do not control, and post-Synapse bank risk appetite has tightened considerably.
- The API deliberately exposes payment rail mechanics rather than smoothing them, which is correct engineering but means a team without payments expertise will build reconciliation and return handling wrongly and only discover it when funds go astray.
- Coverage is United States only, so a company with international payout needs runs a second provider and reconciles two ledgers, and the single API argument disappears at the first cross border customer.
Skyflow
- Reported contracts near 195,000 US dollars a year with a platform fee before usage put this out of reach of early stage companies, which are precisely the ones whose architecture is still cheap to change.
- Every read of a protected field becomes a network call to a third party, so latency and an external availability dependency enter paths that were previously local database reads, and outage planning has to account for a vendor you do not control.
- Analytics and joins on vaulted data are constrained; work that was a simple SQL join now happens through secure functions or on tokens, and data teams routinely discover this after the engineering team has committed.
- Unwinding the vault later is a rewrite rather than a migration because tokens are threaded through every service, so the switching cost climbs steadily and the negotiating position at renewal weakens with each release.
- Scope reduction is an architectural claim your own assessor must accept, so the audit saving is real only if the implementation genuinely keeps sensitive values off your systems, and partial implementations that leave a cache or a log line in place deliver the cost without the benefit.
Pricing, plan by plan
Increase
On request- Increase Platform$undefined/month
- Monthly fee quoted by use case and not published
- Next-day ACH origination listed at 0.50 US dollars per transaction
- Same-day ACH origination listed at 2.00 per transaction
Skyflow
On request- Skyflow Data Privacy Vault$undefined/year
- Platform fee plus usage by data subject count
- Priced additionally per data residency region
- PCI Level 1, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA coverage
Which should you pick?
Choose Increase if
- You need ach origination and receipt.
- You work on API, Web.
- You also want domestic wires.
Choose Skyflow if
- You need tokenised storage.
- You work on API, Web, Self-hosted.
- You also want polymorphic encryption.
Questions people ask
- Is Increase or Skyflow better?
- Neither clearly leads. Increase starts at On request and Skyflow at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Increase or Skyflow?
- Increase starts at On request and Skyflow at On request.
- Does Increase or Skyflow run on more platforms?
- Increase runs on API, Web. Skyflow runs on API, Web, Self-hosted.
- What is Increase best used for?
- Increase is most often used for a payroll or treasury product that needs to originate same-day ach and wires under its own control rather than through a payment processor, a marketplace that must hold seller balances in ledgered accounts with real account and routing numbers, a fintech that wants fednow and rtp payouts so recipients are paid outside banking hours, an engineering team that needs the underlying return codes and settlement timing visible in order to build correct reconciliation and retry logic. Of those, a payroll or treasury product that needs to originate same-day ach and wires under its own control rather than through a payment processor and a marketplace that must hold seller balances in ledgered accounts with real account and routing numbers are not what Skyflow is typically brought in for.
- What can Increase do that Skyflow cannot?
- Increase covers ACH origination and receipt, Domestic wires, Real-time payments, Bank accounts. Skyflow covers Tokenised storage, Polymorphic encryption, Field level access policies, Data residency.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Increase: Does Increase publish its pricing?
Partly. Per transaction fees for ACH, wires, RTP, FedNow and cards are listed publicly. The monthly platform fee is not, and it is described only as varying by use case.
Skyflow: Does Skyflow really take my systems out of PCI scope?
It can, if card data never touches your infrastructure and the detokenisation happens at the boundary. Your QSA has to agree the design, so validate the architecture with your assessor before signing.
Increase: Who holds the deposits?
Partner banks, not Increase itself. That relationship determines your programme approval, your compliance obligations and your risk if the bank changes appetite.
Skyflow: What does it cost?
Nothing is published. Reported annual contracts sit around 195,000 US dollars, built from a platform fee plus usage by data subject count and additional charges per data residency region.
Increase: Is it international?
No. Increase covers United States rails only, so cross border payouts require a second provider.
Skyflow: How does it help with data localisation?
Records can be pinned to a specified region, so an Indian or EU residency requirement is met by the vault rather than by you running regional databases and operations teams.
Increase: How is it different from a middleware BaaS platform?
It exposes the rails rather than abstracting them, showing real return codes and settlement timing. That suits teams who understand payments and punishes teams who do not.
Skyflow: Can I still run analytics on vaulted data?
Partly. Aggregates and comparisons are supported through polymorphic encryption and secure functions, but arbitrary joins against other datasets are harder than they were, and this is the most common late surprise.
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- Skyflow vs Column
- Skyflow vs Lithic
- Skyflow vs Volt
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