Synapse Financial Technologies: company records and group structure

analysisSynapse Financial Technologies, Inc. is a Delaware corporation. Its Chapter 11 docket gives employer identification number 46-5396710 and an address at 21255 Burbank Boulevard, Suite 120, Woodland Hills, California; the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) describes Woodland Hills as its principal place of business. A corporate-data aggregator lists the Delaware company as number 6083706 and shows foreign registrations in Utah, Arizona, Washington, Illinois and Tennessee. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisWashington recorded the company under UBI 604698641 as a foreign profit corporation, with an address at 101 2nd St, Suite 1500, San Francisco, and Michael Rasic and Sankaet Pathak as officers without titles; its last annual report was filed on January 11, 2023 and a statement of termination on May 3, 2024. Tennessee's record of its foreign registration (000858713) shows the status Inactive Revoked (Administrative), with the 2022 annual report, filed on May 1, 2023, as the last filing. ^{5 6 4}

analysisA landlord's 2021 complaint described the company as doing business as SynapseFi, SynapsePay, Synapse Investment Advisors, LLC and TN Synabot Advisors LLC; that is the plaintiff's description, and no retained registry record confirms the trade names. ⁷

analysisAccording to the company's first-day bankruptcy filing, Sankaet Pathak founded the business in 2014 as Synapse Payments LLC, and it took its present name in 2016 when it converted to a corporation; a New Hampshire consent order likewise refers to Synapse Payments LLC as now known as Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc., doing business as SynapseFi. SEC records list Synapse Payments, LLC under Central Index Key 0001638446 at 6745 Lenox Center Ct., Suite 300, Memphis, with a single filing. ^{1 2 3}

analysisThat filing, a Form D of April 1, 2015, describes a Tennessee limited liability company organised in 2014 and lists Pathak as executive officer, director and promoter, and Bryan Keltner, Jeffrey Webb and Douglas Marchant as directors and members; it reports $700,000 of equity sold to ten investors, the first sale on March 16, 2015. ⁴

analysisIn its bankruptcy filings Synapse described itself as a non-bank technology company whose software let financial technology platforms (fintechs) offer the products of partner banks to their own customers, the end users, and as one of the first to pioneer banking-as-a-service. It stated that end users were customers of the fintechs and the partner institutions, not of Synapse, and that it was not in the flow of funds. ^{1 2}

analysisThe company described its scale as follows. Announcing its Series A in September 2018, it said it had processed more than $10 billion in transactions for more than 1.5 million end users and served more than 100 startups and financial firms. In 2024 it told the court that, as of January 2024, it had contracts with more than 20 partner financial institutions and 100 fintechs, that about 10 million end users used its platform, and that at the petition date it engaged about 89 employees and contractors in the United States and about 19 people abroad. ^{3 2}

analysisIn April 2024 Synapse told the court that it wholly owned two subsidiaries, Synapse Credit LLC and Synapse Brokerage LLC. The trustee later summarised their roles: from 2014 Synapse opened demand deposit accounts at banks for about 100 fintech platforms and their end users; from 2020 it built a cash management program with Synapse Brokerage; and it offered secured loans to end users through Synapse Credit. ^{1 2}

analysisSynapse Brokerage LLC was formed in Delaware in 2004 and registered with FINRA from March 2006 under earlier names, MVP Global Trading, LLC and MVP Financial; as MVP Financial its membership was suspended from April 10 to May 8, 2017 after it failed to file its 2016 annual audit report. FINRA records that Synapse acquired the firm in July 2020 and that it did no business until September 2023. BrokerCheck lists it under CRD 137662 and SEC file number 8-67105, with a principal office in Parker, Colorado. Its Form BD schedules show Synapse as owner of 75% or more from June 2020 and Pathak as an indirect owner, through Synapse, in the band of 25% to less than 50%; the schedules give ownership bands, not exact percentages, and do not date Pathak's holding beyond his stated relationship to Synapse as chief executive, established December 2019. ^{3 4 5}

analysisAccording to Pathak's sworn testimony as relayed by the trustee, Synapse Brokerage had not established its planned cash management and money market programs and had deployed only a sweep network at American Deposit Management Company, used to enlarge FDIC coverage and to earn interest shared among Synapse, the fintechs and end users. ^{2 6}

analysisSynapse Credit LLC, doing business as Synapse (NMLS 1971454), is a Delaware company that Synapse said it set up around 2019 to hold state lending licences and offer end users loans, typically secured by restricted cash; it had no employees. Connecticut licensed it as a small loan lender from September 15, 2020. Washington registered it in March 2020, listing Pathak and Rasic as officers; the registration was terminated by a statement filed on December 3, 2024. ^{7 8 9 10 11}

analysisAnother company, Synapse Money LLC, was registered in Washington from November 2019 to January 2021 at the same San Francisco address as Synapse and Synapse Credit. The shared address and name are the only documented link; no record shows who owned it. ^{12 8 13}