Case study

Contractor payments for the agentic era.

Work went project-based and agent-driven. The infrastructure that pays for it didn't follow. So we built it: chat-native project finance on regulated open banking and stablecoin rails, where one client invoice flows in and many compliant payouts flow out, callable by people and AI agents alike.

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55+projects delivered by Rafiki, validating the problem
30+projects transacting through the platform every month
Under 2 mintypical settlement, bank-to-bank and cross-border
MCP-nativecallable by people and AI agents
The flow

A single client payment fans out to every contributor, each settled on the rail that's fastest and cheapest for them. Watch it move.

Petl Pay · Agentic finance

One payment in. Many payouts out.

Read and act on your project finances from anywhere. It all funnels into one Petl core that handles multi-party invoicing, then settles every contributor on the right rail.

Petl Pay is non-custodial software. Settlement is executed by licensed third-party providers. Figures are illustrative.
PetlPay run · CoHabs · May 2026
This run$6,920.00
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Query this pay run in plain language, or generate a pay link.
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Work logged across Claude, ChatGPT, Slack & WhatsApp, consolidated into one pay run. Petl Pay is non-custodial software; settlement is executed by licensed third-party providers. Figures illustrative.
The shift

Work went project-based. Payments didn't follow.

Modern teams are assembled from contractors, subcontractors, fractional specialists, and now AI agents. They ship outcomes, not timesheets. But the money rails underneath still assume a salaried employee, or a single freelancer with one account. Splitting a client payment across a project team, staying compliant, and settling across borders is still slow and manual. As agents start doing real, billable work, that gap becomes a wall.

The build

One payment in. Many payouts out.

Petl is chat-native project finance. Work is logged from WhatsApp, Slack, Claude or ChatGPT. Petl turns it into one clean client invoice, splits it across every contributor, and settles each on the right rail. People and AI agents can run the entire flow, from logging work to triggering payouts, over MCP.

The engineering

We built the rails between open banking, stablecoin, and chat-based finance.

Underneath Petl sits regulated financial infrastructure that we built and own. We engineered the backend, the orchestration, and the compliance layer so a single invoice can fan out to many contributors, each paid on whichever rail is fastest and cheapest, automatically.

Open banking

Instant, account-to-account settlement across the UK and EU, with no card networks in the middle.

Instant bank-to-bank
Regulated stablecoin

Near-instant cross-border payouts to USD, EUR, ZAR and across LATAM, on regulated rails.

Near-instant cross-border
Secured

WorkOS authentication with permissions enforced at the rail, so every action is authorised before money moves.

WorkOS auth
Agent-ready

Exposed as an MCP server and deployed as a Claude connector and ChatGPT app, so people and agents reach Petl where they work.

MCP, connectors and apps
Agent-native

Every payment action, callable in plain language.

This is what makes Petl built for what's coming. We embedded the payment mechanisms directly into the product and exposed them through an MCP server with WorkOS authentication. A person or an AI agent can, in natural language, list projects, check a wallet balance, and query a Pay by Bank or stablecoin payment link, without leaving the chat. The agent isn't simulating a payment. It's talking to real, regulated rails. Money movement becomes something software can request as easily as a database query.

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Trust & compliance

Regulated rails. Compliance built in.

Moving money for distributed teams means compliance cannot be an afterthought. It is wired into both settlement paths.

Stablecoin settlement

Every stablecoin payment runs full KYC, KYB and AML checks before any funds move.

Open banking rails

Open banking payments settle over regulated, licensed, secure rails, with no card networks in the middle.

See currencies, settlement times and payment details in the Petl Pay FAQ →

What teams say

Agencies and founders, getting paid.

“The simplicity of the platform is what strikes me. It’s so easy to onboard, collaborate, manage and pay other agencies or freelancers.”
Daniel
Founder, Tov Studios
“We’ve been using Petl Pay for international client projects and payments from the US and Europe. The speed of payments and ease-of-use within the platform is really impressive.”
Jamie
Founder, Melted Pavement Creative Agency
“The Petl team has gone above and beyond to create something that helps financial operations for our agency. Really great when working with and paying freelancers on projects, and brilliant for taking payments from clients in the US.”
Kath
Co-Founder, The BillyBo Group
The proof

Spun out of real money moving.

Petl didn't start as a pitch deck. Rafiki Works delivered 55+ projects through market exploration and hands-on execution of payments across the contractor economy and distributed teams, validating the problem before a line of Petl was written. Petl has since supported over 30 international projects within its first three months of private beta. It's backed by the Visa Fintech Accelerator and the Baobab Network, with SEIS Advanced Assurance confirmed.

What's next

The payment layer for the agentic economy.

As more work is scoped as projects and more of it is executed by agents, something has to be the rails that pay for outcomes, compliantly, anywhere, callable by software. That's what Petl is building toward: canonical payment infrastructure for project-based and AI-driven work. The Stripe for the way work happens next.

Coming next: native tax calculations and a direct HMRC integration, so filing happens where the money already moves.

This is what we build

From problem to live, regulated, agent-ready software.

Petl is what happens when our team takes an idea all the way: real rails, real compliance, callable by AI.

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