Malte Rau is co-founder and chief executive of Pliant, a Berlin, Germany, company that issues Visa corporate credit cards and spend software to businesses in Europe and the US. Read our review of Pliant.
Lending Jobs at auxmoney and Lendico
His jobs before Pliant were in lending, at the German credit marketplace auxmoney and at Lendico, an online lender for small businesses, and he also worked at Geldspeicher. He co-founded Pliant in 2020 with Fabian Terner, who had also worked at Lendico.
Replacing Wirecard as Card Issuer
The collapse of Wirecard in 2020 left Pliant looking for a new card issuer. "When Wirecard imploded, Visa was there and was very active in helping us find a new issuer," he told FinTech Futures in 2026. "Without Visa, maybe we literally wouldn't have even started, because the money would have run out."
Selling Corporate Cards in the US
He moved to New York City at the end of 2025 to run the US launch, where Pliant's cards are issued by Coastal Community Bank on the Visa network. He describes a corporate card as "essentially a promise to pay, a tool that establishes trust."
