New York fintech Coast has raised 35 million dollars in a round led by Thomvest Ventures, with new investors including Intuit Ventures. The company serves businesses in what it calls the physical economy, such as construction, HVAC, transport and field services. It started with fuel cards and has expanded into corporate cards and bill pay. The new money will go into AI-driven expense automation, broader payment services and partnerships with telematics and fleet management systems.

What it means: Businesses with crews on the road, such as technical contractors, hauliers and builders, share a classic problem: dozens of staff spend on fuel, materials and tolls, and the receipts reach accounts late or not at all. Coast is betting that linking the card to vehicle and job data can check automatically whether a spend makes sense, for example whether the vehicle was actually at the fuel station. In Greece the need is just as big, but with extra requirements: every expense has to match a document reported to myDATA, and electronic payments help with tax obligations. A Greek solution with similar logic would have to match card transactions automatically with suppliers' documents in myDATA and flag gaps before month end. For businesses with fleets, fuel cards with limits per vehicle and per driver are already offered by banks and fuel companies, so the first step is to use the reports they provide. The funding shows investors see value in sectors that digitisation has touched less, where better spending controls can save real money.

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Related service: myDATA integrations

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