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Oban MacTavish

Oban MacTavish is a Canadian-born entrepreneur who is co-founder and chief executive officer of Spade, a New York-based company that enriches card payment data for banks and other card issuers [1]. Raised in Vancouver with time spent in San Francisco as a child, he began trading stocks as a young teenager, took a restaurant job at 16 to fund the habit, and later studied finance in college [2][3]. Before Spade, MacTavish co-founded a vertical software startup in the wealth-management space during college, serving in a business-focused role akin to chief business officer; that company operated for roughly two years and raised about $600,000 to $700,000 before the onset of COVID-19 led him to wind it down [2][3]. He subsequently spent time consulting in financial technology, an experience that led him to found Spade in November 2021 [2][3].

Spade describes its product as "real-time merchant intelligence" for the card ecosystem: it ingests transaction data that issuers receive from card networks or processors and augments it with firmographic information, drawn from a dataset MacTavish says covers 99.9 percent of card-accepting businesses in the United States, along with risk and other insights [2][3]. He emphasizes that the enrichment happens with sub-50-millisecond latency at the 99th percentile, allowing issuers to use the data during authorization rather than only after the fact [2][3]. According to MacTavish, customers include three publicly traded companies and large fintech platforms such as Stripe, and the technology is applied to fraud prevention, authorization decisioning, payments optimization, card-linked rewards attribution, and broader customer analytics [2][3]. He argues that Spade's differentiation from longer-established transaction-enrichment vendors such as Ethoca-type and MX-type providers lies in its use of verified data sourced from state business registries rather than simple name-cleansing, combined with its real-time processing capability [2][3].

By his account, Spade priced its service on a consumption basis, charging issuers fractions of a cent per transaction rather than a flat software subscription, with customers processing hundreds of billions of dollars in card payments annually [2][3]. Following a Series A funding round completed in late 2023, the company had grown to about 18 employees [2][3]. MacTavish states that Spade's operations were, as of the interview, concentrated on U.S. card issuers and U.S. merchant data, with plans to expand into Canada and other geographies [2][3]. He also frames rewards and offers programs as an underappreciated use case, noting that regulatory requirements around advertised cash-back rates make accurate merchant categorization a meaningful cost and compliance issue for issuers [2][3]. Looking ahead, he points to direct merchant-to-issuer connectivity and improved authorization acceptance, rather than fraud prevention alone, as among the more significant developments he expects in payments over the following several years [2][3].

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Insights & ideas

MacTavish argues that raw card transaction data, typically identified only by MCC codes, is insufficient for issuers, and that real-time enrichment with verified firmographic data can materially change business outcomes rather than just improving user experience [1][2]. He emphasizes that Spade differentiates itself from established enrichment vendors by grounding its data in state registries and other verified sources, rather than simply cleaning up merchant names and adding logos [1][2]. A recurring theme in his thinking is speed as a functional requirement, not a luxury, he stresses that sub-50 millisecond latency is what allows enrichment data to be used directly in the authorization stream rather than only after the fact [1][2].

He frames the value proposition around measurable ROI, arguing enriched data can reduce fraud losses, improve authorization rates, and support card-linked offers and rewards attribution, positioning these as core KPIs rather than peripheral benefits [1][2]. MacTavish also holds that any card issuer, across consumer, B2B, fleet, or fuel programs, should want deeper visibility into where cardholders actually spend, reflecting his broader belief that merchant intelligence is foundational infrastructure for the card ecosystem [1][2].

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