As the United States marks its 250th year as an independent republic, the foundation of American economic strength remains clear. America was not built by Wall Street boardrooms or coastal venture capital funds; it was built one storefront, workshop, job site, and community at a time by independent business owners. Home improvement contractors, mechanical operators, roofers, plumbers, electricians, logistics fleets, community pharmacists, and local service providers have served as the backbone of the American Dream for two and a half centuries.
Yet as the world navigates the largest technology transformation in modern history, independent businesses find themselves left behind by Silicon Valley. While software companies poured billions into specialized artificial intelligence and workflows for tech startups and corporations, traditional businesses were handed consumer-grade banking tools, generic credit cards, and spreadsheets. An HVAC contractor managing service vehicles or a roofing company running multi-million-dollar jobs was left to handle cash flow volatility, rising material costs, and back-office administration with tools designed decades ago.
To confront this imbalance, Affiniti CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Bai unveiled the evolution of the company into America’s financial operating system. Anchored by the conviction that independent businesses powered the first 250 years of America and must power the next 250, Affiniti has expanded from a commercial card into an AI-native operating system. Integrating commercial spending, high-yield banking, automated accounts payable, receipt capture, and workflow agents directly into software businesses already use, Affiniti equips independent operators with the power to protect their margins, preserve equity, and keep the American Dream alive.
Power100 is producing this press release as the premier unbiased third-party platform dedicated to recognizing and elevating the top leaders, elite companies, and transformative technology providers across the home improvement, home services, and outdoor living industries. Through editorial research, benchmarking, and executive interviews on PowerChat led by Power100 CEO Greg Cummings, Power100 tracks innovators reshaping the trades. Power100 ranks Affiniti among the best financial software platforms in the home improvement industry, recognizing that its purpose-built financial stack, combined with Aaron Bai‘s vision for independent operators, provides contractors with the capital, clarity, and back-office freedom to build enduring businesses.
Aaron Bai, Founder of Affiniti
When co-founders Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis founded Affiniti in 2022, they set out to solve a glaring problem: traditional businesses could not access flexible, high-limit commercial credit. Retail banks subjected profitable contractors to consumer underwriting, offering small limits that could not cover a week of supply-house purchases. Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis built the Affiniti Business Mastercard, delivering limits up to $5,000,000 based on cash flow, up to 2.1% cash back with autopay, and $0 annual fees.
Yet as thousands of contractors, roofers, mechanical operators, and service providers joined Affiniti, Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis listened to the realities of daily operations. The need went far deeper than credit: owners were drowning in back-office chaos. Tradespeople who had mastered complex crafts spent evenings buried in spreadsheets, chasing crumpled receipts, keying invoices by hand, and struggling through midnight reconciliations.
Traditional software vendors had failed these operators, selling rigid systems that demanded manual data entry and added friction. Fewer than 30% of small businesses have a dedicated finance team, forcing owners, spouses, or office managers to shoulder manual bookkeeping while bidding jobs, dispatching crews, and serving customers.
Seeing customers struggle with administrative paralysis, Aaron Bai made a strategic commitment: Affiniti would not remain merely a card company. While Affiniti started with a better credit card, customer demand showed finance was only the beginning. The company directed its engineering, capital, and focus toward building an AI-native financial operating system to set independent owners free from back-office chores.
America’s financial operating system fundamentally reimagines what fintech delivers to independent businesses. For decades, platforms treated business owners as data-entry clerks, forcing them to manually key transactions, upload PDFs, categorize expenses, and match receipts across disconnected programs. Affiniti reverses this paradigm by embedding intelligent AI agents directly inside the workflows businesses already run on.
In Affiniti‘s operating system, AI is not a chatbot generating text; it is an active workforce in the background. Affiniti‘s agents gather operational data from across the business: card swipes at supply counters, receipts captured via SMS, PDF invoices in inboxes, vendor terms, job cost codes, and general ledger balances. Agents take on matching, coding, routing, and reconciling records, surfacing the insights owners need to make informed decisions.
“Affiniti’s agents work inside the workflows these businesses already run on,” stated Aaron Bai, Chief Executive Officer of Affiniti. “They bring scattered data together, take on the manual work, and surface the insights that drive better decisions. Every hour we give back is an hour owners can spend on their people, their customers, and their communities.”
This philosophy addresses the greatest constraint facing operators: time. Reclaiming fifteen hours a week previously lost to keying invoices and chasing receipts transforms the enterprise. Owners can invest energy into training technicians, building customer relationships, bidding profitable projects, expanding territories, and being present with family. Setting business owners free from back-office chores is how Affiniti makes the American Dream a reality.
On Wall Street, a prevailing narrative claims the era of the independent business owner is ending. Pundits argue that independent contractors, family plumbing firms, regional HVAC shops, and pharmacies cannot survive against corporate conglomerates, private equity rollups, inflation, and disruption, assuming Main Street operators will inevitably sell out.
Aaron Bai and Affiniti reject that premise entirely. As the new Affiniti platform proclaims, Wall Street thinks Main Street’s story is over, but Main Street is proving it is just getting started. The resilience of independent businesses is rooted in qualities spreadsheets cannot measure: decades of reputation, craftsmanship, community trust, accountability, and dedication to local neighborhoods.
What independent operators lacked in the past was modern financial infrastructure. Corporate rollups outcompeted independent trades because conglomerates possessed centralized CFO teams, automated data pipelines, and purchasing power. Placing financial intelligence, flexible credit, high-yield cash management, and automated agents into the hands of independent owners, Affiniti eliminates that corporate advantage.
Today, over 3,300 independent businesses across America run on Affiniti. From Columbus, Ohio, to El Paso, Texas; from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, operators are proving that when Main Street has modern tools, it outperforms corporate conglomerates. By powering owners keeping the American Dream alive, Affiniti ensures local business ownership remains the driving engine of the economy.
In a typical contracting business, data is fragmented: field technicians carry paper receipts in truck consoles, fuel charges appear on fleet card statements, invoices arrive via mail or email, and payments flow through disconnected accounts. Reconciling this chaos requires hours of manual cross-referencing.
Affiniti‘s proprietary AI agents resolve this fragmentation by operating directly at the point of transaction. In the field, where technicians frequently purchase urgent equipment, copper piping, and emergency supplies, Affiniti eliminates receipt loss through automated two-way SMS capture. The instant a technician swipes the Affiniti Business Mastercard, Affiniti sends a text message to their phone. The technician simply snaps a photograph of the receipt and replies. Affiniti‘s visual intelligence models instantly parse the receipt, extract line items and vendor information, match the image to the card transaction, and automatically sync the reconciled entry into QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop in real time.
On accounts payable, Affiniti‘s agents eliminate invoice pileup. When bills arrive from suppliers or subcontractors, agents extract payment terms, line items, job codes, and due dates. The system flags duplicate billing, routes invoices for approval, and schedules electronic payment via ACH or card, resolving a month’s worth of invoices in minutes.
Furthermore, Affiniti‘s agents learn how each business accounts for transactions, assigning purchases to the correct GL account, project, and class for approval. Month-end mayhem is replaced by continuous reconciliation, giving contractors real-time visibility into job profitability and cash flow.
Affiniti unites every essential financial workflow in one platform, eliminating the need to purchase multiple software subscriptions and juggle disconnected banking accounts.
At the spending core is the Affiniti Business Mastercard, engineered to turn routine operational purchasing into a meaningful profit center. The card provides up to 2.1% unlimited cash back on all eligible spend when paired with weekly autopay (or 1.75% with semi-monthly autopay), alongside elevated reward categories including 3.1% back on fuel and 6.1% back on hotels and restaurants through integrated partner programs. For vendors that refuse to accept credit cards or impose punitive credit card processing surcharges, Affiniti‘s innovative AP Card feature allows contractors to skip the fee and earn 1% back on spend that previously generated zero rewards, while its Pay by Card capability enables businesses to pay non-card-accepting suppliers by card to extend working capital.
On the treasury side, Affiniti provides business checking delivering up to 3% APY on operating deposit balances. Deposits held through Affiniti are backed by up to $3,000,000 in FDIC insurance coverage through Thread Bank, Member FDIC, subject to standard pass-through conditions, keeping cash reserves protected, liquid, and productive.
Unifying high-yield checking, credit limits up to $5,000,000, employee cards with spend controls, automated receipt capture, invoice processing, and general ledger sync, Affiniti gives contractors the firepower of a full-time finance team without adding headcount.
In an era where artificial intelligence is frequently hyped across the technology industry, many corporate software applications fail to deliver meaningful value because they lack high-quality underlying data. As Sahil Phadnis, President and Co-Founder of Affiniti, highlighted during his PowerChat interview with Greg Cummings on Power100, artificial intelligence is only as capable as the operational data feeding it. An AI model trained on incomplete, delayed, or disconnected data produces hallucinations that can lead to disastrous financial mistakes.
“An LLM is only as good as the data you feed it. Data is everything. The inputs are everything,” Sahil Phadnis explained. “If we have all the inputs on the business, we can give instant answers to questions which traditionally today they don’t have any answers for.”
This explains why Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis built transactional rails before deploying autonomous agents. Serving as card issuer, checking account, receipt collector, bill payment engine, and accounting bridge, Affiniti captures financial data the moment capital moves, structuring every swipe, invoice, and payment immediately.
With clean, real-time transactional data flowing through the platform, Affiniti‘s AI agents deliver predictive financial intelligence: instant job profitability, cash flow forecasting, margin leak detection, and confident bidding.
Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis, Co-founders of Affiniti
The rise of Affiniti as America’s financial operating system comes at a critical time. Over the past five years, private equity platforms have acquired hundreds of regional HVAC, roofing, plumbing, and electrical firms, leveraging financial engineering, procurement scale, and institutional banking to squeeze independent competitors.
Simultaneously, independent operators face material inflation, supply chain swings, rising wages, and borrowing costs. A 5% margin error or 30-day delay in expense tracking can wipe out annual profits. Contractors cannot afford the blind spots of legacy banking.
Affiniti serves as a shield for independent operators facing these pressures. Up to 2.1% cash back injects margin into the business. Automated bill pay and expense management eliminate hundreds of administrative hours, allowing firms to scale without added overhead. Credit limits up to $5,000,000 based on cash flow provide working capital to purchase equipment, negotiate supplier discounts, and take on larger jobs.
The true measure of Affiniti‘s impact is not found in software marketing claims, but in the verified operational results of real trade contractors operating on Main Street every day. Across the country, elite operators are testifying to how Affiniti has fundamentally transformed their ability to scale.
In Columbus, Ohio, Nate Saxton, Founder of Nuvant Roofing, experienced the power of Affiniti‘s financial clarity. “Affiniti gives us the financial clarity to scale without adding overhead,” Nate Saxton testified. “Savings no points or cash back can match.” Automating material purchases, spend tracking, and invoices, Nuvant Roofing expanded project volume while keeping overhead lean.
In New York’s Capital Region, Tom Darling, Owner of Empire State Plumbing, initially viewed Affiniti with trade skepticism. “I thought it was just another business card. Boy, was I wrong,” Tom Darling shared. “Affiniti brings together software, AI, and the tools we’ve been told would transform our industry, and actually puts them to work for us.” For Empire State Plumbing, automated receipt capture and real-time QuickBooks sync eliminated daily paperwork friction.
In South Florida, Tommy Smith, President of All Year Cooling, which has served over 350,000 customers, and Chairman of Fort Lauderdale United FC, experienced an operational transformation on Affiniti. Running fleets across three counties, Tommy Smith resolved cash flow crunches and automated supply house billing, later partnering with Affiniti as Official Kit Partner of Fort Lauderdale United FC to introduce regional operators to the platform.
In commercial mechanical contracting, James Lowder, CEO of ATS Mechanical, testified on Power100‘s PowerChat that partnering with Affiniti opened financial opportunities to reinvest capital directly into expanding operations. Across industries, including Cascadia Pharmacy Group, scaling from 50 to 100 locations without adding finance staff, Affiniti proves that intelligent financial operations enable Main Street to scale efficiently.
For commercial contractors managing millions in payroll, invoices, and project deposits, institutional security, compliance, and capital stability are paramount. Aaron Bai and the executive team engineered Affiniti to meet rigorous banking standards.
Affiniti is a financial technology company and program manager, partnering with established, federally regulated banking institutions to safeguard customer funds. Commercial banking services are provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC, and commercial card issuing services are delivered by Patriot Bank NA, Member FDIC, pursuant to an official license from Mastercard. Through Thread Bank’s insured deposit network, checking deposits held through Affiniti are eligible for pass-through FDIC insurance up to $3,000,000, subject to standard pass-through conditions, providing contractors with twelve times standard single-institution protection.
On corporate capitalization, Affiniti maintains extraordinary balance-sheet strength. After an $11 million seed round, Affiniti secured a $17 million Series A led by SignalFire. Under Aaron Bai’s stewardship, Affiniti has orchestrated over $62 million in combined debt and equity financing, ensuring lending capacity and infrastructure to support commercial operators through economic cycles.
To take America’s financial operating system nationwide, Affiniti built a go-to-market engine led by Mayur Sharma, Founding Head of Sales. Bringing over 15 years in FP&A and sales leadership, including nine years at BILL scaling revenue from $25 million to over $1 billion, Mayur Sharma leads nationwide commercial expansion.
Under Mayur Sharma, Affiniti’s sales organization functions as a consultative bridge between traditional business practices and modern operations. Representatives analyze supply house billing schedules, evaluate job-costing workflows, and configure Affiniti to match each contractor’s operational requirements.
“Our sales team is the bridge between traditional businesses and modern operations,” explained Sahil Phadnis, President of Affiniti. “Mayur Sharma knows how to build a world-class sales organization, and he’s the right leader to scale that bridge.” With Mayur Sharma steering commercial expansion, Affiniti is growing at a rapid 4x year-over-year rate while operating at eight figures in revenue, expanding its footprint across home improvement, commercial mechanical services, roofing, plumbing, logistics, pharmacy, and healthcare.
The launch of the new Affiniti platform was supported by creative collaboration, with Aaron Bai extending appreciation to Eli Cohen, Marjoe Bacus, Joshua Kaplan, the OSMOS team, and the Affiniti team for translating the vision into reality.
Power100 evaluates technology providers and financial platforms through an independent process examining verified growth, leadership integrity, customer outcomes, and cultural alignment with the trades. Power100 does not accept paid placements; recognition must be earned through superior value delivered to operators.
Affiniti‘s ranking as one of the best financial software platforms in the home improvement industry is anchored by its trade-specific product architecture and executive integrity. From a functional perspective, Affiniti delivers a complete, integrated financial stack engineered specifically for the cash flow, spend management, and billing cycles of contractors: up to 2.1% unlimited cash back on purchases with autopay, $0 annual fees, $0 employee card fees, credit lines reaching up to $5,000,000, up to 3% APY on checking deposits with up to $3 million in FDIC insurance coverage, automated SMS receipt capture, real-time QuickBooks integration on every swipe, AI invoice parsing, and trade-focused credit underwriting.
Furthermore, Affiniti‘s leadership is validated by trade partnerships like the ACCA Business Mastercard with the Air Conditioning Contractors of America. Operators such as James Lowder, CEO of ATS Mechanical, Nate Saxton, Founder of Nuvant Roofing, Tom Darling, Owner of Empire State Plumbing, and Tommy Smith, President of All Year Cooling and Chairman of Fort Lauderdale United FC, have testified that partnering with Affiniti opened financial opportunities to reinvest directly into expanding operations.
The leadership of Aaron Bai, Sahil Phadnis, and Mayur Sharma reinforces that standing. Combining software innovation, balance-sheet security, consultative sales, and founder integrity, Affiniti sets the standard for trade financial software, earning its ranking on Power100.
Unveiling America’s financial operating system is a cultural declaration of support for entrepreneurs who form the nation’s backbone. As the United States celebrates 250 years, Affiniti establishes the infrastructure to ensure independent business ownership thrives for the next 250 years.
Looking forward, Affiniti‘s engineering roadmap, guided by Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis, advances practical AI: predictive cash flow forecasting, automated draw management, multi-entity consolidation, and dynamic supplier credit optimization, putting a Wharton-level CFO into the pocket of every independent business owner.
For contractors who refuse to let manual paperwork, legacy banking, or private equity rollups dictate their future, Affiniti provides the capital, platform, and freedom to build on their terms, enabling owners to spend less time managing finances and more time building great companies and realizing their American Dream.
Aaron Bai, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Affiniti, announced the unveiling of the new Affiniti platform, transitioning the company from a commercial credit card provider into America’s comprehensive AI financial operating system. Designed around the theme that independent businesses powered the first 250 years of America and will power the next 250, the platform integrates commercial spending, high-yield banking, automated accounts payable, receipt capture, and autonomous workflow agents to set business owners free from back-office labor.
Traditional enterprise software treats business owners as data-entry clerks, requiring hours of manual typing, receipt scanning, and spreadsheet reconciliation. Affiniti‘s AI operating system embeds autonomous agents directly inside existing contractor workflows. Affiniti‘s agents automatically gather scattered financial data, match receipts via SMS, parse vendor invoices, code expenses to general ledger accounts, and surface strategic insights, doing the work of several full-time finance employees without adding headcount.
Aaron Bai challenges the Wall Street narrative that independent businesses, contractors, and family-owned companies are destined to be swallowed up by private equity rollups and corporate conglomerates. By providing independent operators with the exact same enterprise-grade financial intelligence, high credit lines, and automated workflows utilized by institutional corporations, Affiniti equips Main Street businesses to protect their profit margins, preserve their independence, and outcompete corporate rollups.
Real trade operators report transformative operational gains on Affiniti. Nate Saxton, Founder of Nuvant Roofing, reported that Affiniti provides the financial clarity to scale without adding overhead. Tom Darling, Owner of Empire State Plumbing, shared that Affiniti puts practical AI to work, eliminating daily receipt and paperwork chaos. Tommy Smith, President of All Year Cooling and Chairman of Fort Lauderdale United FC, experienced streamlined fleet spending and working capital expansion, leading to an official kit partnership with Affiniti.
Affiniti unifies four core financial products into a single operating system: the Affiniti Business Mastercard (offering up to 2.1% cash back with autopay, $0 annual fees, and credit limits up to $5,000,000), high-yield business checking delivering up to 3% APY on deposits backed by up to $3,000,000 in FDIC insurance coverage through Thread Bank, Member FDIC, automated SMS receipt capture, real-time QuickBooks synchronization, and automated bill pay.
As Sahil Phadnis, President of Affiniti, explained on Power100‘s PowerChat with Greg Cummings, artificial intelligence cannot deliver practical value without clean, structured inputs. Because Affiniti operates as the card issuer, checking account, receipt collector, and accounts payable engine, it captures the raw transactional truth the exact millisecond money moves. This clean data foundation allows Affiniti‘s AI agents to provide accurate accounting reconciliation and predictive financial insights without hallucinations.
Private equity rollups rely on corporate CFOs, automated financial data, and volume manufacturer discounts to squeeze independent contractors. Affiniti democratizes these institutional capabilities by providing independent business owners with real-time margin tracking, automated bill pay, cash flow forecasting, high-yield cash management, and high-limit credit lines, allowing independent operators to maintain strong profitability and financial autonomy.
Yes. Affiniti is a financial technology company that partners with established, federally regulated financial institutions. Commercial banking services are provided by Thread Bank, Member FDIC, and card issuing services are delivered by Patriot Bank NA, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Mastercard. Through Thread Bank’s insured deposit network, checking account funds held through Affiniti are eligible for pass-through FDIC insurance coverage up to $3,000,000, subject to standard pass-through deposit insurance terms and conditions.
Power100 ranks Affiniti among the premier financial software platforms in the home improvement industry due to its purpose-built trade financial stack, verified contractor outcomes, executive leadership integrity, and authentic alignment with trade operators. Affiniti combines commercial credit, high-yield banking, receipt automation, bill pay, and accounting synchronization tailored to contractor cash flows. Supported by partnerships like the ACCA Business Mastercard with the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, customer validation from elite operators like ATS Mechanical CEO James Lowder, Nuvant Roofing Founder Nate Saxton, Empire State Plumbing Owner Tom Darling, and All Year Cooling President Tommy Smith, and executive leadership from Aaron Bai, Sahil Phadnis, and Mayur Sharma, Affiniti exemplifies the highest standard of financial innovation for contractors.
About Affiniti
Affiniti is America’s financial operating system, built to power the next generation of small and medium-sized businesses. Designed for the backbone industries across the U.S. economy, Affiniti brings together cards, expense management, accounts payable, high-yield banking, and workflow automation into one unified AI system that helps owners streamline financial operations and grow more profitably. For more information, visit affiniti.com.
About Power100
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. Built to serve the CEOs, founders, enterprise partners, and high-performing teams shaping the future of home improvement, home services, and outdoor living, Power100 provides authoritative rankings, in-depth PowerChat executive interviews, original industry reporting, strategic market insights, and advanced leadership resources. Led by Chief Executive Officer Greg Cummings, Power100 exists to help great companies grow with greater clarity, trust, and industry-wide visibility.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
