Ann Arbor based Protean has raised $5.8 million in venture funding, and has officially re-branded their blue tooth enabled payment system to “Stratos”. The goal, Co-founder Thiago Olson says, is to help reflect where the company is headed to next. “It reflects the strength and universality of the vision,” said Olson. “We’re connecting a dumb piece of plastic to the cloud; it has ties to the cloud infrastructure that we’re building.”
Another player has entered the game. Meet Stratos, another startup aiming to disrupt the staid credit card industry by building and producing an all-in-one and connected credit card. The Michigan-based company recently announced its $5.8 million in funding and is charging forward with manufacturing. Stratos was founded in Ann Arbor, Mich. in 2012, and the team recently shifted from R&D to preparing to launch. Production is already underway with the additional raised capital going to help the company accelerate and scale its recruiting and manufacturing. Stratos is hardly the first to announce a connected, all-in-one credit card yet CEO Thiago Olson tells me that he doesn’t see a competitor offering the same set of features.
