Runtime vs Footprint

Footprint and Runtime at a glance

Footprint is an identity and risk operations company. It unifies KYC, KYB, fraud detection, authentication, and secure vaulting, and offers Percy, an AI agent that works as a risk analyst: alert triage, evidence collection, document extraction, and first drafts of SAR narratives.

Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment teams. From payment ops to risk, compliance, and support, anyone on the team can build agents that work their queues on their own computers inside your cloud, called from Slack, Teams, email, SMS, or voice, with approvals and a full audit trail.

Footprint is for risk and compliance teams that want identity and a risk analyst agent from one vendor. Runtime is for fintechs that want every team that touches a transaction on one agent platform.

How they differ

Risk is one of four teams on the case

A risk alert is often part of a bigger story. A single stuck payment touches support, payment ops, finance, and risk or compliance, and today each team investigates it separately in different tools. Footprint goes deep inside risk operations. Runtime gives all four teams one investigation and one record.

Land like a vertical tool, then expand

Runtime starts the way a specialist vendor does: one team, one sharp use case, such as alert triage or onboarding reviews. Because every agent runs on the same harness and shares one governed memory, the next agent for payment ops or finance builds on what the first one learned. Rain replaced $250k in vendor spend with Runtime.

Your cloud, your models

Footprint runs as a hosted platform with vendor-managed models. Runtime agent computers run in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account, or fully self-hosted. You choose the models, including open-weight models in your cloud for PCI and PII work, and card numbers and SSNs are stripped from prompts and logs.

Built from your SOPs, with an engineer

Footprint's risk agent works out of the box. Runtime agents are built from your own SOPs with a forward-deployed AI engineer who has built payment and risk systems. The FDE maps your processes, builds the first agents with your team, and sets up the guardrails and approvals.

Where Footprint is stronger

• Identity infrastructure. KYC, KYB, authentication, and secure vaulting are built in.
• Out-of-the-box risk analyst. Percy handles alert triage, evidence collection, and SAR narrative drafts without building from SOPs.
• Fraud detection. Part of the core product.
• One vendor for identity and risk ops. Fewer integrations if that's your whole scope.

Which should you choose

Choose Footprint if

• You need identity verification, KYC/KYB, and vaulting from one vendor
• Your main bottleneck is risk and compliance alert review
• You want an opinionated, purpose-built risk analyst agent
• Other teams aren't in scope for agents yet

Choose Runtime if

• You want risk, compliance, payment ops, finance, and support on one platform
• Agents need to work across your ledger, processor, bank files, and tickets
• Data and models have to stay in your cloud
• You need approvals on money movement and an audit trail your sponsor bank will accept

Running both works well: Footprint for identity and vaulting, Runtime for the operations work around it.

Frequently asked questions

Is Footprint good for fintech risk and compliance?

Yes. Footprint unifies KYC, KYB, fraud detection, authentication, and vaulting, and its Percy agent works as a risk analyst on alert triage, evidence collection, and SAR narrative drafts. Runtime is the better fit when you also want payment ops, finance, and support agents on the same platform.

Can Footprint replace my KYC vendor and Runtime replace my analysts?

They do different jobs. Footprint provides identity verification and vaulting. Runtime connects to the KYC vendors you already use and lets your teams build agents from their SOPs, so the work of analysts you were about to hire gets done with approvals and a full record.

What is the best Footprint alternative for payment companies?

If identity verification and risk alert review are the whole scope, Footprint is a strong option. If you want one agent harness across risk, compliance, payment ops, finance, support, and onboarding, in your own cloud, Runtime is built for that.

Can I use Footprint and Runtime together?

Yes. Footprint can handle identity verification and vaulting while Runtime agents work the downstream cases across your ledger, processor, and tickets, with approvals before any money moves.