AccessGrid Secures $4.4M to Simplify Wallet-Based Credentials
AccessGrid, a Miami-based startup founded by former QuickNode CTO Auston Bunsen, has raised $4.4 million in seed funding to expand its developer platform that enables mobile wallet-based access credentials for buildings, devices and digital ecosystems.
The round’s investors include Harlem Capital, Spice Capital, Exceptional Capital, CEAS Investments, Ex Ante, Third Sphere, and HF0.
While the funding announcement underscores AccessGrid’s emergence as a next-generation access technology company, Bunsen’s focus is less on labels and more on execution. The company, he explained to SecurityInfoWatch, is positioning itself as a developer-first API platform that removes the friction of traditional access control integrations and brings digital credentials directly into the cloud era.
Expanding capabilities and security reach
With the new capital, AccessGrid plans to broaden its platform and enhance overall security. “We’re really excited about this next chapter,” Bunsen said. “Over the next 12 to 18 months, we’ll be expanding both our platform and our security footprint. On the product side, that means supporting more wallet ecosystems and credential formats — probably Google’s version of DESFire credentials in Google Wallet, multi-family use case, etc. On the security side, we’re likely to get penetration testing and a security disclosure program in place.”
He added that AccessGrid is pursuing more OEM partnerships as a key growth driver. “By the end of this cycle, any company that issues plastic badges today should be able to issue secure, wallet-native credentials through AccessGrid in hours — not months.”
Bunsen described the company’s mission as removing the heavy lift developers and integrators face when working with fragmented access systems. “Historically, getting wallet credentials to work meant juggling multiple SDKs, proprietary schemas and hardware-specific integrations — all of which were brittle and poorly documented,” he said. “Integrators had to talk to hardware vendors, wallet providers and cloud systems separately just to get a single key to work.”
AccessGrid, he explained, collapses that stack of dependencies into one programmable layer. “AccessGrid collapses a lot of that complexity into a useful API that handles the cryptography, key diversification, wallet provisioning protocols and hardware support behind the scenes, so our partners can focus on their user experience, not the plumbing,” he said. “Developers can issue, revoke and audit credentials programmatically, the same way Stripe made it easy to accept payments online.”
Channel strategy and industry alignment
Unlike legacy access control providers, AccessGrid isn’t pursuing a proprietary platform model. Bunsen said the company’s approach is to “meet the industry where it already operates” while introducing modern development tools and integrations.
AccessGrid’s go-to-market strategy combines direct integrations with OEMs and a partner program for access control integrators and software providers. For OEMs, the company enables wallet provisioning to be built directly into existing platforms, creating instant value for their customers. For integrators, AccessGrid offers APIs, documentation and sandbox environments that simplify adding wallet credentialing capabilities without the need for in-house software teams.
Bunsen’s goal, he said, is to make AccessGrid “the default credentialing layer for every modern access system, whether you build hardware, install it or integrate it into your own app.”
A developer-first architecture
Bunsen sees AccessGrid’s openness and composability as its key differentiator in a market long dominated by closed ecosystems. “Our biggest advantage is our developer-first approach,” he said. “We’re not another proprietary platform; we’re an open, API-first infrastructure layer that speaks the same protocols as the rest of the modern internet. That lets us move faster, integrate widely and support the kind of composability that is native to software today.”
“In short,” he added, “we’re doing for physical access what Twilio did for communications or Stripe did for payments — turning something complex and fragmented into a programmable service.”
Standardization remains a hurdle
Despite momentum around wallet-based access, Bunsen acknowledged that adoption barriers persist. “Technically, the biggest challenge is standardization,” he said. “Every wallet ecosystem — Apple, Google, Samsung — implements slightly different protocols, and not every reader in the field is compatible yet. Even further — every single reader tends to have their own flavor of credential structure, bit format and more — that make standardization extremely crucial.”
Bunsen views the company’s work as part of a broader shift toward wallet-based identity across digital and physical spaces. “We think the shift to wallet-based identity is just beginning,” he said. “Commercial buildings are the first obvious use case, but the same technology applies to lockers, elevators, coworking spaces, apartments, gyms, even secure IoT devices, like Eightsleep. Anywhere you currently use a key, card, or fob can be replaced by a digital credential that lives securely on your phone.”
Bunsen argues that wallet-based credentials mark the industry’s first major re-architecture in decades. “For decades, in this industry innovation meant prettier readers or cloud dashboards, but not a true rethink of how credentials are issued, managed and trusted,” he said. “I think wallet-based credentials change that. They’re secure, private and universally available. Our mission is to make it as easy to manage physical security as it is to send an email or push a payment. AccessGrid is how the world upgrades its locks for the smartphone era.”
About the Author
Rodney Bosch
Editor-in-Chief/SecurityInfoWatch.com
Rodney Bosch is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com. He has covered the security industry since 2006 for multiple major security publications. Reach him at [email protected].