Congressman is examining fintech Ramp’s bid to secure a $25 million federal contract.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, baronial affiliate of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, has accomplished an analysis into whether amount administration startup Ramp is accepting best analysis in its bid for a $25 actor government contract.

Connolly beatific a letter to General Services Administration (GSA) Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian ambitious advice and abstracts accompanying to the GSA’s appear affairs to accolade a arrangement for a pilot affairs to Ramp. News of the delving was aboriginal appear by ProPublica.

Among Connolly’s bigger apropos are that Ramp allegedly has “zero federal application experience” and its investors accommodate a cardinal of Trump allies and supporters. Those investors accommodate Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital (founded by Josh Kushner, brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared), articulate Trump adherent 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale, and Jeb Bush, above governor of Florida and brother of above Republican President George W. Bush. Rabois, according to Connolly’s letter, aloft added than $1 actor for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Connolly is requesting several things from the GSA, including a abundant account of all affairs amid any GSA official and any Ramp representative, and all communications amid any GSA official, contractor, or subcontractor and any Ramp representative.

The government’s centralized amount agenda program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. Currently, Citibank and US Bank, two of the nation’s bigger suppliers of acclaim cards, are the official banks of the accepted SmartPay contract.

In April, Ramp’s arch of communications, Lindsay McKinley, accepted to TechCrunch that the startup was “competing in a accepted accretion action for a SmartPay pilot affairs based on the backbone of our solution.”

She claimed that the startup Ramp saw a accessible column on X aggregate by the Department of Government Efficiency, bigger accepted as DOGE, on February 18 that said “the US government currently has ~4.6M alive acclaim cards/accounts, which candy ~90M different affairs for ~$40B of absorb in FY24.”
A above customer, Ramp claims, alien Ramp to GSA a few canicule later.

However, Connolly alleges that Ramp reportedly began contacting entities in the acquittal industry about appropriate coffer identification numbers appropriate to action government payments afore a appeal for advice (RFI) accompanying to the arrangement was about announced.
He additionally claimed that a GSA agent afresh declared that Ramp was the “favorite” to win this business.

Ramp did not accept any animadversion on Connolly’s investigation.
In March, Ramp angled its appraisal to $13 billion afterwards a $150 actor accessory allotment sale. Since its birth in 2019, the startup has aloft over $1 billion in disinterestedness costs and $700 actor in committed debt funding.