Cross River to buy fintech Accrue, merging payments with loyalty
What's the deal? Cross River Bank's parent company, CRB Group, has agreed to acquire fintech Accrue, the bank said in an October 20 press release. The deal, whose terms were not disclosed, adds branded wallet, stored value, and loyalty rewards technology to Cross River's regulated financial infrastructure.
What each does: Cross River provides embedded financial services across accounts, cards, payments, lending, digital assets, and agentic commerce. Accrue powers customer loyalty at the payment layer, letting shoppers open a branded wallet and earn credit they can spend only with that merchant.
What's the endgame? Once the deal closes, Cross River will let its partners offer customers both payments and loyalty rewards on one platform. “Payments and loyalty are becoming one,” Cross River founder and chief executive officer Gilles Gade said. “Every brand wants its own wallet, and with Accrue, all of our clients can now build one on our platform.”
The hires: Accrue's team will join Cross River, and its founder and chief executive officer, Michael Hershfield, will take a leadership role building out the bank's embedded finance offerings. Separately, Cross River named Lazard Asset ManagementDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → chief executive officer Evan Russo as its new president to help establish the bank as a “trusted infrastructure layer” for payments, banking, digital assets, and AI-enabled finance.
Why now? The acquisition builds on CRB Group's March raise of $50 million, which it earmarked to scale crypto, accelerate AI and global expansion, and launch new products. Gade has described the strategy as “embedded finance 2.0.”
The signal: The deal fits a wider push to fuse payments with customer engagement. Adyen agreed in April to buy loyalty platform Talon.One for €750 million, and Mintoak acquired ICC Loyalty in August — signs that payment providers increasingly see loyalty data as a way to deepen merchant and bank ties, not just move money.
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