Lead Bank Precedent for Column

Lead Bank matters because it shows that acquiring a small bank and rebuilding the stack in house can become a real fintech infrastructure business, not just a niche sponsor bank. Like Column, it owns the charter and exposes its own APIs so fintechs can open accounts, move money, issue cards, and originate loans without stitching together a separate bank, processor, and middleware layer. The big difference is where each one started winning.

• Lead was bought in 2022 by Jackie Reses and other former Square executives, then rebuilt around an API core. That makes it the cleanest precedent for Column, which also took an old community bank and turned it into software driven banking infrastructure instead of a branch led local bank.
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• The customer mix splits the two models. Lead has leaned into lending heavy partners like Affirm and Revolut, with about 68% of 2024 revenue from interest. Column has leaned into neobanks like Mercury and Brex, with a roughly even split between interest income and fee revenue from interchange and transaction usage.
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• Cross River is similar in serving fintechs through APIs, cards, payments, and lending, but it was founded as a fintech infrastructure bank rather than acquired and refactored from an older community bank. That makes Cross River a broader category peer, while Lead is the closer build pattern analog for Column.
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This model is heading toward fewer, larger infrastructure banks that own both the license and the software. Column is positioned to keep taking share where fintechs want one direct banking partner and fast product launches, while Lead shows that the same architecture can also scale into lending, card issuing, and embedded finance at much larger revenue levels.