Cross River Owns Fintech Money Rails
Anthony Peculic, Head of Cards at Cross River Bank, on building a fintech one-stop shop
Cross River is trying to own the full money flow, not just the card at the edge. A fintech may start with a branded debit or credit card, but the harder part is the plumbing behind it, opening the account, approving and funding the loan, pushing money over ACH or real time rails, settling card transactions, and increasingly handling stablecoin flows too. When one bank can run that whole chain through one API stack, the fintech needs fewer vendors and gets to market faster.
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Cards are only one surface area. Cross River also provides deposit accounts, ACH and real time payments, push to card transfers, lending pipelines, and compliance tooling, so a partner like Affirm or a neobank can launch an account, move funds, and extend credit from the same banking partner.
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This is the core difference versus a narrower issuer processor like Marqeta or a middleware BaaS platform. Column wins deals on the same idea, replacing a three vendor stack with one bank led system that directly connects to payment rails, ledger, and compliance under one roof.
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The strategic prize is larger share of wallet per fintech. Cross River already makes money from interchange splits on cards, transaction fees on payments, and interest and origination economics on loans, with net interest income now more than 70% of revenue, which shows why lending and deposits matter as much as issuance.
The market is heading toward bank platforms that can bundle accounts, payments, cards, lending, and compliance into one integration. As more fintechs want fewer counterparties and regulators demand tighter oversight, the winners will be the banks that control the rails, the ledger, and the risk stack together, which is exactly where Cross River is positioned to keep expanding.