Cross River Bank’s parent company has agreed to acquire branded-wallet specialist Accrue, the institutions announced Tuesday.
The value of the deal was not disclosed – nor was a timeline: Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Cross River said just that “the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.”
Acquiring New York City-based Accrue would bolster Cross River’s customer-loyalty capabilities, letting users earn and track incentives in a way that “offer[s] partners a complete embedded finance stack,” the $8.5 billion-asset bank said.
Accrue’s branded-wallet platform “enables merchants to connect stored value, payments, rewards and customer engagement,” the fintech said.
The company launched in 2021 as a save-now, buy-later platform but has shifted its focus over time.
Cross River, for its part, already touts “embedded financial solutions across accounts, cards, payments, lending, digital assets and agentic commerce.”
“Payments and loyalty are becoming one,” Cross River CEO Gilles Gade said Tuesday in a statement. “Every brand wants its own wallet, and with Accrue, all of our clients can now build one on our platform.”
With the acquisition, Accrue CEO Michael Hershfield will “take on a leadership role building out Cross River’s embedded finance offerings.” The Accrue team is also set to join the bank through the transaction.
“I started Accrue with the belief that financial products would increasingly live inside the brands and experiences customers use every day,” Hershfield said in a statement. “Accrue brings that to life by embedding wallets, payments, stored value and rewards directly into the merchant experience. Cross River shares that vision, and with its technology, scale and global reach, we can take it much further.”
