Dive Brief:
- Denver-based Colorado National Bank is being rebranded Transact Bank to mirror the name of its Latvian parent company, payment processor Transact Pro, the bank’s CEO, Mark Moskvin, said this week.
- Moskvin and his business partner, Maxim Yaroshewsky, bought Colorado National Bank for $9 million in 2018 and boosted its capital with $2 million of their own money, Fintech Futures reported. The bank had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2017.
- The new name is meant to convey "the range of payment processing and card issuing solutions" the bank will be providing, Moskvin said in a press release. That will include bank card acquisition, bank transfers, foreign exchange services, European Union-issued cards, and bank accounts that form a bridge between the U.S. and EU.
Dive Insight:
It's not unheard of for a fintech to buy a bank. LendingClub bought Boston-based Radius Bank in February in a $185 million deal LendingClub CEO Scott Sanborn called a "transformational transaction that allows us to reimagine banking in a way that is free from legacy practices and systems."
Likewise, Transact has retooled the former Colorado National Bank’s technology, partnering with Fiserv for new account and transaction processing, document management and imaging, online banking, business intelligence and risk management, according to the press release.
"We are proud to build on our momentum as an innovative fintech-focused organization with a solid presence in the US and EU," Moskvin said in a statement. "Leveraging technology and expertise from both continents will extend our clients an unparalleled platform for conducting commerce, while lowering cross-border fees."
Colorado National Bank, which has $25 million in assets and was founded in 1862, has one branch in downtown Denver. It had a second branch in Palisade, 230 miles west, at the time of the bank’s 2018 sale. That branch was sold to Grand Junction-based Grand Valley Bank in April 2019, according to BusinessDen.
