Fifth Third acquires embedded payments fintech Rize

Fifth Third Bank has acquired Arlington, Virginia-based embedded payment platform Rize Money, the bank announced Monday.

Rize, a payment infrastructure and risk management fintech, has annual revenue expected to eclipse $130 million this year. Fifth Third said buying it would support the bank’s existing embedded payments and treasury management businesses.

“This acquisition is another example of Fifth Third’s commitment to leveraging technology and innovation to benefit our customers,” Bridgit Chayt, Fifth Third’s head of wholesale payments, said in a prepared statement. “The addition of Rize Money enhances our existing embedded payment offerings and positions us to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers.”

The bank has made several fintech acquisitions in recent years, including healthcare fintechs Provide in 2021 and Big Data Healthcare this year, as well as sustainability-focused point-of-sale lender Dividend Finance in 2022.

The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and a spokesperson for Fifth Third did not return a request for more information.

“[T]The Embedded Payments team at Fifth Third has been quietly building what may already be the largest embedded finance practice in the industry, and bringing Rize into the fold will help kick that fiery growth into even higher gear.” Rise CEO Justin Howell said so on his LinkedIn page. “The combination of Rize’s technology with Fifth Third’s scale will create an API-driven, fully interoperable technology platform unparalleled in the embedded finance and banking space to help non-banks seamlessly integrate financial capabilities into their product offerings.”

Howell said he and his co-founders started Rize “with a vision to bridge the gap between how customers think about and spend money in everyday life and the opaque, highly regulated world of financial services.”

“Our goal was to break down the barriers between different financial silos and enable financial user experiences that were simple and intuitive,” he said. “From our first conversation, it was clear [Fifth Third Embedded Payments General Manager Tom Bianco] and the Embedded Payments team at Fifth Third shared that vision, and we couldn’t have found a better set of partners to make that vision a reality together at the scale and level of impact that we’ve always dreamed of.”

Howell did not say whether he would have a role at Fifth Third after the deal.