After abandoning efforts to buy Synapse’s assets, TabaPay plans to acquire Transact Bank and create TabaBank as it seeks greater control over its banking infrastructure.
TabaPay’s abandoned attempt to buy Synapse Financial has shaped the payments company’s next major move: a push to own a bank outright, rather than rely only on partners, according to chief executive Rodney Robinson.
Speaking at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas, Robinson said the failed Synapse process convinced him that TabaPay needed a fuller banking capability if it wanted to expand its product set. He said the company had looked closely at Synapse’s lending licences, brokerage business and issuing platform, but concluded that the underlying problems were too deep to untangle cleanly.
That view helps explain why TabaPay announced in September that it intends to acquire Transact Bank, a federally chartered, FDIC-insured lender based in Denver. Fintech Futures reported that TabaPay also raised $155 million in growth funding around the same time, underscoring how the company is pairing capital with a structural shift in strategy.
Robinson said the idea for a bank emerged during the Synapse discussions, which stretched on for more than a year before TabaPay later explored buying the company’s assets out of bankruptcy in April 2024, as Forbes reported. He said the accounts were too disordered to justify proceeding, and that acquiring Synapse would have delivered only part of what TabaPay wanted.
If completed, the Transact deal would give TabaPay a bank it can use as a more direct operating platform. Robinson said the lender will be renamed TabaBank and sit under a newly formed holding company, with the business expected to be operational by April after regulatory approval. TabaPay has been working with the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for about two years, he said, and has built a board split evenly between bankers and fintech executives.
The company is not planning to abandon its existing network of partner banks, which Robinson said will remain important for capacity and diversification. TabaBank is expected to keep Transact’s payments-heavy focus while adding a new branch in Palo Alto, California, a move Robinson said would place the firm closer to the venture-backed fintech companies that may need banking partners.
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