The fastest way for a fintech to get a national bank charter this year is not applying for one. It is buying a bank that already has one. TabaPay just became the clearest example yet of that shortcut, closing a $155 million strategic growth financing led by FTV Capital and using it to fund the planned acquisition of Transact Bank, N.A., an OCC-chartered, FDIC-insured bank in Denver, Colorado.
Once regulators clear the deal, Transact Bank will be renamed TabaBank, N.A., and sit inside a newly formed holding company, TabaHoldings, Inc., alongside TabaPay’s existing payments business. TabaPay says the move will let it qualify as a full-service acquirer across all major card networks and consolidate a merchant’s fragmented banking-partner relationships into one account, while giving it direct access to Federal Reserve rails like FedNow and ACH under a single national charter instead of a patchwork of state money-transmitter licenses. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending sign-off from the Federal Reserve and the OCC.
Why it matters: TabaPay’s route is the acquisition path rather than the de novo application other fintechs have taken to the OCC directly, with uneven results. Buying an already-chartered bank sidesteps the years-long de novo review process entirely, trading a slower regulatory queue for acquisition risk, integration cost, and the burden of proving to two regulators simultaneously that a payments processor is fit to run a bank. It is the same logic behind Increase’s decision to buy a community bank rather than build a charter from scratch, and it signals that the acquisition route is becoming a recognized second track alongside direct application, not a one-off workaround.
The original insight here is what TabaPay is actually buying beyond the charter: redundancy. TabaBank will complement its existing partner-bank network rather than replace it, which suggests processors now see owning one chartered bank as insurance against a partner bank pulling out, not a full exit from bank partnerships. Expect more mid-size processors to treat a small charter acquisition as a hedge, not a strategy pivot.
Source: TabaPay
