Why MVB Financial’s fintech strategy includes strategic acquisitions

On April 19, MVB Financial’s acquisition of Trabian Technology signifies MVB’s latest play in its strategy to build out tech products to accelerate its own growth and better serve its fintech clients. Trabian specializes in building integrations and digital products for fintechs.

MVB Financial’s core business is MVB Bank and the banking-as-a-service offering it provides to fintech companies. Fintech clients contribute a good chunk to MVB’s deposits. According to its first quarter report for 2021, MVB Bank’s non-interest-bearing deposits were $837.2 million as of March 31, 2021 — 37.8 percent of its total deposits and a 116 percent increase from March 2020. Fintech deposits totaled $744.6 million — an increase of almost 300 percent from March last year, pushing MVB to become the 21st largest bank in the U.S. based on number of accounts.

Matt West, chief strategy officer at MVB Financial, says Trabian’s expertise will help MVB improve its BaaS offerings so its fintech clients can build better digital products. West anticipates Trabian’s use in a host of cases, such as helping challenger banks or embedded finance clients add mobile remote deposit capture (mRDC), direct deposit or bill pay into their offerings. He says there’s also potential for Trabian to serve in a “lead engineering and development” capacity for an MVB fintech client in its early stages.

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