Fifth Third leads a strategic investment in Payload, which processes nearly $500 million monthly in earnest money deposits and other embedded payments, to fund engineering hires and new payment rail integrations.
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Payload has secured a strategic investment led by Fifth Third as the company looks to expand its embedded payments platform, Payload said in a Wednesday press release.
Founded in late 2019, Payload processed its first payment in January 2020 and has since grown to process nearly $500 million in May alone, according to the release. The company has become a leading processor of earnest money deposits in the residential real estate market in the U.S. and Canada. It has also been embraced by the legal payments, professional services, property management, homebuilding and franchise sectors, and has been selected by a growing number of software companies to embed its technology in their products.
Payload will use the new capital to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams, accelerate the rollout of new payment rail integrations and deepen the platform's reach across software ecosystems, the release said.
Payload CEO and Co-Founder Ryan Rybolt said in the release that the company was launched with the thesis that "the way businesses move money was fundamentally broken and that the best fix was to make payments invisible inside the software they already use."
Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder Ian Halpern said the company built the platform from the ground up to be both simple and capable. The result, he said, is "a platform where a developer can go from first API call to processing live payments in hours, and get enterprise-ready security, real-time event handling, and the flexibility to create exactly the payment experience their customers expect."
Fifth Third Head of Commercial Payments and Treasury Management Bridgit Chayt said Payload's platform delivers for customers and that Fifth Third sees "enormous opportunity ahead as businesses demand smarter, faster and more seamlessly integrated ways to move money."
The investment comes as embedded finance becomes a bigger piece of the payments landscape. Two PYMNTS Intelligence reports cited in the release found that embedded finance lets organizations maintain full control of the customer journey, unlock new opportunities for loyalty and growth, and deepen customer relationships by weaving payments and other financial functions directly into digital ecosystems.
No terms of the investment were disclosed.
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