CSI, a provider of financial software and technology, has acquired Qolo, a fintech company specialising in treasury solutions and payments infrastructure. The deal adds commercial banking capabilities to CSI's existing offering, with a particular focus on deposit structures, money movement, and commercial card programmes for community financial institutions.
Addressing a competitive gap for community banks
According to Datos Insights, 85% of SMBs said they would remain with their primary financial institution rather than move to a fintech or larger bank if that institution offered comparable capabilities. CSI positions the Qolo acquisition as a response to this dynamic, aiming to give community banks access to commercial banking tools that have historically been the preserve of larger institutions.
A company official said the acquisition is intended to help community banks deepen commercial relationships by offering banking capabilities that integrate more closely with day-to-day business operations, while also supporting fintechs and B2B payments providers as demand grows for embedded financial services.
Three areas of added capability
The acquisition brings three main capability areas into CSI's product set. The first is a real-time account ledger, providing deposit infrastructure that gives banks and businesses visibility into balances, transactions, and authorisations as they occur. The second is multi-rail payment orchestration, a unified engine designed to manage domestic and international money movement across multiple payment rails. The third covers expanded card capabilities, including integrated issuing and processing across debit, prepaid, virtual, and secured corporate credit card programmes.
Qolo's technology is set to operate as an orchestration layer spanning payments, accounts, and workflows, integrating with CSI's core banking platform, digital banking solution, and application programming interfaces (APIs). The intention is to deliver pre-integrated commercial banking solutions that community financial institutions can bring to market without building the underlying infrastructure themselves.
Existing fintech customer base
Beyond community banks, Qolo serves fintech and B2B payments providers that use its infrastructure for card issuing, multi-rail money movement, virtual account management, and embedded ledgering. Under CSI's ownership, these customers are expected to gain access to additional compliance resources and scale as they continue to build out their own products.
A Qolo representative described the acquisition as a response to common infrastructure challenges facing both community banks modernising commercial offerings and fintechs building Embedded Finance products, including fragmented vendor relationships and disconnected payment rails.
Strategic context
CSI frames the acquisition as part of a broader vertical banking strategy, under which it aims to help community banks deliver pre-integrated commercial banking solutions tailored to industries with specific deposit, payment, and workflow requirements. D.A. Davidson & Co. acted as exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Qolo, with Cooley LLP serving as legal counsel. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
