Stripe completed its $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge on February 4, 2025, making the stablecoin infrastructure company its largest purchase to date. The deal gives Stripe technology for moving between dollar-pegged stablecoins and traditional payment rails, while shielding customers from some of the complexity of using blockchains directly. Bridge has since launched Open Issuance, which lets fintechs, wallets and enterprises create and manage branded stablecoins. Stripe also acquired crypto wallet provider Privy in mid-2025, pairing embedded wallet creation with Bridge’s payment orchestration. The company has outlined plans extending through 2026 to scale Bridge-powered payouts and virtual accounts across more than 100 countries. Together, the moves put issuance, wallets and conversion alongside payment delivery. They do not eliminate the operational demands of stablecoins, but Bridge’s APIs are designed to handle tasks such as transaction fees, cross-chain routing and private-key custody behind a conventional developer interface.

CRB Group, the parent of Cross River Bank, agreed on October 20, 2026, to acquire Accrue, a fintech focused on merchant-branded digital wallets and customer loyalty. Accrue founder and CEO Michael Hershfield and his team are expected to join Cross River to lead its embedded wallet and loyalty offerings when the deal closes. Financial terms and a completion date have not been disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions. The companies already had a banking relationship: Cross River held deposited funds and issued Visa debit cards for Accrue programs. The acquisition would bring Accrue’s wallet capabilities into that existing arrangement. Closed-loop wallets can keep payments and refunds within a merchant’s branded balance, offering an alternative to routing every transaction through card networks. The deal also illustrates why embedded finance providers are looking beyond payment-processing margins toward wallet software and stored-value services, though the companies have not disclosed the acquisition’s expected financial impact.