Payload, a Cincinnati-based embedded payments platform, founded in 2019 by Ryan Rybolt and Ian Halpern, and among the leading processors of earnest money deposits in the US and Canada, has secured a strategic investment from Fifth Third.
The deal represents the first significant outside capital Payload has taken on since it was established, and reflects a shared outlook between the two firms on the direction of embedded money movement for businesses and software platforms.
Payload is currently processing close to $500m per month, putting it on course for roughly $6bn in payment volume annually, alongside annual revenue growth exceeding 100%.
Rybolt and Halpern set up the company in late 2019 after concluding that payments infrastructure needed to be rebuilt from scratch rather than layered onto existing systems. The pair wanted to give software integrators and businesses greater flexibility, control and reliability, and Payload handled its first transaction in January 2020.
Payload’s technology is built around a unified API and a consistent object model, intended to let integrators build quickly while still accessing sophisticated functionality. Real-time risk monitoring and integrated KYC are built into the core architecture rather than added on top.
Funds from the round will go towards growing Payload’s engineering and go-to-market functions, speeding up integration with next-generation payment rails, and extending the platform’s presence across additional software ecosystems and industries.
Fifth Third will also act as a strategic partner as Payload builds out relationships with financial institutions, enterprise platforms and software providers throughout North America.
Payload CEO and co-founder Ryan Rybolt said, “This investment is validation of what we’re building at Payload. A payments infrastructure that actually works for the businesses relying on it every day.
“I started my career in payments at Fifth Third, left to build Infintech, and launched Payload with Ian with a clear thesis: the way businesses move money was fundamentally broken and that the best fix was to make payments invisible inside the software they already use. Fifth Third understands payments from the inside out, and they share our conviction about where this is all going. This enables us to expand to new markets and industries.”
Payload CTO and co-founder Ian Halpern said, “We built Payload’s infrastructure from the ground up, innovating at every layer, to unlock new capabilities and deliver the best integration experience that is genuinely intuitive on day one but reveals some of the most powerful capabilities in fintech the deeper you go.
“Most payment integrations force a trade-off: you can have something simple but limited or something capable but complex, but rarely both. We refused that trade-off. The result is a platform where a developer can go from first API call to processing live payments in hours, and get enterprise-grade security, real-time event handling, and the flexibility to create exactly the payment experience their customers expect. That combination is what makes Payload different, and it’s what this investment will help us bring to even more platforms.”
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