Fort Lee-based Cross River Bank announced Friday that it is celebrating its 16th anniversary since its founding in June 2008.
Cross River said that, since coming out of the 2008 crisis, the financial institution has been at the forefront of driving innovation and underpinning the growth of the fintech industry and is known for its values-driven business model. The bank has provided both leading technology and deep banking expertise to break down barriers for individuals and communities through its responsible and innovative offerings, financial inclusion initiatives and notable Foundation@ giving arm.
“Cross River was born out of a commitment to provide financial resources to those in need, especially during the 2008 financial crisis, when others were retreating. We have transformed the financial landscape, providing life-changing access to credit for nearly 100 million customers and facilitating nearly 1 billion payment transactions. This achievement is a testament to the unwavering dedication of our extraordinary team and the invaluable support of our partners, friends and communities,” Gilles Gade, founder and CEO of Cross River, said. “As we look to the future, we remain dedicated to our foundational values of responsibility, integrity, compassion, creativity and humility. Our path forward is clear: to continue leading the way in developing innovative solutions, expanding our giving, and driving positive change.”
Since opening its doors, Cross River has positively impacted lives across the nation and around the world. Clients and partners leverage Cross River’s proprietary, real-time API-based banking core, payment rails and technology infrastructure to provide access to credit and enable best-in-class lending, payments, banking and merchant acquiring services.
Cross River reflected on its last 16 years of contributions pioneering the fintech space, including:
- Opened with $10 million in equity; today, the bank has $1 billion in equity and $8 billion in assets.
- Entered into its first technology relationship in 2010 and, today, has more than 120 and growing, delivering on optionality for businesses and consumers.
- Built the Cross River Operating System, an industry-leading, proprietary application programming interface-based banking core, from the ground up, developed by in-house engineers and utilized by fintech clients to better serve their end users.
- Developed and scaled one of the broadest sets of banking and payments APIs in the industry for continued innovation, with 99.9% historical uptime and over 30x growth in API requests since 2019.
- Grew to become one of the largest originators of loans for marketplace lending platforms, with over $137 billion in total originations and over 94 million loans originated since inception — nearly 100 million individuals provided with access to credit.
- Launched payments business in 2015 with a simple Automated Clearing House platform and most recently, built one of the first singular API interoperability technology for instant payment networks, RTP & FedNow Service, giving consumers access to their funds when and where they need.
- Named a Top 4 originator of RTP since 2023 and the No. 1 processor of Same-Day ACH, for efficient, responsible and more instantaneous transactions.
- Committed to growing a fintech workforce promoting inclusion, with employees in 35 states across the country and over 160 developers in Israel.
- Unwavering dedication to responsible risk management and industry-leading compliance, with 18x growth in risk and compliance positions since 2019.
The company is poised to continue leading the way in the development of innovative solutions with investments in infrastructure capabilities, cross-border solutions and prepaid offerings.
