National Australia Bank has agreed to acquire Banked, a global Pay by Bank and payments orchestration platform, converting a minority stake held through NAB Ventures into full ownership. The bank announced the transaction on Thursday, saying Banked's entities would operate as wholly owned subsidiaries and be integrated into the NAB technology environment in the coming months.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. NAB said the acquisition would deepen a relationship that began in 2022, when its corporate venture arm made the first of three successive investments in the London-headquartered fintech between 2022 and 2024.
FROM MINORITY STAKE TO FULL OWNERSHIP
NAB Ventures participated in Banked's earlier funding rounds as a minority shareholder before the parent bank moved to take control of the business outright. The bank framed the acquisition as a natural progression of that partnership, giving it end-to-end ownership of technology it has already been working with commercially. Three separate investment rounds between 2022 and 2024 gave NAB Ventures a sustained window into Banked's product development and customer traction, informing the strategic case for moving from a minority position to full ownership.
Banked operates a Pay by Bank platform that lets merchants accept payments drawn directly from customer bank accounts using open banking rails, along with an orchestration layer that lets businesses route transactions across different payment methods. The company has built out its infrastructure across multiple markets and has positioned itself as an alternative to card-based acceptance for larger merchants.
By folding those capabilities inside the bank, NAB is aiming to broaden the mix of payment services it can offer to business customers, an area in which Australian banks have been under sustained pressure from specialist fintechs and international acquirers.
INTEGRATION PLANNED OVER COMING MONTHS
In its announcement, NAB said Banked's businesses would continue to operate under the existing brand as wholly owned subsidiaries while integration work progressed. The lender said the technology would be brought inside its own environment in the coming months, indicating a staged rather than immediate merger of platforms.
The acquisition marks one of the more notable moves by an Australian major bank to bring a global payments fintech in-house, rather than partner with one through a distribution agreement. NAB has been an active corporate investor through NAB Ventures, but conversions of those stakes into outright ownership have been relatively rare.
For Banked, the transaction gives the platform the balance sheet and distribution of a major bank behind its Pay by Bank offering as open banking adoption continues to spread across corporate payments. NAB did not provide guidance on the earnings impact of the deal, in keeping with its practice of not disclosing terms on transactions of this scale.
The bank said further detail on how the technology would be embedded into its product suite would follow as integration progressed. NAB's own commentary highlighted that Banked's technology sits at the intersection of open banking, Pay by Bank and payments orchestration, three areas that have received sustained investment across the global payments industry as merchants seek to reduce processing costs and lift authorisation rates.