A community bank in New Jersey has raised millions in funding from Silicon Valley's star fintech venture capitalists.
Cross River Bank in Fort Lee closed a $28 million round of investment led by Battery Ventures. Andreessen Horowitz and Ribbit Capital also participated.
The $467 million-asset bank said in a press release Tuesday that it plans to use the funds to launch new business lines to support fintech firms, expand its technology and product development teams and continue investing in its compliance infrastructure.
"Cross River has always used technology and innovative business strategies to carve out profitable niches and level the playing field against larger competitors where our commitment to compliance is a competitive differentiator," Gilles Gade, the bank's chairman and chief executive, said in the release.
Cross River has been an advocate of marketplace lending, partnering with more than 15 online lending companies, including Affirm, Borrowers First, Marlette Funding, Rocket Loans and Upstart. The bank originated more than $2.4 billion of aggregate loans last year. It has also developed payments solutions for faster, more secure and lower-cost transfers that have been integrated by Google Wallet, Stripe and TransferWise and the bitcoin wallet Coinbase, among others.
As part of the financing deal, Scott Tobin, Battery Ventures' general partner, will join Cross River's board.
Gade "and his team have built a truly disruptive business that combines the best of these technologies with stringent regulatory and compliance procedures in ways that have helped the bank become a partner of choice for both established and emerging fin-tech companies," Tobin said in the release.
