TabaPay Ends Planned Acquisition of Synapse

TabaPay has reportedly ended its planned acquisition of bankrupt FinTech company Synapse.

A TabaPay spokesperson told TechCrunch on Thursday (May 9) that the company had “pulled out” of the deal and had sent “termination notice of the purchase agreement this morning based on failure to meet the purchase agreement closing conditions,” the publication reported Thursday.

Synapse Co-Founder and CEO Sankaet Pathak told the publication that he believes TabaPay is still interested in making the acquisition and can be convinced to do so, according to the report. He details his claims in a Medium post to which includes a link on a LinkedIn post.

TabaPay said April 19 that it was acquiring Synapse’s assets and that the deal would allow TabaPay to offer new financial services for FinTechs and financial institutions.

The company said at that time in a press release that the two firms offered complementary financial technology services, and both appeared on Deloitte’s 2023 Fast 500.

TabaPay added that once the bankruptcy court approved the acquisition, TabaPay would debut new solutions that leveraged the Synapse assets.

Synapse, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) startup, had announced two rounds of layoffs, in October 2023 and June 2023, with Pathak writing in a June blog post that — despite the company reaching profitability — “the current macroeconomic conditions have begun to impact our clients and platforms, affecting our anticipated growth.”

In an April blog post, Pathak said that the deal with TabaPay would place Synapse’s customers in “a thriving ecosystem of 15 bank partners, 16 network connections, 2,500+ existing clients, and domain expertise of the collective team.”

In an earlier move by TabaPay, the company announced an expanded partnership with Pathward in October 2023, with those two companies saying their collaboration would enhance Pathward’s suite of faster payments solutions.

In that collaboration, TabaPay and Pathward aim to empower FinTech firms, merchants and platforms with faster payments nationwide, catering to consumer expectations.

The partnership builds upon their initial alliance established in 2020. By connecting to the TabaPay platform, Pathward aims to provide its partners with enhanced money movement capabilities, offering a more complete end-to-end solution through its BaaS offering.