FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cincinnati, OH - Payload, an embedded payments platform processing nearly $500 million per month and trending toward $6 billion in annual payment volume, today announced the closing of a strategic investment led by Fifth Third. The investment marks Payload’s first significant outside capital since its founding and signals a shared vision for how businesses and technology platforms will move money in the years ahead.
Payload was founded in late 2019 when Ryan Rybolt and Ian Halpern left their respective companies with a shared conviction: that the payments industry was long overdue for a ground-up rethink. Rather than building on top of existing infrastructure, they built Payload from bare metal, designing every layer of the stack to give software integrators and businesses the flexibility, control, and reliability they need. Payload processed its first payment in January 2020. In May 2026 alone, the platform processed nearly $500 million, a monthly run rate trending over $6 billion annually with a consistent annual revenue growth rate over 100%.
For Rybolt, fintech has become a career-long pursuit. He began his career in fintech at Fifth Third and left to found Infintech in 2004. The story is similar for Halpern, who successfully launched and exited PlacePay, which served the multi-family & co-working sector. In late 2019, the two joined forces to launch Payload as their next chapter, building on everything they had learned about where the industry falls short and what it would take to fix it.
That momentum is most visible in residential real estate, where Payload is among the leading processors of earnest money deposits in the United States and Canada. Until Payload, this industry had limited options, relying on traditional checks and wires for mission-critical payments where timing, compliance, and reliability are non-negotiable. From independent brokerages and title companies to national real estate platforms, Payload’s infrastructure underpins some of the most consequential transactions in the property market.
But real estate was only the beginning. Legal payments, professional services, property management, homebuilding, and franchises have each embraced Payload’s platform to automate inbound and outbound payments. They are drawn to infrastructure that adapts to how they operate, not the other way around. A growing range of software platforms embed Payload’s capabilities directly into their products, extending their reach across an expanding range of industries and use cases.
“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.”
Ryan Rybolt, CEO & Co-Founder, Payload
Central to Payload’s growth is an integration experience designed from first principles. The platform exposes some of the most powerful capabilities in fintech and money movement via a unified API and a consistent object model that lets integrators move quickly without sacrificing sophistication. Security and compliance are built into the architecture, not layered on afterward. Real-time risk monitoring and integrated KYC are native to the integration experience.
“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.”
Ian Halpern, CTO & Co-Founder, Payload
Fifth Third led the investment based on a shared belief that the next era of payments will be faster, more intelligent and increasingly embedded within the software businesses already use. This reflects a fundamental shift in how money will move in the future. The bank brings decades of institutional payments expertise, rooted in a legacy that includes Fifth Third Processing Solutions and a foundational role in the creation of Vantiv, which grew into one of the world’s largest payment processors. That history informs a clear-eyed view of what it takes to build payments infrastructure that endures.
“Payload has built something rare in the payments space: a platform that is both technically sophisticated and deeply aligned with real business needs. Fifth Third has been in the payments business long enough to know the difference between a product that looks good on paper and one that delivers for customers. Payload is clearly the latter. We see enormous opportunity ahead as businesses demand smarter, faster and more seamlessly integrated ways to move money.”
Bridgit Chayt, Head of Commercial Payments and Treasury Management, Fifth Third
Proceeds from the investment will be used to expand Payload’s engineering and go-to-market teams, accelerate the rollout of next-generation payment rail integrations, and deepen the platform’s reach across software ecosystems and new industry verticals. Fifth Third will serve as a strategic partner as Payload expands its relationships with financial institutions, enterprise platforms, and the software companies that power industries across North America.
About Payload
Payload is a Cincinnati-based embedded payments platform enabling businesses and software platforms to accept, process, and manage payments natively within their products and workflows. Founded in 2019 by Ryan Rybolt and Ian Halpern and processing nearly $6 billion in annual payment volume, Payload is among the leading processors of earnest money deposits in the United States and Canada, and has since expanded to serve businesses and platforms across real estate, legal, and a growing range of industries and software verticals. For more information, visit payload.com.