Pathward Selects Thought Machine to Expand Financial Access

London and Sioux Falls, S.D., August 20, 2026, Thought Machine, the cloud-native banking technology company, today announces that Pathward®, N.A. (“Pathward” or “Bank”), a leading U.S. bank, has selected its core banking platform, Vault Core, as the Bank’s foundational infrastructure to accelerate product innovation and expand financial access nationwide.

Pathward focuses on expanding financial access through payments and lending solutions that help organizations scale. The Bank serves as a critical, regulated bridge between traditional finance and the modern fintech economy, facilitating billions of dollars in transactions daily. As a leading sponsor bank, Pathward powers payments partners and scalable commercial finance solutions, including asset-based lending and flexible funding that help businesses grow and its partners thrive.

Vault Core advances the flexible architecture already central to Pathward’s strategy, adding scale and speed to a foundation the bank has been building. The platform reinforces Pathward’s technical independence to swiftly design and deploy bespoke financial solutions. Alongside Pathward’s own capabilities, this empowers its fintech, payment innovator, and commercial partners to thrive, while expanding financial access to underserved markets. 

 

Charles Ingram, Chief Information and Operations Officer at Pathward, commented: "Updating our core infrastructure is central to how we continue innovating with speed, scale and discipline — work that has been underway for some time. Thought Machine’s Vault Core is a strong complement to the flexible, cloud-native strategy we’ve been building, strengthening our ability to put customers at the center of our work and better meet their needs in today’s market, while building the agility to anticipate what our partners, clients and consumers will need next. This is about creating a stronger foundation for responsible innovation and expanding access to financial solutions that can evolve with the market.” 

Paul Taylor, CEO and founder of Thought Machine, commented: "Pathward is an industry powerhouse that recognizes the next era of banking belongs to institutions that command their technical stack. By adopting a lean, real-time platform, Pathward is removing the structural boundaries that have historically slowed down financial services. Vault Core provides the exact precision and scalable infrastructure Pathward needs to deliver innovative solutions and drive financial inclusion across the U.S. ecosystem."

This partnership follows record commercial growth for Thought Machine in the Americas, where it now serves 20 banks and fintechs, including 6 tier 1 banks. After a 57% year-on-year revenue surge, the company recently crossed the $100m threshold. Thought Machine holds undisputed leadership in the tier 1 market, securing more large-scale core banking contracts than all next-generation competitors combined. Building on this enterprise-grade maturity, it is now rapidly scaling across mid-size and regional institutions like Mascoma, M1, General Bank of Canada, and US Senate Federal Credit Union.

 

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Thought Machine has developed the foundations of modern banking with its cloud-native core banking and payments technology. Free from legacy debt, the Vault platform gives financial institutions the control and agility needed to run any product or payment type required in today’s rapidly changing world. It is trusted by 68 leading banks and financial institutions worldwide, with several also counting as strategic investors.

 

Thought Machine is a global team spread across offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney, and Lisbon, and has raised more than £500m in funding.

 

For more information, visit thoughtmachine.net

 

Pathward®, N.A., a national bank, is a subsidiary of Pathward Financial, Inc. (Nasdaq: CASH).

Pathward focuses on financial access and strives to increase financial availability, choice and

opportunity through payments sponsorship and lending. Learn more at pathward.com.

 

Courtney Heidelberg

605.291.7044