Credit Karma made headlines earlier this year after being acquired by Intuit for $7.1 billion, but its main competitor, Credit Sesame, seems headed in the opposite direction. The credit monitoring platform, which entered the neobank space with the launch of Sesame Cash in March, announced today it is acquiring the Canadian banking platform Stack for an undisclosed amount. 

“[Stack’s] overall design and feature capabilities, like merchant offers and P2P, are things that would have taken us some time to build,” said Adrian Nazari, founder and CEO of Credit Sesame. “[The acquisition] is accelerating our time to market.” 

The Stack acquisition, which began at the end of last year and culminated today, is a technology grab for Credit Sesame, as Stack’s white label banking platform helped build Sesame Cash. The deal also offers a starting point for San Francisco-based Credit Sesame’s global expansion plans, which will begin in Canada through the Stack brand, according to Nazari. 

Toronto-based Stack offers a direct-to-consumer banking platform with cash-back rewards in Canada. According to Stack CEO Miro Pavletic, the platform has gained 70,000 accounts since launching 18 months ago. The company’s banking and rewards platform garnered the attention of other institutions looking to offer similar features to their customers, so Stack began to white-label its technology. Through a partnership with Celero Solutions, a bank and credit union technology vendor in Canada, Stack’s white-labeled solutions now reach more than 4 million consumers.  

Nazari said Credit Sesame will integrate its credit monitoring tools into Stack’s white label product. Credit Sesame won’t target companies that aim to become challenger banks, but rather employers, associations and insurance companies that want to offer financial services.  

To start, Stack will keep its own brand in Canada and incorporate Credit Sesame’s solutions, but Nazari said eventually the goal is to include all international products under the Credit Sesame brand. Because Stack offers international payment rails, Credit Sesame can expand its products globally. Credit Sesame plans to integrate its credit monitoring tools into Stack sometime this year, and Nazari said this could be a starting point for further international expansion. 

Credit Sesame is keeping Stack’s employees on board, and employees based in Canada will continue to work out of its Toronto offices. 

Sesame Cash launched in March to combine banking and credit monitoring services. By monitoring customers’ cash flow, Credit Sesame aimed to provide tailored credit-building advice. The banking platform was available to a limited number of existing Credit Sesame users to start, but became widely available in mid-May. Nazari said Sesame Cash has gained 200,000 accounts so far. He added that, in the future, the company would like to automate functions like bill pay, to help customers pay in a way that would have the most positive impact on their credit scores.  

See also: Credit Sesame wants to create a frictionless web application process

With Intuit’s acquisition of Credit Karma, Credit Sesame’s main competitor is no longer an independent brand. Some industry thinkers believe the acquisition could hurt Credit Karma’s long-term trajectory. “Intuit has a poor track record of integrating acquisitions and making 1+1=3 in the retail banking space,” Ron Shevlin, managing director of fintech research at Cornerstone Advisors, wrote in February. “Far and away the best case for selling is so that Credit Karma shareholders can cash out.” 

Credit Sesame aims to take advantage of what it sees as an opportunity. “We’ve always had deeper technology than Credit Karma when it comes to credit,” Nazari said. “This is our time to take center stage.”