Capital One said Thursday that it was acquiring payments startup Brex for $5.15 billion, the latest splashy deal undertaken by the bank’s CEO, Richard Fairbank.
The firm, which disclosed the acquisition in its fourth-quarter earnings statement, said the purchase is made up of 50% cash and 50% stock. Brex was previously valued at $12.3 billion.
Shares of the bank fell about 3%.
Under Fairbank, a rare founder-CEO of a major U.S. bank, Capital One acquired rival card firm Discover Financial last year for about $35 billion. That deal was Fairbank’s crowning achievement, giving the credit card lender access to one of the only payment networks of any scale.
“Since our founding, we set out to build a payments company at the frontier of the technology revolution,” Fairbank said in a release. “Acquiring Brex accelerates this journey, especially in the business payments marketplace.”