The Austin community bank service provider BancVue has purchased the credit card portfolio of the failed Silverton Bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The portfolio is made up of accounts from nearly 700 agent-bank relationships and will double BancVue's client base. BancVue did not give a price for the acquisition, which it announced Thursday.
BancVue will manage the accounts under the name BancVue Card Assets, and has struck an agreement with First Arkansas Bank and Trust of Jacksonville, Ark., to serve as its bank sponsor. It also plans to offer its card management services to other financial companies.
"We have to be able to come up with a way so that community institutions can offer a bad-ass credit card program that can compete with a Capital One or a Citibank," BancVue's chairman, Don Shafer. said in an interview.
BancVue is best known for a suite of high-rate checking products that community banks and credit unions offer under the brand name Kasasa.
Silverton, of Atlanta, failed in May 2009. It's operations were folded into a bridge bank formed by the FDIC.