After months of collaboration with a division of its company, Cedar Falls, Iowa-based startup Banno announced Tuesday it has been acquired by Jack Henry & Associates Inc., an information-processing solutions provider for community banks headquartered in Monett, Mo.
“We really worked well with them,” Banno CEO Wade Arnold told Silicon Prairie News. “We were two different tech teams with two different bosses. That normally doesn’t work well together by definition, but both ProfitStars and Banno felt passionate about bringing a really great product to market.”
While specific terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, management and operations will continue in both Banno’s headquarters in Cedar Falls and offices in Des Moines.
The startup first worked with the publicly traded company in July 2013 through a partnership with ProfitStars, a division of Jack Henry. Through the partnership, ProfitStars created a white-labeled version of Grip—an application Banno unveiled in Sept. 2011, still under the name T8 Webware, to help its users make financial decision on the go—called Andiamo. Prior to that, the two companies collaborated on ProfitStars’ iPay Solutions platform. 
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“On my side I wasn’t necessarily in the market to sell a company and they weren’t necessarily in the market to buy a company, but it really made sense to both of us to continue working together and expand on the relationship,” Arnold (right) said.
Since the partnership began, Arnold says Banno’s software has served as “the front-end to the two robust back-ends” that ProfitStars offers in iPay Solutions and their EPS division.
Between part- and full-time employees, Banno now has a team of 82 between its two offices. While Banno will continue to focus on its three product lines for the time being, its offices in Cedar Falls and Des Moines will become Jack Henry offices, the company’s first two in Iowa.
Since its founding in 2008, Banno has built mobile products for more than 375 financial institutions across the country, while Jack Henry works with more than 11,900 financial institutions and corporate entities. Banno, which changed its name from T8 Webware in July 2012, makes mobile applications, websites and personalized payment card services for banks and financial institutions.
“The feedback I’ve received for the most part has been hundreds of congratulations and lots of text messages from people who aren’t even contacts in my phone,” Arnold said.
He says he views Banno’s acquisition as a positive not only for his company but the community as a whole.
“I think this is great for Banno, its employees and the overall Silicon Prairie startup community,” Arnold said. “We can build some awesome things here.”
Credits: Wade Arnold photo from LinkedIn.
2 responses to “Banno acquired by Jack Henry, continues ProfitStars collaboration”
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