Fintech M&A Deal: nCino Acquires Sandbox Banking

In early 2025, nCino acquired Sandbox Banking for $52.5 million in cash, along with a potential $10 million earnout based on performance milestones. The deal gives nCino access to Sandbox’s integration platform, which helps banks and credit unions connect their core systems to modern fintech products more efficiently. This kind of infrastructure is increasingly valuable in M&A as financial institutions look to streamline workflows, reduce vendor friction, and bring solutions to market faster.

This fintech M&A deal shows where value is shifting in the financial services market. Banks and credit unions want faster ways to connect their existing systems to new fintech tools. Long timelines and custom development have slowed innovation for years. nCino’s acquisition of Sandbox Banking is a move to change that.

Sandbox offers a low-code platform designed to streamline integrations. Instead of building custom APIs or relying on external vendors, banks can use Sandbox to connect internal systems to outside products in less time and at lower cost. This allows them to respond more quickly to client needs and industry shifts.

For buyers like nCino, infrastructure like this is more than a technical upgrade. It improves delivery speed, reduces churn risk, and expands product capabilities. These are the kinds of advantages that continue to drive fintech M&A interest, especially among companies focused on enabling growth rather than just acquiring scale.

Sandbox Banking is a fintech infrastructure company founded in 2015 and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The team built Glyue, a low-code integration platform designed to help banks and credit unions connect their core systems to a growing number of third-party fintech products.

Glyue supports integrations across more than 14 core banking systems and over 50 fintech solutions, including lending platforms, digital onboarding tools, and fraud and compliance software. Instead of relying on custom code, banks use Glyue to speed up deployments and reduce the operational burden that often comes with managing multiple vendors.

At the time of the acquisition, Sandbox served over 75 financial institutions. Its clients included community banks, credit unions, and regional players looking to modernize without replacing legacy infrastructure. That traction is part of what made it a strong strategic fit for nCino’s client base.

nCino announced its acquisition of Sandbox Banking on February 11, 2025. The deal included $52.5 million in cash, along with a potential earn-out of up to $10 million based on financial and product milestones.

Through this transaction, nCino adds Sandbox’s Glyue platform to its offerings. Glyue allows financial institutions to connect core systems to fintech solutions using prebuilt adapters, low-code automation, and configurable logic. The platform is designed to reduce integration costs, shorten implementation timelines, and support faster deployment of new banking services.

This acquisition is part of nCino’s broader strategy to expand its capabilities in infrastructure and integration, especially for mid-sized banks and credit unions seeking to modernize without replacing legacy systems.

Adding Glyue gives nCino a new layer of flexibility in how it delivers integration capabilities to clients. The platform simplifies how banks connect legacy core systems to external fintech products, using automation and prebuilt connectors to reduce delays and lower development costs.

For financial institutions managing multiple vendors and outdated infrastructure, integration is often one of the biggest roadblocks to launching new services. Glyue helps cut that down. It removes many of the manual steps typically required to sync systems and allows for faster, more consistent rollouts.

The deal positions nCino to offer a more complete experience. Instead of leaning on third-party connectors, the company now owns a toolset that can handle these connections directly. That shift improves implementation, increases speed, and adds value across its existing client relationships.

Activity in fintech M&A continues to accelerate, especially around companies offering core infrastructure, compliance automation, and integration platforms. Buyers are focused on practical tools that solve high-friction problems. That includes anything that speeds up onboarding, reduces cost to serve, or simplifies how financial institutions connect new technology to existing systems.

Strategic acquirers are also watching how regulatory changes, rising customer expectations, and evolving tech stacks are putting pressure on legacy players. Instead of building everything in-house, many are choosing to acquire proven platforms that fill specific operational gaps. That’s where deals like nCino and Sandbox come into play.

Private equity and growth-stage investors are taking notice, too. Infrastructure-focused fintech companies with real traction and recurring revenue have become attractive targets. Many are reaching meaningful scale without relying on large sales teams or expensive customer acquisition strategies.

Following the acquisition, Glyue will become a key component of nCino’s integration capabilities. The platform is expected to help financial institutions connect to fintech applications more efficiently, reduce development timelines, and minimize the need for custom engineering. Expansion of its adapter library and compatibility with additional core systems are already underway.

Current Sandbox clients will continue to access the tools they rely on, now backed by nCino’s broader infrastructure and resources. The focus is on delivering faster implementation, tighter data coordination, and fewer bottlenecks across deployment projects.

Looking ahead, nCino gains more flexibility in how it builds and delivers new features. Owning an internal integration engine allows the company to experiment, iterate, and respond more quickly to changes in client needs and market conditions.

Fintech M&A deals like nCino’s acquisition of Sandbox Banking show how the right transaction can accelerate growth, expand capabilities, and strengthen market position. At 733Park, we work with founders and investors in fintech, payments, SaaS, and AI to identify and execute these kinds of high-impact opportunities.

Our team brings over 25 years of transaction experience and more than $10 billion in completed deals. We specialize in sell-side representation for founder-led companies, pairing deep industry knowledge with direct access to strategic buyers and private equity groups. For select clients, we also provide buy-side advisory to source and secure acquisitions that align with long-term growth goals.

If you are considering an exit, exploring a strategic partnership, or looking for your next acquisition target, 733Park can help you structure and manage the process from start to finish.

Unlock your next big opportunity. Contact us at info@733park.com or (617) 564-0404 to discuss your options and take the first step toward maximizing enterprise value.