Chime is really a consumer fintech company - one with a totally different business model from lenders. Although Chime competes with banks for checking and savings accounts, its own FDIC-insured accounts are held at partner banks including Stride Bank.

“We’re a company that’s in the right place at the right time because so many Americans are feeling anxiety about their money.”Ĭhime is known for giving Americans early access to their paychecks through a feature called Get Paid Early when they sign up for payroll direct deposit using their Chime account.Ĭhime has a simple advantage over traditional banks: It isn’t actually a bank. “We’ve gone through explosive growth,” Chime co-founder and CEO Chris Britt told CNN Business.

It's the end of pen-and-paper - and DocuSign is cashing in Chime has even overtaken Robinhood, the red-hot trading app, to become the most valuable VC-backed consumer fintech startup in the United States, according to PitchBook. That makes Chime more valuable than publicly traded companies including United Airlines In just 18 months, Chime’s private market valuation has spiked by a staggering 1,015% to $14.5 billion, according to PitchBook. (WFC) and Bank of America have lost tens of billions of dollars in market value during the pandemic, Chime’s price tag is going parabolic. The company says it is signing up hundreds of thousands of new customers each month, and some of them are ditching big banks for Chime. And it doesn’t have a single bank branch.Ĭhime, which provides banking services via a smartphone app, has more than tripled its transaction volume and revenue in 2020.

Yet Chime, a startup taking aim at big banks, is booming. The economic forces set off by the pandemic are crushing traditional banks.

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