Chime to buy its bank partner Stride for $590 million, becoming a regulated bank

Chime Financial said Tuesday it will pay $590 million in cash to acquire Stride Bank, the small Oklahoma lender that has served as its banking partner for more than seven years — a deal that would convert the consumer fintech app into a regulated bank holding company for the first time since its 2025 initial public offering.

Under the agreement, disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Stride Bank, N.A. would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Chime, renamed Chime Bank, N.A. The purchase price represents about 1.5 times Stride's tangible book value and will be funded entirely from Chime's existing cash, without a new capital raise. Chime said it expects the deal to close in the first half of 2027, pending approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve; Stride's shareholders have already signed off, according to the full filing index that includes the underlying merger agreement.

Ending a reliance on borrowed bank charters

Chime, like many consumer fintech apps, has never held its own banking license. Instead it has relied on "sponsor bank" arrangements — partnerships with federally chartered banks, in Chime's case Stride and, separately, The Bancorp Bank — that let it offer checking accounts and debit cards under someone else's regulatory umbrella. Buying Stride outright would let Chime control that infrastructure directly for the first time. "By combining Chime's leading brand and deep member relationships with Stride's national charter and team, we will accelerate toward our vision to be the largest provider of primary bank accounts in America," said Chime chief executive Chris Britt.

Stride, headquartered in Enid, Oklahoma and tracing its roots to a bank chartered in 1913, has other fintech clients beyond Chime, including Affirm — a relationship analysts flagged as a source of integration complexity once the bank becomes a subsidiary of one of its own customers. Stride chairman and chief executive Brud Baker said the bank's "national bank charter and experienced team will be central to what comes next," citing seven years of watching Chime's "member-first mission" up close — an integration challenge analysts have flagged given Stride's other clients.

The numbers

Stride Bank currently holds about $5.4 billion in assets; combined with Chime's existing balance sheet, the pro forma bank would hold roughly $7 billion. Chime said it expects more than $100 million a year in net synergies from eliminating sponsor-bank fees and lowering its cost of funds, and described the deal as immediately accretive to earnings per share. Alongside the acquisition announcement, Chime raised its own guidance: third-quarter revenue of about $705 million, up roughly 30% from a year earlier, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $117 million to $120 million; for the full year, the company now expects revenue of $2.76 billion to $2.77 billion, up 26% to 27%. Chime shares jumped as much as 10% on the news and closed Wednesday at $35.39, within a day's trading range of $32.16 to $37.49.

"This acquisition will make our proven model even stronger," Britt said, framing the deal as an extension of Chime's existing strategy rather than a change of direction.

Part of a broader shift among neobanks

Chime's move follows a pattern among other so-called neobanks seeking their own charters rather than renting one from a partner. SoFi obtained bank holding company status in January 2022 by acquiring Golden Pacific Bancorp; Varo Bank spent three and a half years and filed roughly 5,000 pages of documentation to win a national charter from scratch in 2020. Chime's approach, buying an existing charter outright, is the faster of the two routes, and analysts see it as a signal other well-capitalized fintechs may follow. William Blair analyst Andrew Jeffrey said the deal could "accelerate Chime's market share by giving it control of the product lifecycle," while also noting the operational risk of folding in a bank with its own separate client base. Truist Securities analyst Brian Finneran said staying under the $10 billion consolidated-assets threshold — which triggers stricter regulatory scrutiny, including debit-card interchange caps under the Durbin Amendment — "looks tough" for a company of Chime's scale as it continues to grow.

Chime went public on the Nasdaq in June 2025 at $27 a share, pricing above its expected range and rising 37% on its debut to a roughly $11.6 billion valuation. The company has built its business around serving Americans earning $100,000 a year or less, a segment Britt has said traditional banks have long underserved. Its most recent quarterly results, reported in August, showed revenue of $670 million, up 27% from a year earlier, 10.4 million active members and a second consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability.

What happens next

The deal's completion depends on federal banking regulators signing off on Chime's conversion into a bank holding company, a process expected to run through the first half of 2027. Analysts will be watching how Chime handles Stride's existing fintech partnerships, including Affirm's, once the sponsor bank becomes a subsidiary of one of its own former clients, and whether Chime can keep growing its member base while managing its position relative to the $10 billion asset threshold that changes its regulatory treatment. If regulators approve the deal on schedule, Chime would join a small but growing list of consumer fintech apps that answer directly to bank regulators rather than through an intermediary — a structural change that could shape how aggressively it can expand products like overdraft protection and short-term credit, both areas where sponsor-bank arrangements have drawn scrutiny from consumer advocates in recent years.