Chime is paying $590 million in cash for Stride Bank, the Oklahoma lender that has cleared its deposits for more than seven years.
Six years ago the company's chief executive was telling conference audiences the opposite — that Chime was a technology company rather than a bank — because that was the story the valuation rewarded. The panel's argument is that the trade has now flipped, and that the evidence is a competitor who got the charter first and grew more slowly because of it.
"And I've actually had someone argue to me that part of the reason why Varo, which has a very sort of similar product set to Chime, one of the reasons it may have struggled to scale the way that Chime has, ironically enough, was because it is a bank, right?"
Jason Mikula spent more than ten years in consumer lending on both the bank and the non-bank side and now publishes Fintech Business Weekly; John Reynolds covers startups and fintech across the UK and Europe for Tech.eu and wrote the Molten Ventures story the show opens with; Nadia Edwards-Dashti co-founded the financial-services recruiter Harrington Starr in 2010 and has worked in the industry for more than twenty years.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 65 minutes of audio, 20 minutes of reading.
Here are the 5 arguments that matter.
🎙️ Host: Ross Gallagher, Head of Consulting at 11:FS
👥 Also on: Nadia Edwards-Dashti, Chief Customer Officer at Harrington Starr, the financial-services and fintech recruiter she co-founded; John Reynolds, fintech reporter at Tech.eu; Jason Mikula, publisher of Fintech Business Weekly and author of a book on bank-fintech partnerships
📰 Published: 14 September 2026 on YouTube (11:FS)
🔴 YouTube | 🔗 Show notes | ⏱️ 1 hr 5 min | ✅ Time saved: 45 min
Key Takeaways
Chime spent six years saying it was not a bank, and is now buying the one it rents
$590 million in cash for a partner it has used for more than seven years
Being regulated may be the reason Varo never scaled the way Chime did
Capital requirements and public financial filings capped what a chartered bank could spend chasing customers
The fastest way into US banking used to be buying a bank, and the panel says that has changed
SoFi and Lending Club each bought their way in; Varo was the rare new charter granted to a fintech before this administration
Europe's funding problem is not the first check, it is the one after it
Molten Ventures' £175 million first close, a €5 billion EU fund and a billboard campaign are all aimed at the same gap
UBS wants graduates to show what they solved with AI, not which tools they have opened
Edwards-Dashti wants the proof to come from their own lives rather than a corporate placement
A chatbot that cannot escalate to a human is not a saving
Mikula's own bank refused a disputed card charge with no route to a person
1. Europe's Scale-Up Gap
Gallagher opened on Molten Ventures' £175 million first close of a new venture growth fund, against a £350 million target, with the British Business Bank in for £75 million as cornerstone investor. The fund backs Series B and later companies across the UK and Europe in fintech, AI, space, quantum and deep tech. Molten has previously backed Revolut and Zopa and is reportedly in contention to manage the government's proposed £1 billion scale-up fund.
Reynolds, who wrote the story, put the gap in plain terms: "So a back of the cigarette packet explanation is that startups across Europe be their fintechs, AI companies, defense tech don't struggle really to get early stage funding from European VCs." Early checks run to the hundreds of thousands and European investors write them
"The problem is as they get bigger, more successful, they need bigger checks," he said — multi-million-pound rounds for hiring sprees and new markets
The consequence he described is not financial but political. Better-capitalized US funds take the equity, and with it board seats and influence, and can push a European company to move its headquarters or list in the US. Reynolds pointed to Klarna, a UK-headquartered Swedish company that listed in the US, as the example everyone has in mind
Gallagher put it back to him as a doom loop, and Reynolds declined to accept it. He listed the counterweights: Hiro Capital's late-stage fund, where former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is a general partner; "Another VC called Balderton Capital did a big advertising campaign to get UK startups to build in Britain"; and "And then on the political side of things, you've got this big mammoth 5 billion euro scaleup fund which is driven by the EU which has also got private backers"
His read on the current crop is that they have not left: "If you think about Revolut, they've heavily invested in France a lot. They've got a new UK HQ." The open question is where they list
Mikula's explanation for the US advantage is geographic concentration, not capital alone. He said US venture capital effectively means the San Francisco Bay Area, a small and concentrated place, and that what it buys is what economists call agglomeration or network effects — the money, the investors and the companies deploying it in one network
He also named what has changed on the supply side in the past ten to fifteen years: sovereign wealth was not a serious limited partner twenty years ago and now writes very large checks, SoftBank does the same, and companies stay private longer with fewer initial public offerings
Mikula's second point was that the single market is not one market for capital. American colleagues, he said, work under the misapprehension that the EU is unified; for anyone living in Europe, and particularly in the UK after Brexit, "borders are still very real" in capital, banking and financial services, which balkanizes the funding pool
The chicken-and-egg problem is where the exit money goes. Proceeds flow back to the investors and the geographies they came from, so a blockbuster listing only compounds locally if the capital stays: "If that capital stays in the country that company was built in, it can help foster a sort of virtuous cycle of funding the next round of startups," Mikula said, and the same applies to early employees who go on to write angel checks or found companies
Edwards-Dashti's addition was that where the money lands decides who gets hired. A day-one company hires from its founders' own networks — "nepotism in its absolute purest of forms," as she put it — because those are the people they already believe in
"The further along down the life cycle that you go, we are then starting to look for more specific talent," she said: candidates who have done the identical job somewhere else, rather than people hired on potential
She also named a cost nobody prices, which is the emotional toll on founders as the vision narrows from challenging the universe to what is acceptable and possible
Her recruiter's point is about visibility: "as an external recruiter, I see that lots of opportunities happen before recruiters are anywhere near those opportunities," so the jobs are filled inside an inner circle before the wider market knows they exist
Reynolds closed the story optimistically. The British Business Bank's mandate has grown — "I think they've got like six billion to invest" — and a cornerstone investment is designed to de-risk the fund for other investors, who are likelier to come in once the government has. He also named the Fintech Unicorn Council as getting real access to government and the Financial Conduct Authority: "So, I think the mood music is pretty strong"
2. Chime Buys Its Own Bank
Gallagher read the Reuters story: "So Chime has agreed to acquire Stride Bank for $590 million in cash, bringing a significant part of its banking infrastructure in-house." Stride is a nationally chartered Oklahoma bank founded in 1913, and has been Chime's banking partner for more than seven years. Chime says buying it is a faster and more proven route to full-stack ownership than applying for its own charter, and the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
The show's own summary of the economics: "Chime plans to keep Stride's assets below $10 billion for the foreseeable future and expects the acquisition to generate more than $100 million in net synergies." The $10 billion line is the threshold above which a US bank's card interchange income is capped
Mikula's first observation was about the change in story, not the change in structure. Chime's co-founder and chief executive Chris Britt teased the deal at a Semafor conference a couple of months ago, he said, and had spent the pandemic years saying the opposite when asked whether Chime would ever become a bank: "Chime is not a bank Chime is a technology company"
The reason was the multiple. Lending-heavy fintechs were being penalized on valuation, because banks are valued on price to book: "Whereas technology companies, particularly quickly growing technology companies are often valued using other perhaps squishier metrics, price-to-revenue multiples or start getting into the world of active users"
What separated Chime from a crowded field of copycats was spending, not product. Mikula said the US neobank category was easy to enter — partner with a middleware provider or a bank and launch — because there is no e-money institution license of the kind the UK and EU have
"But one of the biggest differences is Chime raised a lot of money and deployed that money to acquire customers and grow very large," he said, including sponsoring an American basketball team, and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on acquisition
"I think their most recent quarterly earnings they revealed more than 10 million active users which you'll want to look at the footnotes to see how they define active but still an impressive number nonetheless"
The next problem is revenue per user, and the answer is lending. Mikula said the neobank category has historically served low-to-moderate income customers and Chime is consciously moving up the income spectrum, which means more lending products, which means the charter
Without one, a fintech lends through a bank partner or through state-by-state licenses: "There are state-by-state lending licenses. I've worked for multiple companies that have operated on that model. It is complicated. It is time-consuming. It has a lot of compliance overhead."
The charter window
Reynolds tested the partnership model against the two British banks that tried it in the US. Monzo applied for a charter, was told it would not get one, partnered with a licensed bank instead, and has since retreated from the US market
"Revolut I think had a partnership and now they're very likely to get a US charter," he said, recalling Nik Storonsky stressing how important the charter was in a country that runs on credit cards
"I think OakNorth's another example" — Reynolds said the UK lender is in the process of acquiring a US bank
Mikula's history is that the acquisition route was a workaround, not a preference. After 2008 new bank formation in the US fell from hundreds a year to a handful: "And so until fairly recently, I mean until the current administration and the regulators appointed by the current administration, the quickest route to get to market if you wanted to become a bank was buying one." Even that was difficult
"Things have absolutely changed," he said, and the phrase the industry uses is that the charter window is open
The examples predate the change: SoFi became a bank by acquiring Golden Pacific Bancorp, and Lending Club, the original peer-to-peer lender, by acquiring Radius Bancorp
On the range of options now: "But you have national charters, you have state charters, you have a quirky kind of charter, call it an ILC, you've got trust bank charters." Companies are moving because they read the window as limited
What Varo shows
Varo was, on Mikula's account, the only new charter granted to a fintech before the current Comptroller of the Currency was appointed — and it has not reached Chime's scale. He relayed an argument he has been given for why
"And I've actually had someone argue to me that part of the reason why Varo, which has a very sort of similar product set to Chime, one of the reasons it may have struggled to scale the way that Chime has, ironically enough, was because it is a bank, right?"
The mechanism is capital and disclosure: "Banks as we all know listening to this show I'm sure have regulatory and capital requirements and so Chime was able to spend much more aggressively" — and as a private company, without its financials on public view, while Varo has to hold leverage and tier-one capital ratios and file call reports
Edwards-Dashti's question about the merger was whether anyone can explain it to a candidate. A fast fintech and a bank founded more than a hundred years ago is a hard story to tell, and the story is what a hire is actually buying
"But when it comes to an individual and them choosing whether to grow their career in one company or another, it's about making sure that story is really clear," she said. There is a vision, a plan, and what she called a train people can get on board
"So when we look at big changes within companies, big changes equals risk when actually big change could really equal huge opportunity" — her argument is for being honest about the risks alongside the opportunity rather than picking one
She also flagged the two things that decide where a company grows besides tax: where the talent is, and the ease of hiring there. In the UK she sees fear of hiring anyone less than the perfect candidate
Gallagher agreed and added his own observation that organizations solving this problem reach for org charts, tooling and ways of working, and underinvest in a clear purpose and mission that gets everyone pulling in one direction
3. AI On The UBS Job Spec
The third story: UBS will require graduates and interns joining its global banking and markets division in 2027 to demonstrate AI proficiency during recruitment — specifically how they have used AI to improve outcomes and efficiency, rather than familiarity with the tools. UBS has also tested AI-generated avatars of analysts delivering video presentations to clients. Santander is seeking advanced AI users for some graduate programs in its corporate and investment bank.
Edwards-Dashti's reaction was mixed and she said so on camera, with a grimace and then a smile. Her objection is to the previous phase of AI hiring, where employers advertised for AI engineers with more years of experience than the field has existed
What she wants the interview to ask is what the candidate solved. Her examples are deliberately domestic: "Have you sorted out how your grandmother gets to all the doctor's visits? Have you used AI with that?" — organizing a family's shopping and travel for the week, or building something to fix a problem in their own life
"Because I think this is where the gaps have really been where in hiring processes people have wanted to test things that actually aren't ever going to be used"
The skill being tested, on her reading, is problem solving and whether an employer can build an environment where people feel safe making mistakes and trying again
Her evidence that reskilling works at scale came from NatWest. She said she had spoken that morning with Wincy Wong, who ran digital transformation there, about a program "there was a wonderful transformation they did of completely reskilling 480 people who had never worked in technology before to become engineers"
Reynolds was not surprised by the story and said he would expect the same questions in any white-collar graduate application now, in law, banking or the civil service — with the caveat that everything depends on how an interviewer defines proficiency
His warning was about the candidate pool: "A lot of graduates though particularly of that age in America are kind of from my understanding they're kind of anti-AI from a environmental perspective." He thinks it is fine as long as AI does not overshadow the core job
Gallagher added that he had read about university students becoming disillusioned as classmates who use AI on multiple-choice exams and essays out-score those who learn the material, and treated it as a gray area that still points in one direction
Mikula's test for any of this is whether the tool does the job. He said he had read about candidates being interviewed by an AI: "I also recently read a story about people who are doing job interviews and the candidate was interviewing with an AI which frankly sounds dystopian and horrible." He noted he had not yet heard the word agentic on the show, and that everything on LinkedIn and the conference circuit now is
Where he sees it working is compliance, where much of the work is repetitive and lends itself to automation — with the caveat that this may be availability bias
Where he sees it used as cover he called AI washing: leaning into an AI narrative to justify layoffs a company wanted anyway, or to fit whatever Wall Street is rewarding. His example was Klarna — "Klarna very loudly and proudly was like, you know, we laid off all these people because AI is so great" — which later backpedaled and backfilled roles
His own experience is the case against. "I am a customer of bunq the bank here in the Netherlands and I needed to do a chargeback on something because it was like a fraud or an erroneous charge and there was literally no option to interact with a human being." The bot's answer was immediate — "It immediately told me this is declined" — and there was no escalation path to a person
Gallagher's gloss was that these systems read instructions literally rather than intuitively and miss the nuance, which he expects to remain a limitation
Edwards-Dashti's closing advice separated the hype from the position. "AI is definitely not the solution to everything," she said, and the reason she is positive is that the conversation has moved from AI replacing everything to AI helping redesign things — while insisting the sustainability cost and the reduction in entry-level jobs stay in the conversation
"But one thing that I say to everybody is we must not only look at entry level. We must look at the group of people who are highly experienced, highly talented and very willing and ready to adapt the 40 plus." If the retirement age is being pushed back, she said, hiring has to stay open to that part of the population
4. Meta's Muse And Plaid
In the quickfire round, Gallagher read that Meta has launched Muse, a personal AI agent that connects to users' financial accounts through Plaid — balances, transactions, investments and liabilities — to help with budgets, subscriptions and debt alongside productivity, health and shopping. It launches in the US, where Plaid connects to more than 12,000 financial institutions and apps, and users have to opt in and can revoke access through Plaid.
Mikula said it could be a positive for consumers and then attached three caveats. The first is the brand: "Meta is not exactly the most loved and trusted brand lately," given litigation in the US over consumer and child safety
The second is the category's reputation. "I'm frankly not sure about in the UK, but the data center piece, which is frankly a little bit distinct from AI itself, has become a really hot button political issue in the US with most people not loving it"
The third is that personal financial management has a graveyard. Dozens of fintech startups have launched in the space and not succeeded, he said, because most people do not want to think about budgeting their money
The bar is therefore whether it helps them make better choices without effort, and whether they trust Meta to do it: "It could work, but I'm not holding my breath"
Gallagher, who had been assigned the story in the show notes, handed it to Mikula on the grounds that it is a US story — and noted Mikula's promotion to co-host
5. Trump On A $1 Coin
The last item: the US Mint has launched a $1 coin carrying President Donald Trump's portrait for the 250th anniversary of the United States, marketed as a collectible but legal tender. US law generally bars living presidents from appearing on currency; the administration points to provisions in the anniversary coin legislation. The last sitting president on a US coin was Calvin Coolidge, on a commemorative half dollar in 1926. Rolls of 25 sell for $61 and bags of 100 for $154.50.
Mikula's first point was legal: "So it is not even legal to put the president on a physical bill, which was I think the original idea, a living president I should say, on a physical bill." The coin, on his reading, is the backup plan
Gallagher raised Trump's promise, made that day, of $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans win both houses, and the debate over its legality. Mikula's answer was one line: "Clearly a policy that would be great for inflation, but I don't want to take us too far off track." He called the coin borderline propaganda and left it there
Edwards-Dashti nominated a replacement. "I think the perfect person to be on a coin would be Madame CJ Walker," she said, having discovered her through the series Self Made
"So, she was born in 1867, and she built a hair care and beauty empire for black women in the States, and she is credited as one of the first ever self-made female millionaires in America" — and Edwards-Dashti said she would pay time and a half for that coin
Asked whether she would be holding the Trump coin, she said: "No comment"
Reynolds agreed with Mikula and argued a face on a coin should belong to someone with proven longevity, which is not something that can be judged this early: "Why leave it to other people to make that decision after he's gone? He's just going to do it himself right now."
Bonus Insights
Mikula introduced himself as the panel's American and then complicated it: "I believe I'm the token American but I live in the Netherlands," which is what made him the natural voice on both the US banking story and the European capital one
Reynolds pre-empted his own billing, pointing out he is a tech and startup reporter for whom fintech is part of the beat rather than a pure-play fintech specialist
Edwards-Dashti announced a report she has co-authored with Samantha Emory and Bill Oats: "And the report is called think again why UK financial services must act now on AI era resilience." It covers mitigating risk in the sector through talent, diversity of thought and debate in the workplace
Mikula said he is trying to avoid the conference circuit this year, which is where he hears the word agentic most
Gallagher's recurring complaint through the show was time: he said each of the three main stories could have carried a whole episode on its own
The panel's bottom line is that the regulatory window, not the technology, is what is moving the US fintech business right now — Chime is buying a hundred-year-old bank because a charter is briefly obtainable, and Mikula's warning is that the charter itself is what may slow a company down once it has one.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Chime and Stride Bank (The $590 million cash deal that led the show; Chime keeps Stride's assets below $10 billion and expects more than $100 million in net synergies, and Mikula reads it as a move into lending and up the income spectrum)
Varo (Mikula's counter-example: a near-identical product set with a charter, which someone argued to him may have scaled more slowly precisely because capital rules and public call reports limited what it could spend)
SoFi and Lending Club (The two fintechs that became US banks by acquisition, before the current administration reopened the charter route)
Molten Ventures and the British Business Bank (The £175 million first close against a £350 million target, with £75 million of cornerstone money designed to pull other institutional investors in)
Balderton Capital and Hiro Capital (The other European answers Reynolds named — a build-in-Britain advertising campaign, and a late-stage fund where Nick Clegg is a general partner)
Revolut, Monzo and OakNorth (The British banks' US attempts: Monzo was refused a charter and has retreated, Revolut is likely to get one, and OakNorth is buying a US bank)
Zopa, Trade Republic and Wise (Named as the European fintechs whose outcomes decide whether exit capital recirculates in Europe)
UBS and Santander (The two banks now screening graduate applicants on how they have used AI; UBS has also tested AI-generated avatars of analysts for client presentations)
Klarna (Two roles in one episode: the UK-Swedish company that listed in the US, and Mikula's example of AI washing after it publicized AI-driven layoffs and then backfilled roles)
bunq (Mikula's own bank, where a disputed card charge was declined by a bot with no option to reach a human)
Meta and Plaid (Muse, a personal AI agent that reads balances, transactions, investments and liabilities through Plaid's connections to more than 12,000 US institutions and apps)
NatWest (Edwards-Dashti's example of reskilling at scale: 480 people with no technology background retrained as engineers)
US Mint (The $1 Trump coin, sold in rolls of 25 for $61 and bags of 100 for $154.50, and the first sitting president on a US coin since Coolidge in 1926)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Revolut backer Molten Ventures hits £175M first close of growth fund – John Reynolds, Tech.eu (The story the first segment is built on, written by the guest who discusses it)
Chime to buy nationally chartered Stride Bank – Reuters (The source for the deal terms Gallagher read out)
UBS makes AI proficiency a hiring requirement for junior bankers – FStech (The graduate-recruitment story behind the third segment)
Plaid powers Meta's new AI agent, Muse – FF News (The quickfire item on Meta's personal finance agent)
Trump becomes first living US president on a coin in a century – BBC News (The closing item)
Self Made (The series through which Edwards-Dashti discovered Madame CJ Walker, her nomination for the coin)
Fintech Business Weekly – Jason Mikula (The newsletter he publishes, and the basis for his read on US bank charters)
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