US fintech firm Chime Financial, Inc. has announced a deal to purchase the parent company of its long-time partner, Stride Bank, for $590 million in cash. Once the transaction is finalized, Chime will shift from a fintech platform dependent on partner banks for its underlying services to a financial holding company with a regulated banking subsidiary, positioning itself to expand into consumer lending.
Under the agreement, Chime will acquire Central Service Corporation, the parent entity of Stride Bank, with the $590 million purchase price subject to potential adjustments as outlined in the final agreement. The acquisition will be funded with cash from Chime's balance sheet, and the company does not anticipate needing additional capital injections for the deal. Upon completion, Stride will be renamed Chime Bank and operate as a wholly owned banking subsidiary of Chime, which will itself become a bank holding company regulated under the US Bank Holding Company Act.
Stride, a nationally chartered bank headquartered in Enid, Oklahoma, was founded in 1913 and has collaborated with Chime for over seven years. Chime currently relies on Stride and The Bancorp Bank to provide deposit accounts and other banking services to its users, as it is not itself a bank. This acquisition does not involve Chime directly applying for a new banking license; instead, the company opted to acquire an existing licensed institution, leveraging Stride's established capital, compliance, and risk management frameworks to gain full control over its banking infrastructure more swiftly.
Chime projects that the acquisition will be immediately accretive to earnings per share after closing and will generate over $100 million in net synergies, primarily derived from savings on partner bank fees, expansion of lending products, and reduced funding costs. With a banking subsidiary in hand, Chime can directly deploy deposit funds to support a portion of its lending operations, lessening its reliance on external partner banks and alternative funding sources. The company also plans to integrate its proprietary technology systems, customer data, and credit decisioning processes with Stride's banking infrastructure, streamlining the development and approval timeline for new products.
Chime emphasized that its core business will remain a payment-focused, asset-light model, but the acquisition will enable more effective scaling of its lending activities. Post-transaction, the company intends to centralize its primary banking operations within Stride while keeping total assets below $10 billion for the foreseeable future. This approach signals that Chime is not immediately pursuing rapid expansion into a large-scale balance-sheet bank. Current US regulations impose stricter debit card interchange fee limits on card issuers that reach certain asset thresholds, so managing asset size also helps Chime preserve the economics of its existing payments business.
The deal, unanimously approved by the boards of both Chime and Stride, is expected to close in the first half of 2027. Completion remains subject to approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, along with other customary conditions. Acquiring the banking license will reduce Chime's dependence on partner institutions, but it also exposes the company directly to more stringent capital, liquidity, compliance, and consumer protection requirements. Whether the transaction concludes on schedule and the anticipated synergies materialize will depend on regulatory approvals and the pace of subsequent systems integration.
In parallel, Chime raised its 2026 financial guidance, now projecting full-year revenue of $2.76 billion to $2.77 billion, reflecting year-over-year growth of approximately 26% to 27%, and adjusted EBITDA of $481 million to $489 million.