In September, three companies gave three different answers to the same question: who should hold the bank charter?
On September 28, Valley National Bancorp agreed to acquire Bluevine, a small-business banking platform with about 175,000 active customers, for about $340 million (Bluevine). Bluevine's roughly $2.1 billion in deposits are held today at a partner bank and are expected to move to Valley in the first half of 2027 (Banking Dive).
Earlier in the month, Chime agreed to buy one of its own partner banks, Stride Bank, for $590 million. Its CEO said the fintech needs "complete control of our destiny" (Banking Dive).
And Enova withdrew its applications to acquire Grasshopper Bank. Its CEO pointed to an absence of "clear standards" for nonbanks that want to become banks, and said the company's growth does "not depend on becoming a bank" (Banking Dive).
A bank buying a fintech. A fintech buying its bank. A fintech walking away. Most companies launching a financial product won't do any of these. But each deal shows what the bank relationship is really worth.
Three routes to the same question
Partner with a bank. A chartered bank holds the deposits and carries the regulatory responsibility. The company owns the product and the customer experience. This is how most embedded financial products launch.
Buy a bank. The company takes on the charter, and with it the full weight of supervision. Explaining Chime's deal, its CEO described the friction of working with a bank partner: "We have our level of risk tolerance and compliance, and so forth. They have theirs. We're both mostly right, but we have different perspectives on those things" (Banking Dive).
Be bought by a bank. The platform's customers and deposits become part of a bank's own franchise. In the Valley deal, funding was part of the logic: the bank said the deposits would improve its funding mix (Banking Dive).
What this means if you're launching on a partner bank
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1. Connect: make the two perspectives line up before launch.
"Buying a bank changes who owns the risk tolerance. It doesn't make the obligations go away," says Tyler Ferguson, Chisel co-founder and a 25-year commercial banker. "For everyone else, the work is to make those two perspectives line up before launch, not after."
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2. Comply: write down who owns what. Complaints, marketing review, reconciliation and vendor oversight each need a named owner and evidence behind them. Regulators are moving the same way. On September 11, the OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC and NCUA proposed revised third-party risk management guidance that would tailor oversight to the risk of each relationship (OCC Bulletin 2026-46).
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3. Grow: know what your deposits are worth.
"Your balances are part of the bank's business model," says Darin Petty, Chisel co-founder. "Know how, before you negotiate." Early on, ask who earns the value of the deposits, how it's shared, and whether your cost to serve scales with volume or with headcount.
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4. Operate: design for the relationship changing. Bank relationships change: through acquisitions, repricing, or a program that outgrows its partner.
"The ledger and reconciliation design decides whether that's a migration or a rebuild," says Matt Anderton, Chisel co-founder. Know what would move and what would have to be rebuilt.
The takeaway
Whether to partner with a bank, buy one or become one isn't a question most companies need to answer this year. The question they do need to answer is whether they understand their bank relationship well enough to negotiate it, run it, and survive a change to it. Chisel works with companies that have earned the right to launch a financial product, helping them make those decisions together, with people who have done it before.