Digital banking covers the institutions themselves: neobanks and challenger banks, the charters and licences that let them hold deposits, and the core banking platforms they run on. Fintechbits follows the slow and expensive process of becoming a bank — OCC applications, federal trust charters, EU licences, and the rejections that come with them — alongside the product decisions that follow: deposit accounts, overdrafts, savings rates and the economics of each. Coverage includes Chime, Revolut, Monzo, Nubank, Bunq and Varo, and the infrastructure vendors behind them such as Mambu and Thought Machine. Where a story is really about how money moves rather than who holds it, it belongs under payments.
Fintech—Charitarth Sindhu—September 16, 2026
Chime Stride Bank news broke on September 8, 2026, when Chime Financial agreed to buy Stride Bank, N.A. for $590 million in cash. Stride, an Oklahoma national bank, has been Chime's bank partner for more than seven years. The deal runs through Stride's parent, Central Service Corporation. As a result, Chime's most important vendor relationship
September 10, 2026
Mambu Intelligent Core is a rebuilt architecture that merges Mambu Core, Mambu Payments and a new native AI layer called Mambu Agentic. The pitch is that banks and lenders running on Mambu no longer bolt AI onto the core after the fact. Instead it ships inside the ledger itself. Inside Mambu Intelligent Core Three new
September 8, 2026
Fintech bank charter rejections just got a second high-profile example: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency rejected bunq's application for a US national bank charter on August 7, citing gaps in capital planning, credit risk modeling, management experience, profitability assumptions and familiarity with US banking rules. It is the second high-profile fintech charter
September 7, 2026
Working Abroad Index editions now number three. Bunq, which describes itself as Europe's second-largest neobank, published the 2026 ranking covering 75 cities across 40 countries, with Canada included for the first time. What the Working Abroad Index Found in Canada The Working Abroad Index rent numbers travel well because they are counterintuitive. Vancouver renters pay
September 3, 2026
Revolut US bank charter plans just cleared a major hurdle: conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a national bank in America, a step two of its European rivals failed to clear just weeks earlier. The proposed entity, Revolut Bank US, N.A., still needs sign-off from the FDIC on
August 20, 2026
Circle Q2 earnings arrived on Wednesday, August 5, from New York. Total revenue and reserve income reached $701 million, up 7 percent year over year. That fell short of the roughly $712 million analysts had modelled. Net income from continuing operations landed at $48 million. That $530 million year-over-year swing is almost entirely an artefact.
August 20, 2026
Chime Q2 earnings landed on Wednesday, August 5, with revenue of $670 million, up 27 percent year over year and ahead of the $640.4 million analysts expected. Meanwhile, net income reached $28 million. That marks a second consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability since the June 2025 listing on Nasdaq. Buried in the same Chime Q2
August 17, 2026
Revolut French banking licence approval arrived on 10 August, and at first glance it reads like a routine expansion story. Revolut Bank S.A. anchors the company's Western European business. It has received a full banking licence after a joint assessment by the ACPR and the European Central Bank. Notably, the ECB Governing Council adopted the
August 4, 2026
OneSource Virtual trust bank operations began this month with the launch of OneSource Virtual Trust Bank, N.A., a limited-purpose national trust bank regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The charter took effect July 1, 2026, and the announcement followed on July 21. OSV expects the final phase of its transition to
August 3, 2026
Identifi Keystone customers now include Mid Atlantic Federal Credit Union, after the Tampa-based document automation vendor announced the Maryland institution as a client on July 21, 2026. The deal adds another name to a roster of credit unions tied to the Corelation Keystone core banking platform, and implementation is scheduled to begin immediately. What the
July 9, 2026
Axos Arc Technologies is a deal about where digital banks go next. Axos Financial has agreed to buy Arc Technologies, a fintech that gives venture-backed startups a single dashboard for cash management, yield, and debt financing. Terms were not disclosed. The purchase runs through Axos Nevada Holding, a subsidiary of Axos Financial, and the deal
July 4, 2026
Neobank profitability has become the defining test for digital banks. For a decade, these apps chased sign-ups. Now the market wants earnings. Research from Simon-Kucher found that fewer than 5% of the world's roughly 400 neobanks have ever reached breakeven, and most earn under $30 per customer each year. The neobank profitability gap is the
July 2, 2026
Neobank account or traditional business account? That is one of the first real decisions a new founder makes. For an underbanked founder, the pull is obvious. Speed, low fees, and a clean app beat weeks of branch paperwork every time. Yet that convenience hides trade-offs that rarely surface until money is on the line. So
