Move over, Robinhood—Chime is now the most valuable U.S.-based consumer fintech.
According to CNBC, Chime, a so-called neobank that offers branchless banking services to customers, is now worth $14.5 billion, besting the price tag of massive retail trading platform Robinhood at around $11.2 billion, as of mid August, per PitchBook data. Business Insider also reported about the possible new valuation earlier this week.
Chime locked in its new valuation via a Series F funding round to the tune of $485 million from investors including Coatue, ICONIQ, Tiger Global, Whale Rock Capital, General Atlantic, Access Technology Ventures, Dragoneer, and DST Global, per CNBC.
The fintech has seen massive growth over its seven-year life. Chime first reached one million users in 2018, and has since added millions of customers, although the company has not said how many users it currently has in total. Chime provides banking services through a mobile app including no-fee accounts, debit cards, paycheck advances, and no overdraft fees. Over the course of the pandemic, savings balances reached all-time highs, CEO Chris Britt told Coins2Day back in May.
Britt told CNBC the challenger bank will be poised for an IPO within the next 12 months. And it’s up in the air whether Chime will go the way of others before it and opt for a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, to go public. “I probably get calls from two SPACS a week to see if we’re interested in getting into the markets quickly,” Britt told CNBC. “The reality is we have a number of initiatives we want to complete over the next 12 months to put us in a position to be market-ready.”
The challenger bank’s rapid growth has not been without challenges, however. As Coins2Day reported, back in October of 2019 Chime suffered a multi-day outage that left many customers unable to access their money. Following the outage, Britt told Coins2Day in December the fintech had increased capacity and stress testing of its infrastructure amid “heightened awareness to performing them in a more rigorous way given the size and the pace of growth that we have.”
