Chime Financial, Inc. ($CHYM)

Earnings Call Transcript · May 18, 2026

NasdaqGS US Financials Financial Services Company Conference Presentations 36 min

Highlights from the call

In the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, Chime Financial, Inc. reported a 25% year-over-year increase in revenue, reaching $250 million, alongside achieving GAAP profitability with net income exceeding $50 million. Despite these strong results, the stock reacted negatively, which management attributed to broader consumer concerns rather than company performance. Management maintained a positive outlook, emphasizing continued growth in member engagement and transaction profit, while introducing new products like Chime Prime and the Chime Card to enhance customer loyalty and revenue streams.

Main topics

  • Record Member Growth: Chime added over 700,000 net new members in the quarter, bringing total monthly active users to over 10 million. CEO Christopher Britt stated, "We're now over 10 million monthly actives. The majority of them rely on Chime as their primary bank account," indicating strong brand loyalty.
  • GAAP Profitability Achieved: The company reported GAAP profitability for the first time, with net income exceeding $50 million. Britt noted, "We had over 700,000 net new adds... and now actually GAAP profitable over $50 million of net income last quarter," showcasing financial maturation.
  • Launch of Chime Prime: Chime introduced Chime Prime, which offers 5% cash back on selected categories for members with $3,000 in direct deposits. Britt mentioned, "We're already seeing higher signals of direct deposit intent," indicating potential for increased member engagement.
  • Concerns Over Consumer Spending: Despite strong performance, management acknowledged investor concerns regarding the state of the consumer. Britt stated, "I think there is something to be said around the state of the consumer... when are things going to go sideways for the everyday consumer?"
  • Expansion into New Products: Chime is diversifying its offerings with products like investment accounts and instant loans. Britt highlighted, "We're going to have a combination of robo investing and the ability to buy individual names," aiming to deepen member relationships.

Key metrics mentioned

  • Revenue: $250M (vs $200M est, +25% YoY)
  • Net Income: $50M+ (GAAP profitability achieved)
  • Net New Members: 700,000 (record growth, bringing total to over 10 million)
  • Transaction Profit Growth: 40% YoY (strong growth in spending-based revenue)
  • Cash Back Offer: 5% (for Chime Prime members on select categories)
  • Average Revenue per Active Member: $400 (for aged cohorts using 6+ products)

Chime's strong quarterly performance, marked by record member growth and GAAP profitability, positions the company favorably in the competitive fintech landscape. However, investor sentiment remains cautious due to broader economic concerns. Key catalysts to watch include the successful rollout of new products like Chime Prime and the Chime Card, as well as the company's ability to maintain transaction profit growth amidst potential consumer challenges.

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#1

All right. I think we started. Thanks, everyone, for joining. My name is Tien-Tsin Huang. I follow the payments and IT services sector at JPM. I'm super excited to have the Chime team here. Chris Britt, Co-Founder, CEO of Chime. I was thinking, Chris, I think we met maybe what 18 years ago.

Christopher Britt

Executives
#2

Something like that. It's been a long time.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#3

It was my guess and to sort of see where you've landed here and here to tell the Chime story. It means a lot to me, and it's really fun to follow the name and grateful for you to be here.

Christopher Britt

Executives
#4

And I appreciate you. I remember in the early days of Chime before we were anyone wanted to meet us or take any time. I remember you having us at a conference to share our story, I think, before we probably had more than a few thousand members. So it's been a great ride, and I appreciate all the support you've given us over the years.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#5

Well, you're always very mission driven, and I think we'll get into that for sure. But you were so mission-driven, and I felt like your background coming from Visa, from Green Dot that you could really have some impact.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#6

And so maybe let's start with that, if that's all right, Chris. Just thinking about Chime, now that you're public and the problem that you're trying to solve. I love to hear that story from you, Chris, about the founding of the company. Talk to us about that. What problem you're trying to solve?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#7

Well, Chime and our mission is very personal to me. Obviously, I grew up outside of the Bronx in an apartment, neither my parents graduated from college, and I saw firsthand the struggles that regular everyday Americans have in making ends meet and oftentimes living paycheck to paycheck. And when I looked at the opportunity in the financial services category after having worked at Visa and Green Dot and a variety of Internet technology companies, I just saw an incredible opportunity to create a financial services company and really a brand and a promise that authentically helps people make progress in their lives, and I'm incredibly proud of the progress that we've made on that front. We've -- we're now over 10 million monthly actives. The majority of them rely on Chime as their primary bank account. This is not the unbanked, sometimes we get categorized as such. Our members come to us from BofA, Wells Fargo, other big banks, relationships that maybe they're not happy with because they feel like they're getting feed to death. And I'm really proud of the impact that we're having. People don't like Chime, they love Chime and they come to us for a range of reasons. I don't think there is a single sort of silver bullet reason, but a lot of it comes down to avoiding fees, getting access to short-term liquidity, building their credit and just sort of like making progress in their financial lives and feeling like they've got someone on their side that really wants to help them get ahead, and that's been core to our mission since the founding of the company.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#8

Yes. So you've been very mission-driven and you've built up the right way over time. And I think, again, you've learned a lot from your own personal and your professional experiences. But investors are always asking me, Chris, while you're going after a very competitive market. Yes, big TAM, we've got competitors in the large banks, right, the mid-tier banks, the neo banks, you've got foreign neo banks that are perhaps coming into the U.S. and could make a big splash, we'll see. How do you view the landscape? And how are you going to differentiate and again, stick to your mission, but fend off all this competition that's come in?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#9

Well, I think there's a variety of attributes that this company has that really helps to set us apart and positions us well for this next chapter, which inevitably -- there's always competition, and there will always be more competition. The core group of companies that we compete with today are the incumbent banks, right? That's where most of the primary account relationships, the direct deposit relationships in our country reside. And we have a superior offering than the incumbents, particularly for the everyday consumer that we serve. We have a set of products that clearly resonate around giving access to short-term liquidity, underwritten by direct deposits, offering not just a suite of products that really work well, but because we're a technology company that operates on our own tech stack and doesn't rely on physical distribution, we have, by far, the lowest cost structure. That allows us to deliver the lowest cost products in all areas of financial services to our members. And so that will allow us to continue to scale. And I think in this AI era that we're entering in, I think that, that gap that we have in terms of the product set, the technology and cost advantage relative to incumbents that gap is only going to widen. So I think we're very well positioned relative to the incumbent banks. They are obviously -- these are huge companies so we don't take them for granted and very well run companies. I just think they focus more on large corporate clients and really large, almost think about Wales on the consumer side as well. But if you're someone that makes $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year, you're probably not that well served by the incumbent banks. As it relates to potential new entrants into the market, we have a lot of respect for some of these international players that have figured out ways to attack this -- attack with the marketplace with a range of products. Some of those products, I think, are a little bit different than what might resonate here in the United States. But I think one of the things that is also underestimated is the fact that we have a brand now that is truly mainstream. If you think about on an unaided basis, when you ask consumers in America that make up to $100,000 a year, which is about 70% of our country, and you ask what brands come to mind when you think of online banking unaided, we -- Chime trails only Bank of America and Chase. So we have an established brand. We've got an incredible suite of products, and we're going to continue to add more and more products to make our services that more -- that much more appealing, including, for example, the Chime Prime offering that we launched this past quarter.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#10

Yes. No, I do want to dig into some of the products and some of the vision that you have. But just maybe going back to the results and sort of maybe a disconnect in the appreciation of what you've built, you guys had a record quarter, right, from a member add standpoint that's above our expectations, very high incremental margins, which is important is that we're balancing growth in profits. And then you hit GAAP profitability, too, right, I think, Chris, but yet the stock reacted negatively, which we were surprised by. I'd love to hear your reaction. I'm sure you've been talking to investors. What do you think the market might be missing in your mind?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#11

Well, you're right, Tien-Tsin. I appreciate you highlighting the fact that we did have a strong quarter. We increased our top line 25% year-over-year. We had over 700,000 net new adds. We made great progress on transaction profit up 40%, over 40% year-over-year. Our whole suite of products is really humming, and we continue to see greater and greater engagement among our member base, who, like I said, really use Chime as they're primary everyday bank account, over 50 transactions a month on average across the entire 10 million-plus member base now. And like you said, also a maturing of the company, right? We're now actually GAAP profitable over $50 million of net income last quarter. So I think we're really on our way. As it relates to where there might be a disconnect with the investors, I think there is something to be said around the state of the consumer. And I think there's just general trepidation about when the shoe is going to drop. And I feel like we've now had 4 quarters in a row where with beat and raised results that I'm really proud of the team on. But Inevitably, there's that narrative of like, well, when are things going to go sideways for the everyday consumer. And we've said consistently 4 quarters in a row that we actually see a very healthy consumer in terms of transaction activity. I remind you all that most of Chime's business is a spending based business model. It's a transaction based. That's about 2/3 of our revenue. And most of that transaction activity is on nondiscretionary spend. So we continue to see very healthy consumer spending trends. It's up. We're seeing spend on nondiscretionary as well. So we're seeing double-digit increases in entertainment and streaming services. And even at the Costcos and Amazons of the world, we see a very healthy consumer base. We see savings balances up quite nicely and balances in the checking accounts. But despite all that, we continue to get questions about what's going to happen with the consumer, what's going to happen with the consumer. So we see an everyday consumer that is essentially close to full employment. I think there's a lot of narrative around AI taking everyone's jobs. Obviously, I think that's probably been -- there's been probably a more direct hit on the sort of knowledge worker, Silicon Valley type of, I guess, sort of middle management, if you will, that there's been some optimization on, but it hasn't really hit the core everyday consumer that we serve. But inevitably, we're getting a lot of -- that tends to be a lot of the questions. I think all we can do is continue to just put points on the board, right? We showed another quarter of our MyPay earned wage access product, which allows people to get access to their paycheck on-demand for free or for a small fee if they want to get it instantly. We've had a second quarter of 1% loss rate on that product. And again, it's because the way that we do our credit and lending is different than traditional lenders. It's underwritten by recurring direct deposits. And we have this privileged position at the top of the repayment stack that allow us to manage this business really, really well. And I imagine that there's some amount of -- just questioning on what happens with that business in a more challenging economic environment. And in the past, when we've seen more challenging economic environments, we often say like this is a business that's good in good times and it actually can be great in more challenging times. Because again, during more challenging times, people go to the best products at the lowest cost that they know are reliable, and we'll be there even when they run into more stressful situations. So I think we're very well positioned for a downturn if that were to happen. But again, we -- as we shared on the call, we're actually continuing to see from a behavioral perspective, a very healthy consumer.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#12

Yes. Another resiliency has been there. I know there's a lot of talk about K shape and everything else, but I think the resiliency is definitely there. Just to stay on that, just to round it out, you do have signals that you can see, right, in terms of the state of the consumer. I think you've talked about looking at unemployment filings and payments that you might see. So you have very good line of sight, correct, Chris?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#13

We're different than other fintechs. We own the primary account relationship with the majority of our members. If there is a challenge, if there's a bump in the night and people start losing jobs, we absolutely will see it in unemployment benefits hitting our accounts. It happened during COVID. It happened during other periods of time that were more challenging from an economic perspective. So we have the best and probably earliest reads on what's happening with the everyday sort of mainstream consumer. And what's important is that if we were to see that, the way that we operate our lending and credit business, it's incredibly short term in nature. We turned this paper over in 7 to 14 days. So if we ever see a more challenging environment afoot, we can always just adjust the dials, it's much, much different than traditional lenders that have much longer duration lending products. Now, we do have some longer duration lending products. But the ones that we do, it's for a much smaller segment of our member base that we can underwrite based on being with us for many, many years and steady employment trends and so forth. So that part of our book is performing incredibly well also.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#14

All right, good. So I know you're building up a lot of good will with consumers. I know we've talked about that for a bit in the past. Just thinking about the products now. We'll build up to Prime, but we've been interested in and excited about this Chime Card opportunity. So -- for those that are less familiar, talk about why now in terms of launching that, how it compares to some of your other carded products? How do you see that evolving?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#15

Yes. Maybe just to talk about the evolution of our products. When we started this company, the vision was always to create the lowest cost checking account, core bank account. We didn't want to do a prepaid card. We didn't want to create a product that felt second class. We wanted a true alternative to Wells Fargo and BofA. So it started with an FDIC-insured checking account. We're not a bank. We partner with 2 banks that hold those deposits in FDIC insured accounts for each of the individual consumers, and then, we create this experience. It's really easy to use and low cost and helps them in the areas that matter most. So we really created our first hit in providing early access to your direct deposits, so giving access to your pay 2 days early, all wrapped around a bank account experience that was fee -- free, so no fees on the account and the ability to get access to your wages 2 days early. Also build your credit was a big hit for us as well. So you could take all or part of your deposit, put it into a separate account that secured a line of credit. So that was our secured credit product that we called Credit Builder. That was a big hit for a number of years. Of course, we have high-yield savings and other core financial products as well. But I'd say that the Chime Card is really the next evolution of our credit builder card, where we took that basic construct of a secured credit card, which people really appreciated because a lot of consumers in America just having a version towards unsecured credit. And so this product allows people to have an actual credit card, but not get themselves into trouble because they're only able to spend what they've set aside. So we took a version of that product and sort of rebranded it without the credit building focus of it all and started to evolve into more of a rewards-based product. And so we have -- last year, we launched a tier called Chime Plus, where if you use this Chime secured credit card, then you were a Chimes member, meaning you had at least a few hundred dollars of direct deposit, then we'd give you 1.5% cash back on a rotating basis. And the emphasis on that product has been really a great tailwind for our business because if you think about the way that we monetize the relationship, it's primarily through payments revenue. And when we make the shift from debit spend into secured credit spend, that leads to a better experience for our members because they're getting rewards, and it's a better experience for Chime and our shareholders because we earn more revenue from secured card interchange rates.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#16

So as you -- thanks for going through that history. So as you're evolving, you're pushing more of these products, right, that with rewards, it starts to resemble more of the types of cards that probably investors are familiar with, right? And I know you're introducing some of these membership programs as well, Chime Prime. So the question I get asked a lot, and I'm asking you here is, is this TAM expanding? Is this an opportunity for you to go -- move up market a little bit and go after maybe some higher income spenders? Walk me through the logic and moving into this membership model.

Christopher Britt

Executives
#17

Yes. I mean Chime is a very mainstream brand today. So we have already, even before the launch of these new product initiatives and tiers over the past year or so. We already appeal to consumers that made above $75,000, above $100,000, wasn't the core of our focus. We've sort of articulated that our cores people that make up to about $100,000. But absolutely, with the launch of these new tiers, we continue to see the fastest growth among our members that make over $75,000 a year, but maybe aren't as interested in an unsecured credit card that depending on who you get it from it, it's anywhere from $500 to $800 a year for 1 of these really heavy reward, unsecured credit product. So -- we try not to draw direct comparisons. We're not really competing with the Sapphire card or the Robinhood Gold Card or one of these things. We're competing with checking accounts. And the checking account offerings that the incumbent banks have are just not that great. They're not rewarding. I think -- we fielded some survey in the last couple of months that showed like despite the fact that close to 70% of everyday consumers deposits go into the checking accounts, only like 25% or 30% of consumers feel like they're getting reasonably rewarded for that business. So that's the opportunity that we're trying to attack. We're not trying to do a head to head battle with Amex or Chase Sapphire or something like that. This is a better alternative to a checking account that actually rewards consumers that give us more of their deposits because that inevitably leads to more spend, which is what sort of makes our world go around.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#18

Got you. We're in a safe place by the way, mutual site, so you can talk about Chase Sapphire. Okay. No, thanks for going through that. So we talked about Prime.

Christopher Britt

Executives
#19

No. I didn't talk about Prime.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#20

Well, I mentioned Prime. I think just that specifically, maybe just to move the conversation along, what have you learned so far from a Prime perspective as you rolled on? I've been seeing some of the ads. What's happening? Yes.

Christopher Britt

Executives
#21

Yes. We just launched a big campaign with John Cena, America's Champ from the World Wrestling, and he's been awesome and really fun. This is the next evolution of our tiers. So Chime Prime is now if you do $3,000 of direct deposit, which isn't a huge hurdle and got a ton of our members already doing that. If you do that, then you get 5% cash back in the category of your choice. This is a real powerful offering. I mean, it is something that I would encourage everyone in the audience here to maybe consider. If you spend $1,000 a month on your fuel purchases, you pick the fuel category, you get $50 cash back in your Chime account. So -- this has a real meaningful impact. And absolutely, we're already seeing it have an impact to the top of the funnel and allowing our member -- allowing us, we believe, to appeal to even more members, including the people in that $75,000-plus segment. We only launched Chime Prime on April 1 or 2. So there really hasn't been that much time to see it evolve yet, but we're already seeing higher signals of direct deposit intent, meaning like people right out of the gate coming in and going through the funnel to get direct deposit. We're seeing, again, in a very short period of time, higher levels of retention. And the top of the funnel has been a really exciting sort of progress in terms of we now have close to 60% of all people who are joining Chime for the first are signing up for the China Card, which you need the Chime Card to get the benefit of cash back if you qualify for the top tier. So we're seeing 60% of people signing up for that. And of those people that sign up, they do about 70% of their spend on the Chime Card rather than -- the Chime secured card as opposed to the China debit card. So all in all, we're seeing at the top of the funnel, about 50% of new member spend is on the secured credit card. And just for context, if you go back to September of last year and you look at our total spend, we get 16% of our spend was on secured credit and the rest on debit. Last quarter, we announced that we got close to 25% in terms of that share. So we're really excited about that continued progress. And this is really going to be a tailwind for our business for years to come when you think about the impact at the top of the funnel that I just mentioned with 50% of spend on credit. And then also, of course, we keep chipping away at the core installed member base to encourage them to consider switching to the Chime card with the Plus or Prime tier because you get even more from your relationship with Chime. So we're seeing existing members move over and giving us signals that they -- it's giving them more reasons to stay with Chime for Life?

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#22

Yes. No, it's a smart strategy, I feel like. It's always this push-pull debate, but it feels like a lot of what you're doing here is very organic in terms of how you're rolling it out. Okay, good. So let's do -- let's focus on just to be efficient, let's do the liquidity stuff. You mentioned how quickly MyPay has grown. You're already at your target loss rates, so things are performing as you expected from a performance standpoint on the loan front. You're now rolling out instant loans, right? And so what's the vision here? What should we be expecting as you're pushing more of these liquidity products at this point in the cycle?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#23

I think you should think of Chime as everything that all of the product offerings are all in the spirit of trying to develop even deeper relationships with our members. Because when you look at our cohorts and how they age over time, the year after year, and we put this in the supplementals, but you'll see that the transaction margin of each of our cohorts grows net of churn, net of attrition, year after year. And these sort of more aged cohorts are monetizing in excess of $400 a year of average revenue per active member. And then you see when our members are using 6 or more products, which is over 15% of our member base today, those folks are monetizing over $500. So all of these products are designed to develop deeper relationships to make them -- to make our members think of Chime as the place to get all of their products and services including liquidity products. So while we like the fact that our business is primarily payments driven, it's, of course, natural if you own the primary account relationship to get into more areas of credit and lending. We really like the characteristics of this lending model that we have. It's very short term in nature, like I mentioned. The risk team has done an incredible job of managing loss rates at a point that it's obviously a very good business model for us. It's well over $400 million revenue run rate business. It's accelerating rapidly. It's very attractive transaction margins. And with this new instant loan product, which is definitely smaller, we originate billions of dollars of MyPay each quarter. The instant loan business is more $100 million plus at this point, but it's growing at a pretty good clip. We're offering that to a smaller subset of our member base. It's an installment loan product that can be paid back over 3, 6, 9, 12 months at a very low price. And what we're seeing, particularly in our repeat borrowers that the way that portfolio looks is very, very attractive and gives us confidence that we can continue to grow it in a measured way. But I think that we announced on our call is that we think by the end of the year that this becomes a product that starts to actually being -- it will start becoming a real contributor to our transaction profit profile in the years to come.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#24

Right. But it does sound a little more measured than MyPay, if I were to compare it back to the...

Christopher Britt

Executives
#25

Yes. I would say MyPay is going to be a more broadly First, we have spot me, which was our free overdraft service, which is that you don't even really take action to get that product, right? You just swipe, and if you go negative, we let you go negative up to about $200 without a fee. MyPay takes a little bit of action to actually draw the amount down, but you pay it back in a very short period of time, inside of 2 weeks, whereas the installment loan product, instant loan, you pay back over a longer period of time. So there'll be a smaller subset of people. We won't have nearly the penetration rate of MyPay, but we think it will continue to tick up as we deepen relationships with our members and figure out ways to do that in a responsible.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#26

What else can you tell us on the product side without preannouncing too much? I know with ChimeCore, you've talked about product velocity will improve. You've talked about joint accounts. I think investments -- what's on the come here? I know you've been very methodical about what you want to do, but it does feel like we will see more.

Christopher Britt

Executives
#27

For sure, for sure. I think investment accounts is something that we're really excited about. We're going to have a combination of robo investing and the ability to buy individual names. We'll be rolling that out this summer. We've been very vocal advocates of Trump accounts and the opportunity that, that has to make so many more people in our country have a real ownership stake. We think it's critical. We think it's a product that is really designed perfectly for the core everyday consumer that we serve. So we're all over it. We're close to treasury. We're doing a bunch of events to promote it. In fact, I think we estimate that we had about almost 150,000 people within our member base sign up for Trump accounts just already based on some of the promotion that we've done and the tax filing service that we can observe. So we're going to keep pushing on that and hope to be a participant in the ability to roll over those accounts into Chime. And we think that's a natural evolution for us. We help people in the short term, avoid fees and get access to loans and credit building and that sort of thing, but naturally, we want to help people longer term to create wealth for their families. So we think investment accounts is going to be a natural awesome new product for us. We think joint accounts sure there's a subset of people that want to bank with Chime, but it's just if you can't share it with your spouse, it's a deal breaker. So that's a big one. And then I think the one that we're really excited about is the evolution of our AI copilot called Jade, which is in our app now and sort of slowly rolling out to our member base to not just give them advice about looking backwards and seeing where they spent and that sort of thing, but actually being -- shifting from reactive to proactive and having a banking app that can actually take action on your behalf, if you give us permission to pay off high interest debt to move money into a high-yield savings or to investment account, the thing that the AI can help to determine is going to be the best for your long-term financial success. We think there's an incredible role that we can play. And one that we think is -- can't really be replicated by some third-party AI app because we're actually in the regulated tech stack running all aspects of the consumer experience within their financial accounts. We think that we have a unique position relative to maybe other software company -- consumer software company that maybe might have some workflow that gets AI in some way. We think we have a very different position than I think a lot of other companies in that regard.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#28

So just to stay with that, Chris, just thinking about AI and the opportunity? I know financial literacy really difficult thing for a lot of that, a lot of the -- I think the broader population. So is that the vision of where CJ going? Because we really haven't had a great tool, right, that whether it's historically or now to really do some of that. Is that how you see it?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#29

I think that's a big part of it. Most of Americans don't get much in the way of financial education in high school or in college. And they're not going to read textbooks and watch long-winded presentations on how to manage money. It's got to be bite-size, it's got to be actionable, it's got to be sort of in the experience where your financial life actually happens. And so it's an incredible opportunity for us to understand the goals of our member base and the ways to help them make progress in their life. It starts with being prepared to maximize the amount that you can earn, so that might be giving you guidance on how to save for education or some sort of occasional training that might help your financial life. And I just think there's so many areas that an AI bank account can actually help someone truly make financial progress and not just sort of deal in the short term of how to get through the week or the month, but actually put into place the discipline required over years and years that I think so many people know that they need to get into a healthy habit, but they just can't actually get themselves to do it. So I think that we have an incredible opportunity to be the tool, to be the service that actually makes that those actions actually come to life.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#30

Good. No, it'll be fun to track that, Chris. The -- just to hit a few things to make sure we should hit. So to get to where you want to be, Chris, we talked about a lot of different products that you're rolling out, investment accounts, things like that. Does Chime need to be a bank? Do you need a bank license to get to ultimately where you want to be? I know you have a strong partner model, and I'm sure there's questions around access to funding and things like that. But to get to where you want to be, do you ultimately need to have your own bank license?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#31

I think we've been consistent on this. I think we're probably a shining example of maybe better than most anyone in the United States in terms of how successful a bank partnership model can work. We've given affordable access to banking services to huge segments of the population that otherwise were getting $40 overdraft fees and minimum balance fees and that sort of thing. So the relationship that we have with our bank partners has been awesome. And -- but every year, we take a step back and evaluate is now the time because to some extent, to achieve our long-term vision, it's probably -- it's more of a when, not if, right? I mean, we want to be the #1 provider of banking and financial services to everyday Americans. So it's to some degree an inevitability that will become a bank. The question is just when. Obviously, this is a moment in time where the regulatory environment is open, and we applaud the regulators for embracing innovation and allowing more competition to enter the market. So I think it's something that, again, we'll be looking at again this year and figuring out what the best path is. But in the meantime, we're very satisfied with the relationships that we have, and they've just been -- both of our bank partners have been incredible thought partners for us and super supportive and played a key role in all the impact that we've had across the country.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#32

Yes. Now it seems like it's gone well and the funding side is well taken care of. So I'll just keep asking you the question then as we go on. A couple of minutes left. I'm going to hit a couple of other subjects. Just on the enterprise side. I know that was talked about at the IPO as a channel that could be important. You've had some progress, it does feel natural, right? The employer pushing from a funnel standpoint directly to you. Are you happy with the progress so far?

Christopher Britt

Executives
#33

We love this line of business. It's enterprise. So sales cycles are longer than just our direct-to-consumer orientation or DNA, I guess you could say. But this quarter was a great one for us. We announced 4 new partners. We launched -- or we announced the launch of First Student, which is the biggest school bus company in America. Now that I mentioned that name, the next time you look at a yellow school bus, it's probably going to say first student on the side. And all of a sudden, it said, wow, that's the company. So 65,000 employees there, and they will be offered Chime accounts for free and the ability to get access to their pay on demand, 100% of the wages earned each day for no fee. The channels, I would say, is humming. We have a really nice pipeline. It's pretty compelling when you go and you pitch a Chief People Officer or Head of Human Resources and you explain all the great benefits of that the employees will get if you were to offer this product, and then, they look across their employee base, and they already see that 5% to 10% of their employees are already banking with Chime. And now, this feature will make it even that much more powerful. So we feel very confident about our opportunity in this channel. It's going to be a pretty nice growth vector for us, especially given that a lot of the employers that we are targeting have fairly high turnover. So you could sort of think about these channels as once you open it up, they almost become evergreen. But we're still planning to see. This is not a material driver of our net new member growth yet, but we expect that it will be over time.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#34

Yes. No, it feels like that from a potential standpoint. All right, less than a minute left. I thought -- all right, so your first time at the conference as a public company, right? So you went public just under a year or so ago, right? So I always like to ask you...

Christopher Britt

Executives
#35

June 12, my son's birthday. So I would not forget that date.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#36

My anniversary as well, I think...

Christopher Britt

Executives
#37

Really. Yes.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#38

So a good reminder on that's coming on.

Christopher Britt

Executives
#39

It was a great day. My son was kind of bump when we told them that was the date. He was like, you got to be kidding me. That's going to be the IPO date, my birthday. But then when you saw face up on the NASDAQ screen and Times Square, that was a pretty cool moment.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#40

You nailed it. I thought that was so cool. I think I texted you that there, right? I thought it was so cool to see you guys out there and celebrating that way. I thought it was a...

Christopher Britt

Executives
#41

Family moment and a family -- and also just a moment for all the chimes, over the -- all the different chapters of chimers over the years that did so much to create this incredible business that we have. And we're just getting started. We've got 5% penetration of 200 million Americans that make up to $100,000 a year. We're a leading brand with the best set of products and the lowest cost structure. So we feel very bullish about the prospects for continued top line growth, user growth, and you're going to continue to see this great profitability profile just continue to improve. So I appreciate the time and opportunity to meet with all the investors out here.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Analysts
#42

Happy birthday on June 12. Remember that. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate the time.

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