View / Fintech startups that hated banks are now becoming them

“This is the beginning of a bankless world,” proclaimed a 2016 ad for SoFi, which embodied the sneering disdain its generation of fintech startups had for the banks they were out to dethrone.

SoFi is now a bank, the 46th biggest in America. So are Klarna and PayPal. Chime is the latest to bite the bullet, announcing the acquisition of a bank earlier this month. Revolut, whose CEO was once quoted saying “I just don’t like banks,” has also applied for a license. Block, which got a skinny banking license in 2021, wants another one.

Contempt for banks was hard-coded into these companies’ DNA. Now they all want to be one. Why?

First, the real money to be made in financial services is in lending, especially as the young tech-savvy customers they courted through YOLO brokerage, crypto trading, and money transfers grow up and want to buy a house. In the lending business, controlling your funding is important, and there’s no cheaper funding in the world than savings accounts. Relying on bank partners to fund the loans you want to make is risky, as LendingClub found out the hard way, which is why it bought a bank in 2020 and is now a full-fledged bank called Happen.

These companies’ pivots are also an acknowledgement that their hypergrowth stage is over. Regulators don’t like banks growing too quickly because they tend to screw up when they do, which is why Robinhood abandoned its pursuit of a license in 2019. A reminder: We had “Robinhood becomes a bank” on our 2026 Semafor Business bingo card. We might be early, but I don’t think we’re wrong.