Hey, fintech fam 💜

I genuinely can’t believe it’s already April. This year is flying.

It feels like every week there’s something new happening across the industry right now, and the energy has been so good lately.

Between all the events, conversations, and momentum building, it really feels like fintech is in one of those moments where things are starting to click in a different way.

On our end, we’re deep in prep mode for everything coming up, especially New York Fintech Week at the end of the month. Make sure you have your tickets!

It’s coming up fast, and it’s shaping up to be something really special!

More to come on that soon… but for now, let’s get into it. ✨

#TRENDING

Every Thursday, I break down the fintech stories that matter most — grounded in my reporting, interviews with industry leaders, and what I’m seeing unfold across the industry.

For years, consumer fintech has had one goal: to make banking cheaper, faster, and more accessible.

Now, the companies that delivered on that promise are facing a new question:

What does growth look like after you’ve already won the customer?

Chime’s latest move is one answer.

On April 2, the company announced Chime Prime, a new premium tier designed to reward members who make Chime their primary account.

And that distinction is the strategy.

Chime built its brand by rejecting traditional banking economics: no monthly fees, no minimum balances, no penalties.

Chime Prime doesn’t abandon that model — it builds on it.

Instead of charging for premium access, Chime is rewarding behavior:

That includes:

All without a monthly fee.

As Chief Growth Officer, Vineet Mehra put it: customers who commit more to Chime should receive more, not pay more.

This isn’t a product launch in isolation — it’s a continuation of momentum.

As of December 2025, Chime reported:

→ 9.5 million active customers, up 1.5 million year-over-year

→ Expected +1.4 million new customers in 2026

→ 31% revenue growth last year

→ Forecasting 20–22% growth in 2026, with GAAP profitability

At the same time, Chime is leading where it matters most: acquisition.

According to J.D. Power data cited by the company, Chime opened more new checking accounts than any U.S. financial institution in late 2025 — accounting for 13% of all new checking accounts in Q4 alone.

Chime isn’t just trying to add users — it’s trying to own the relationship.

Customers who direct-deposit their paycheck are more engaged, more loyal, and more valuable. They spend more, use more products, and generate more interchange revenue — still Chime’s core revenue model.

Chime Prime is designed to accelerate that shift:

From secondary account → primary account → financial default

And in fintech, that’s everything.

There’s another signal here, too.

Chime is moving upmarket.

The new tier targets consumers earning $75,000+ annually, now one of its fastest-growing segments. That marks a shift toward a broader, more competitive customer base.

At the same time, it’s adopting familiar tactics — like cash-back rewards — long used by traditional banks.

But with a different foundation:

No fees. No balance requirements. No legacy cost structure.

It’s not becoming a bank — Chime still operates without a bank charter, partnering with Bancorp and Stride to issue its cards — but it is doubling down on what matters more: owning the customer experience and deepening the relationship.

The neobanks that defined fintech’s first chapter are entering their second.

Growth is no longer just about acquisition — it’s about retention, depth, and profitability.

Chime’s move signals a broader shift:

→ Premium banking is being redefined around behavior, not wealth

→ Primary account status is becoming the central battleground

→ Fintech is evolving from disruption to discipline and scale

And the numbers back it up.

Chime isn’t just growing — it’s maturing into a company that public markets can understand, measure, and reward.

Because in this next phase of fintech, the winners won’t just be the ones who onboard users. They’ll be the ones who become indispensable to how money moves in everyday life.

Most financial data is a mess.

Not conceptually — operationally.

Every day, banks and fintechs process billions of transactions across cards, ACH, and wires. But the underlying data is often fragmented, mislabeled, or flat-out unusable. Merchant names are inconsistent. Categories are wrong. Context is missing.

And that creates a ripple effect:

→ Higher fraud risk

→ More disputes

→ Worse customer experiences

→ Broken AI models built on bad inputs

Spade is building in that gap.

On March 24, Spade, founded by CEO Oban MacTavish and co-founder & COO Tess Bloch, announced a $40 million Series B, led by Oak HC/FT with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Flourish, Gradient, and others.

The company’s core premise is simple — and increasingly essential:

If financial institutions want to use AI, they need clean, structured, reliable data first.

Spade’s platform, founded in 2021, takes raw transaction data and enriches it in real time — matching transactions to verified merchants, adding context, and making it usable across systems.

That means:

And it’s not theoretical.

According to the startup, Spade is already:

→ Processing up to 1.9 billion transactions daily

→ Delivering 99%+ accuracy across merchant data

→ Powering workflows for companies like Stripe, Bilt, and Mercury

→ Growing revenue 470% year-over-year

What’s changing — and what this raise really signals — is Spade’s evolution.

This is no longer just about “cleaning up transaction strings.”

Customers are now building entire systems on top of Spade:

→ Fraud detection

→ Rewards attribution

→ Spend analytics

→ Authorization decisioning

As co-founder Tess Bloch put it, what started as enrichment has become something bigger:

An intelligence layer that sits underneath financial services.

And that’s the real story.

Because as fintech leans deeper into AI, automation, and real-time decisioning, the bottleneck isn’t compute.

It’s data quality.

Fintech’s next wave won’t be defined by better apps.

It will be defined by better inputs.

Spade is tapping into a foundational shift:

→ AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on

→ Transaction data is one of fintech’s most valuable — and underutilized — assets

→ The companies that structure that data will quietly control how decisions get made

And that has real implications:

Fraud models get sharper.

Rewards get more precise.

Customer experiences get smarter.

And entire workflows become automated — correctly.

Because the future of fintech isn’t just faster or more embedded.

It’s more intelligent.

And intelligence starts with clean data.

Oh, and Spade is also hiring, so check that out here.

There’s a moment every fintech eventually hits — when growth outpaces trust.

Shanthi Shanmugam has already lived it.

Before founding Casap, she led customer support infrastructure at Robinhood, where she saw what happens behind the scenes when things break: disputes pile up, fraud slips through, and trust — once lost — becomes incredibly expensive to rebuild.

Now, as Founder and CEO of Casap, she’s building the system she wishes had existed back then.

And banks are paying attention.

For years, fraud and disputes have been treated like operational annoyances — something to manage, not solve.

Casap is challenging that assumption.

The company automates disputes and chargebacks while targeting one of the most persistent (and expensive) issues in fintech: first-party fraud — when consumers themselves game the system.

It’s not rare. It’s not small. And it’s not going away.

What Shanthi realized early is that this isn’t a support issue — it’s an infrastructure gap.

And infrastructure gaps don’t get fixed with more headcount.

They get rebuilt.

Casap sits at the center of one of fintech’s biggest shifts right now: agentic AI.

But Shanthi’s approach is notably grounded.

This isn’t about replacing teams or layering on flashy automation. It’s about building systems that can reason through disputes, detect patterns, and support better decisions at scale.

In her words, AI should act less like a tool — and more like a thought partner.

That distinction matters.

Because in fraud, speed without accuracy creates more damage than it solves.

Casap raised a $25 million Series A last year — a signal in itself.

But more importantly, it’s already delivering results:

I’ve heard versions of this problem in my reporting for years. From neobanks to enterprise institutions, the message has been consistent:

We can’t scale if we can’t trust the system.

Casap is one of the first companies to actually operationalize that solution.

Fraud is no longer a side effect of growth — it’s the constraint on it.

As fintech scales, the question isn’t just how fast money can move — it’s how safely it can move.

And increasingly, that comes down to who owns the intelligence layer between transaction and resolution.

What Shanthi is building signals something bigger:

→ Fraud prevention is becoming core infrastructure, not compliance

→ AI is shifting from customer-facing novelty to back-end decision systems

→ And trust is no longer a brand value — it’s a product feature

If fintech’s next chapter is about durability, not just growth, then companies like Casap are building exactly where the industry is weakest — and most exposed.

🎧 Hear Shanthi break it all down live during New York Fintech Week — and get a closer look at how Casap is building a category-defining AI company.

Let’s keep you booked and busy. Every Thursday, I share fintech events worth adding to your calendar— both IRL and online.

The official conference of New York Fintech Week!

Across three cornerstone events — The Fintech Summit by Fiat Growth, The Fintech Is Femme Leadership Summit, and The Fintech Security Summit — NYFTW convenes founders, operators, investors, and global brands who are actively building the future of financial services.

Not talking about it. Doing it.

The stage will be filled with powerhouse speakers like…

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🎤 Host an epic event by booking me as a speaker, moderator, or emcee.

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That wraps up today’s edition—thanks for reading! Until next week, keep innovating and challenging the status quo.

See you Tuesday!

Love,

Nicole 💜