Three Things You Should Know about Chime Bank
Banking is evolving with new players like Chime entering into the picture. Sure, they aren’t the only ones reaching into your pocket and digitizing your money. At present, there’s Square, Paypal, and many others who seek to encourage you to save and spend with them.
What’s so great about Chime?
I don’t know, but with over 6 million active accounts, the firm shows that it is trying to shake things up and seek to continue its growth. Chime must be doing something right to attract that base of users.
I didn’t know too much about them before digging into them, but here’s what I found out.
The Chime Mission
The Chime Mission aligns with many new entrants in the banking world. You can believe their mission too.
Why?
It aligns perfectly with why many of these fintech players exist in the first place. For instance, Chime notes “we believe everyone deserves financial peace of mind. We’re building a new kind of bank account that helps members get ahead by making managing money easy.”
Square also touts a similar line from where they stand; they discuss democratizing finance and investing with their Cash App and simplifying the world for merchants with their Square Card Reader.
But how does Chime help to live up to their mission?
They do so through technology and customer experience.
Chime’s Best Features
The firm is a fintech company; as such, it makes sense that they are mobile-first. The end-user gains Chime banking services through their device and have no in-person branches to visit or any fees to pay.
That’s right; there are no additional fees that you have to worry about when you’re banking with Chime.
Indeed, it is something that users would appreciate with Chime, there’s no overdraft fees or even monthly maintenance dollar bleeds.
Chime’s Different Relationships
A key feature of Chime is present within its relationship with its customers. It’s less of a “you need me, I charge you” relationship and more of a “how can I help improve your banking experience” relationship.
Traditional banking firms within the United States have a massive hold on the banking sector, hosting millions of bank accounts and processing many transactions each day.
But these traditional firms also find themselves in hot water over ripping their customers’ faces through fees, credit cards, opening up accounts with them knowing about it, and quite a bit of other customer service issues.
The founders of Chime wanted to make sure that they didn’t generate profits by gouging customers through fees. Their idea was that there should be a better way to do banking than by taking advantage of customers.
As the firm came about in 2013, it realized there was an opportunity to capitalize on the growing millennial base that was already starting with disadvantages due to the banking crisis of 2009.
Their core demographic was people who didn’t need the traditional hassles of regular banking and needed something different. The key here is that millennials required something different, not just wanted something different.
They also prefer simple mobile banking without visiting traditional physical branches. Chime stands out because it shows that it can keep to its promises.
They continue to say one thing and take actions that align with what they say.
“You can either have product structures that are aligned with the consumer’s best interests, which is what we strive to do, or you can have products that are adversarial and profit from people’s misfortune. That’s what big banks do and that’s being exposed.” – Chris Britt, Co-Founder and CEO of Chime Bank (American Banker)
You can see the Chime difference in its exclusion of overdraft fees to monthly fees, and then building out a banking interface that helped Chime users to improve their financial lives.
Chime users were pleased to have compelling features like mobile payments, advances, and ways to quickly and easily build their rainy day fund.
Truth be told, Chime was no pioneer with any of these services, but the difference was that it would continue to quickly provide its users with new features and benefits that met their needs and improved their banking experience.
Chime kept delivering value without charging random fees for the privilege of benefitting from its platform.
Customers Appreciate Chime Bank
Chime users appreciate Chime because it is simple to bank online without any extra costs.
From ways to build credit with a Chime fee-less secured credit card to open up a checking account within minutes, it is hard not to choose Chime as a banking partner.
Further, the fact that you can take advantage of various new features also makes Chime a compelling banking partner for the digitally native user.
But despite all of its qualities, it does have flaws. Remember that Chime has gone technically down several times due to one reason or another where consumers were left wondering how to access their funds.
The firm has made it a point to always be transparent about the matter, but for the time being, many might want to build a small relationship with Chime before adding the bulk of your funds with the firm.
