China expands e-CNY network, adding 20 banks to reach 30

SoFi Technologies is the only one of the three major fintech lenders — SoFi, Upstart, and Affirm — that currently holds a full bank charter, giving it an internal deposit base to fund loans while its rivals still rely on third-party bank partners. SoFi obtained its charter on Jan. 18, 2022, by acquiring the small California bank Golden Pacific and applying through it, and has since grown deposits from $1.2 billion in first-quarter 2022 to $45.5 billion in second-quarter 2026, with members rising from 3.9 million to 15.8 million and products from 5.9 million to 24.4 million over the same period. The company swung from a net loss of $110 million, or -$0.14 per share, four years ago to net income of $156 million, or $0.12 per share, in Q2 2026. Upstart received conditional approval for a national bank charter in July and is expected to get final approval in early 2027, while buy now, pay later provider Affirm applied for an industrial loan bank charter in January and has not yet been granted any approvals. SoFi stock is down about 36% year to date and trades at 34 times earnings and 21 times forward earnings, after returns of 116% in 2023, 54% in 2024, and 70% in 2025.

Chime Financial has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Stride Bank, a move that would give the digital banking and payments provider direct control over a bank charter and deposits. The deal would shift Chime away from its partner-bank reliant model and is expected to extend its national reach in consumer banking as it integrates Stride Bank's existing operations and customers. Chime, which operates in the Diversified Financial sector with consumer-focused accounts and card products, counts 9.1 million active members. The acquisition ties Chime's app-led engagement to a balance sheet of its own, which matters for products including Chime Card, MyPay and instant loans, and could reduce its reliance on interchange and partner banks for core economics. Owning Stride also raises new execution questions around regulation, capital and operational resilience.

GlobalData reports that influencers on X largely view India's new 0.4% Merchant Discount Rate on Person-to-Merchant Unified Payments Interface transactions above INR 2,000 ($20.8) as a vital step toward monetising the UPI ecosystem. Shreyasee Majumder, Social Media Analyst at GlobalData, said influencers see the levy as creating a durable revenue base for banks, acquirers and payment platforms, funding payment infrastructure, cybersecurity and credit-linked services, and improving the financial outlook for payment companies, including supporting public listing plans for PhonePe and lifting forward earnings forecasts for merchant platforms such as Paytm and Pine Labs. Influencers expect larger merchants above monthly turnover thresholds to absorb the fee, while peer-to-peer transfers, recurring payments and rural QR codes remain exempt, though some merchants may push cash payments or other means to recover the cost on higher-value transactions. Commentators including MobiKwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh, Moneycontrol Executive Editor Chandra R. Srikanth, Emerging Payments Association Asia Chief Expansion and Innovation Officer Monica Jasuja, research analyst Abhishek Kothari and Capitalmind Mutual Fund CEO Deepak Shenoy stressed that the new UPI levy remains substantially lower than traditional debit card charges of 0.90% and credit card charges of 1.5-2.5%. Kothari said he now explicitly incorporates UPI MDR monetisation into Paytm and Pine Labs estimates, assuming roughly 30% of Paytm's UPI GMV is MDR eligible versus about 70% for Pine Labs, with Paytm capturing around 10bps of the MDR pie and Pine Labs 6bp. Influencers cautioned that in the long term the ecosystem must ensure infrastructure and value-added service improvements outweigh merchant cost pressures to preserve widespread digital adoption.