Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
SoFi added about $1 billion of deposits a month for two straight years
The FDIC's annual deposit report puts SoFi Bank 47th in the country at $46.8 billion, double its total two years earlier. Chime is holding its own balance sheet under $10 billion to keep uncapped interchange.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- SoFi Bank held $46.8 billion of deposits at the end of June, ranking 47th in the FDIC's annual Summary of Deposits, the first time a bank with fintech roots has made the top 50.
- Two years earlier, on June 30, 2024, SoFi's deposits stood at $22.9 billion, a total that roughly doubled over the following eight quarters.
- Chime, which has been opening new checking accounts, has said it plans to keep its assets below $10 billion for the foreseeable future to stay clear of debit interchange caps.
- Banks with more than $10 billion of assets added 1,091 offices in the 12 months to June 30, 2026, while every other bank closed 1,329.
- The United States had 4,249 banks at the end of June, against 13,002 in 1994, and the latest 12-month decline in the count was the largest in six years.
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Why it matters
- capability Insured deposit funding at tens of billions of dollars is reachable by purchase: the deal price was $22.3 million, and the deposits now sitting in the bank are about 2,100 times that.
- decision Any consumer fintech with a card business has to price the choice SoFi and Chime answered differently, between uncapped debit interchange under $10 billion of assets and a deposit base that can run past $46 billion.
- precedent One fintech-rooted bank in the top 50 makes buying a small charter a demonstrated route, and American Banker reports other large consumer fintechs have already bought one or intend to.
- constraint Because the FDIC publishes the deposit table once a year, anyone testing whether SoFi's doubling holds waits twelve months for the next comparable number.
The difference between the two June snapshots is $23.9 billion, spread over 24 months, or just under a billion dollars a month of new insured deposits [1]. The FDIC report does not include the rate SoFi paid for them. Deposit cost is what separates cheap funding from expensive funding, and the Summary of Deposits gives one figure a year [15].
SoFi was founded in 2011 as a fintech that refinanced student loans, and ten years later it struck a $22.3 million deal [3][4]. The deposits now inside the bank are about 2,100 times that price [2].
Chime has gone the other way, saying it plans to keep assets below $10 billion for the foreseeable future, because banks above that threshold are subject to regulatory caps on debit interchange fees [7][8]. SoFi's deposits alone are 4.7 times the ceiling Chime set for its assets [3].
SoFi took 47th place in a market with about two thirds fewer institutions than 1994 had [4]. Utah led the states with 2.39% growth in bank locations, followed by South Carolina at 1.84%, Alabama at 1.41% and North Carolina at 1.16% [13]. The South's population grew 5.5% between 2020 and 2025 against 3.0% nationally, according to Census data [14]. Among the ten largest metro areas, Dallas grew 1.57% and Atlanta 1.23%, while New York fell 1.06%, and Boston, the eleventh largest, fell 1.93% [16][17].
The named movers sit on both sides of that line. JPMorganChase added 141 locations, and Fifth Third added roughly 60 on top of the approximately 350 it inherited from its acquisition of Comerica [18][19]. TD Bank shed 53, Wells Fargo 46 and Bank of America 42 [20]. Nationally the year came out 238 offices lighter [5].
There is now one demonstration that the charter works as a deposit-funding channel. American Banker reports that other large consumer fintechs have acquired a bank or plan to [6], so the second data point is still a stated plan. That view is wrong if the doubling was bought with promotional rates that run off when the policy rate falls, and the next annual snapshot is where that would show [15]. It is wrong in a duller way if most fintechs copy Chime's ceiling, in which case insured deposits at scale stay one company's story and the interchange exemption keeps everyone else below $10 billion [7][8].
What to watch
- SoFi's next quarterly disclosure of what it pays on deposits, since the doubling is a volume figure and the rate behind it is still missing.
- Whether Chime lifts its self-imposed $10 billion asset ceiling once checking growth outweighs the interchange exemption.
- The next annual Summary of Deposits, for whether the decline in the bank count stays at a six-year high.