Hi Toaster Readers,

Today’s piece is a sponsored deep dive. The sponsor provides valuable input, but we write, research, and edit the piece, and it’s an honest reflection of our thoughts on the topic.

Today’s essay adds a layer to a piece we wrote 2 years ago on how lenders will use cash flow data in their marketing programs.

Our thanks to Prism Data & Engine by Gen for sponsoring it!

We hope you enjoy it!

- Carlos & Nick

For years, the knock on cash flow data was simple: great for risk splitting, but the friction of collecting the data spelled trouble for marketers.

Underwriters love cash flow data.

Bank transaction data slopes risk incrementally to credit bureau data. In credit risk nerd speak, the two data sources are orthogonal. In layman’s terms, that means each data source helps predict credit risk, even after accounting for the predictive power of the other.

But marketers didn’t like what it did to their funnel, because the only way to get it was to ask a shopper to link their bank account, usually mid-application, and usually via a username-and-password screen. Drop-off went up. Conversion went down.

Many lenders concluded that cash flow data was too high-friction to use in a customer acquisition use case. (That’s why cash flow data has been commonly used in second-look programs and customer management programs like credit limit increase reviews).

That may be about to change.

Fresh off an announcement at The Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders and Publishers in San Francisco, I sat down with James Brandon of Prism Data and David Friermor of Engine by Gen to talk about what they just launched:

Prism Data’s cash flow intelligence, offered at the marketing stage in the Engine by Gen publisher network.

What Prism Data & Engine Announced at The Summit

Lenders on the Engine network can now use Prism Data’s cash flow analytics to get predictive power from permissioned cash flow data at the marketing stage, not just at final underwriting. Engine’s Spark platform was already tri-bureau. Now there’s a cash flow layer sitting alongside the credit data, and lenders can use all those data sources together in their targeting model.

James described the cleanest fit as lenders trying to expand their buy box: personal loans, near-prime, subprime. But he was quick to add that prime lenders, credit cards, cash advance and other small-dollar products are well in-scope too. Real-time cash flow information improves credit decisions across the product spectrum.

Read more about this directly from Prism Data:

Prism Data Joins Engine By Gen’s embedded finance platform to help unlock frictionless cash flow-based underwriting

What About The Friction In The Application Flow?

Engine is embedded in thousands of places across the internet: publishers, PFM apps, even lenders selling their declines to other lenders. Adding a bank-link step in the application flow could hurt publishers, Engine, and conversion volume for the advertiser (lender).

Instead, when a lead comes through an Engine form, the PII gets matched against MoneyLion’s permissioned consumer base. MoneyLion sits in the same corporate family, and its users have linked bank accounts not only for MoneyLion’s first-party products, like Instacash and its banking products, but also for the Engine marketplace network and related partner offers.

David said the match rate is surprisingly high. When there’s a hit, Engine pulls the freshest transaction data, runs Prism Data’s cash flow analytics on it, feeds the attributes and scores into the lender’s model or knockout rules in Spark, and returns an offer in real time. No friction.

What if the shopper isn’t a MoneyLion user? No magic wand there yet, David shared.

They’d be asked to permission at that point. Expanding coverage beyond the MoneyLion base is something Engine is actively working on.

The Free Toaster Podcast recently sat with James Brandon of Prism Data and David Friermor of Engine by Gen to discuss how lenders can take advantage of cash flow data at the marketing stage (Apple Podcasts | Spotify).

Check out the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

What Prism Data Attributes Are Available Inside Engine?

The full Prism Data suite is available through the program, the same products many lenders already use for decisioning. Prism categorizes messy transaction data, then produces thousands of Insights attributes, an Income product that analyzes trending income, and CashScores® (multiple of them, on a 1-to-999 scale, which predict risk of credit default similar to a traditional credit score).

James called out the Income product in particular as enabling a far more accurate DTI calculation early in the funnel. Many Prism Data clients already use it to avoid income and identity stips, and it beats self-reported income or zip-plus-four estimates handily.

What Results Are Lenders Seeing So Far?

Prism Data clients see approval rate lifts of 5% to 30% at constant loss rates1. Those figures include the bank-linking step. Remove that friction, and both James and I expect the number could get even better.

Beyond approvals, David sees a second play: lenders re-decisioning existing customers who show up again on the network and moving them into a better product tier.

The key thing they’ll be looking for as the product scales?

How far lenders are able to expand their buy-box as a result of having the cash flow data and analytics at the marketing stage.

This is what will give consumers access to low-cost credit who might have otherwise been overlooked with credit bureau data only.

Why Wouldn’t Every Lender Use This?

I asked this on the Podcast. I was looking for what objections they hear from lenders when they discuss the product.

The first hurdle, James said, is comfort. Risk teams may never have worked with cash flow analytics, so Prism Data invests heavily in retro testing to help them set thresholds and build models. Spark’s champion-challenger A/B testing lets lenders expand the buy box incrementally while holding risk constant.

As an API native solution, the integration effort is low. It does require some coordination across Risk, Product, and Engineering teams, so lenders still have to believe the value is high enough to prioritize.

Want To Learn More?

If you’re already a Prism Data client, reach out to your Prism Data customer success team. If you’re already an Engine partner, reach out to your Engine account manager.

Looking to use both Engine and Prism? Submit the form at engine.tech.

Closing Thoughts

The tension marketers always faced with cash flow data was that more information upstream cost you conversion downstream.

This is the first setup we’ve seen where that trade-off mostly disappears. The bank link happens somewhere else, with a consent that carries through the funnel.

If Prism Data & Engine can scale this to a large enough segment of users, the cash flow underwriting category finally has a path to scaling from the customer acquisition side (in addition to the second-look programs and credit limit & pricing reviews that are already commonplace).

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

Nicky Senyard has been doing digital acquisition since before Facebook existed, and she’s seen every wave: web, social, mobile, and now what we’re calling the LLM era.

She started in 2002, built and exited her first affiliate tech company, then co-founded Fintel Connect to help financial services companies scale digital growth. She was named the 2025 Industry Legend at the Global Performance Marketixng Awards, and her insights have been featured in Forbes and American Banker.

When I asked her if LLMs are going to disrupt affiliate marketing, she pushed back immediately.

Listen to the full Podcast episode with Nicky here.

She sees LLMs as a new layer on top of affiliate marketing. What has changed, she said, is “the two layers above, which is awareness and consideration.” People are using ChatGPT and Claude to discover products, not just to transact.

Citation Problems, According to Fintel's Own Research

• ~90% of LLM citations are non-branded, which means a lender has about a 1-in-10 chance of being quoted directly. The other nine times, the citation goes to a publisher or user-generated content.

• 54% of surveyed Americans now use ChatGPT for personal finance recommendations.

LLMs reward neutrality and comparison content.

“They’re looking for comparisons. So a domain will get more authority if it’s got more comparisons on it.”

A brand is very unlikely to put a comparison of themselves and their major competitor on their own branded site. Domain authority, she said, “is going to be a... collection of voice... where the publishers win.”

You can see the disruption already at the publisher level, using NerdWallet’s recent earnings report, as I noted in the episode:

• Card business reportedly down more than 50%.

• Visitors who used to come straight from Google to their top-10 listicles are now in Claude and ChatGPT, synthesizing their own answers, and not making it to NerdWallet at all.

• But from the lender’s chair, the acquisition mix looks basically the same as it did five years ago.

SPONSORED, FROM OUR FRIENDS AT FINTEL CONNECT

Don’t Miss Out: Three Weeks Until Financial Affiliate Marketing Forum (FAMF)

The second annual Financial Affiliate Marketing Forum, co-hosted by Fintel Connect, is just around the corner. Happening October 6 in Toronto, FAMF brings together leaders from Google, American Express, NerdWallet, KOHO, IBM, Tangerine, RBC, and more, for a full day of expert-led sessions, practical insights, and meaningful networking.

This year’s agenda focuses on the trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping financial marketing today, with sessions covering customer acquisition, partnerships, performance marketing, growth, and the evolving role of technology and AI in financial services marketing.

If you work in financial services, affiliate, or performance marketing, this is the room to be in.

Use code Fintel15 for 15% off tickets. → Register now

On ChatGPT selling paid ads

Publishers are already selling placement inside the LLM answers. “What we’re actually finding is most of the larger publishers actually have a specific package for GEO,” Nicky said.

“What they’re optimizing to, through insertion, through sponsorship, through different types of deal structures, they’re actually optimizing for those placements.”

She noted that one publisher Fintel works with is “the largest advertiser in finance on ChatGPT.”

I was surprised when Nicky told me ChatGPT doesn’t let advertisers track the performance of the ads, but she said she’d almost bet her career that tracking is coming.

I’ll go out on a limb and guess that thoughtfully placed ads inside an LLM are going to be the highest converting ads on the internet.

ChatGPT will know more about the user, their shopping intent, budget, goals, and constraints than any publisher out there.

I have no doubt advertisers will pay through the nose for that kind of targeted intent.

But gosh, will there be a bunch of questions regarding how exactly it will all work.

Nicky’s LLM playbook for lenders

So what should a CMO or VP of marketing at a card or personal loan company do?

Nicky laid out a three-step playbook for customer acquisition leaders:

Step 1: Use your customer service backlog for LLM content. Analyze your call center questions and chatbot logs. They may have the perfect material to rank for the LLMs, because that’s the questions customers are asking. Those pages don’t even need to be human-visible.

Step 2: Draft off of publishers with authority in the LLMs. Some publishers are already appearing in these LLMs and been indexed as domain authorities. Why attempt to build authority from scratch when someone already has it and is willing to work with you? Reddit pops up a lot as example domain that indexes well in the LLMs. In a B2B context, LinkedIn seems to be up there, too.

Step 3: Save the site overhaul for last. Nicky recommends using a “sandwich effect.” Do the quick wins first, use what’s already working, then “do your own hard work in terms of maybe site restructures or overhauls or whatever else, but do that last.”

And take note of how each engine is different. Gemini, for example, will mention a brand 50% of the time over publishers (this seems understandable given Google’s alliances with many large advertisers). Claude on the other hand, mentions brands less often and goes to aggregators more often.

“You need to decide where your audience is, and then you need to decide how to optimize for that engine, and the optimization processes are going to be different.”

How long before LLMs disrupt distribution for lenders?

I said five years before consumers default to LLMs for new (account opening) financial transactions. Nicky said ten, at least.

Her reasoning was that we have three variables in play, and that introduces complexity.

1. Consumer trust.

2. Bank willingness to open functionality to agents.

3. Regulatory posture.

“When you have one variable, it becomes easier to predict. When you have two variables, it gets a bit more complicated. When you have three variables, it’s complex. And complex usually takes time.”

For lenders, the near-term LLM game is discoverability through partners. The LLM layer is entrenching the publisher role, which means the acquisition leader’s playbook looks more like a marketplace strategy. You can win through the partners you already work with.

Listen to the full episode with Nicky here.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

P.S.: We’re super pumped to see you at the Summit in SF next week!!!

Please walk from the street following the red path below. (Video of walk below).

Please DO NOT ENTER the Exploratorium Museum Main Entrance.

Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/bbypemhhDvocw5VT9

Fisher Bay Observatory: Video Of Walk From Street

Please walk from the street following path illustrated in the video.

Please DO NOT ENTER the Exploratorium Museum Main Entrance.

Questions On How To Get To The Venue?

Please email carlos@thefreetoaster.com or nick@thefreetoaster.com.

On a recent Podcast, I was joined by Mark Elliot, Chief Customer Officer at Happen Bank, formerly known as LendingClub. He has a simple test for CMOs convinced their brand name is what’s broken.

We discussed GEICO, the Government Employees Insurance Company. The name is, objectively, terrible. It sounds like a credit union for postal workers in 1974. And yet it’s one of the most valuable insurance brands in the world.

Mark’s point is that a rebrand reflects transformation that’s already underway, but doesn’t create the transformation itself.

“Rebrands aren’t trying to force or manufacture transformation. They’re trying to reflect the transformation that is underway. The brand can lead the company, but only if it’s in the direction it’s already going.”

Listen to the full conversation with Mark Elliot here.

Setting the Scene:

• LendingClub was founded in 2006 as a peer-to-peer lending platform, IPO’d in 2014, acquired Radius Bank in 2021 to become a chartered digital bank, and rebranded to Happen Bank in June 2026.

• Mark joined the company three years ago. In his first conversation with CEO Scott Sanborn, he asked about the name. Scott had been pushing for a rebrand for the better part of a decade.

• The name “LendingClub” described a business model the company no longer ran. They’d gone from a peer-to-peer marketplace to a multi-product national digital bank.

Mark, tasked to lead the rebrand, came in with mix of brand and performance marketing experience:

• Ran the national direct-to-consumer deposit business at Capital One.

• Helped manage the transition to digital banking at JPMorgan Chase.

• Led a brand evolution as CMO at TIAA.

• Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Bakkt.

• CMO at BioCatch.

Sponsored by Bulldog Media Group

Reach the Borrowers Others Miss

Bulldog Media Group specializes in connecting consumer lenders with less than perfect borrowers — a massive, underserved market that requires precision targeting to get right. With 25 years of financial services marketing experience, they deliver qualified leads through affiliate marketing, targeted email, and data-driven acquisition strategies built for this exact audience.

If you’re a lender looking to scale, these are your people.

Get Qualified Borrower Leads

Why Did They Pick Happen Bank?

They started with over 100 names. Then came the tactical reality of branding: what trademarks are available, what domains are available and at what cost. That cut the list down hard.

Then they ran phase one research. Surveys with both existing customers and prospects, asking things like: Is this a bank you would consider doing business with? How does this make you feel? That narrowed it to six finalists.

Respondents saw the final names in print only, with no logos, colors, or visual identity attached. One finding was unambiguous.

Customers wanted the word “bank” in the name.

“They wanted the trust of the bank, but, and this is a really important but, they wanted it to be innovative. They wanted it to be digital. They didn’t want it to be the bank of their parents or their grandparents.”

The word gave them confidence in how their money was held, and provided the feelings of stability and trust alongside it.

Would The New Name Tank Conversion Rates?

A rebrand can really take a hit to conversion rates. You’re swapping out a known brand for an unknown one across every channel where your CAC depends on recognition.

A few things they did to de-risk distribution:

1. They tested the new color palette under the old LendingClub brand and tested new brand language under the old name. Across all channels tested, they found either very little impact, or when they did, it trended positive.

2. Several months before the rebrand, they seeded the market. Direct mail, digital marketing, homepage, search, in-app messaging, and customer email with “LendingClub is becoming Happen Bank.”

3. After the switch, they kept running “Happen Bank, formerly LendingClub” across touch points (and still do today).

Mark specifically called out working with affiliates and marketplaces to understand how the brand is reflected on those sites. You don’t have full control of how your name appears inside a partner’s marketplace, so they ran tests with partners to nail down their placement.

The KPIs they’re tracking illustrate that this is a performance shop running a brand project.

Short-term: daily search volume for the old brand versus the new one, tracked daily.

Medium-term: a quarterly brand health survey, custom-built rather than a generic gen-pop instrument.

Long-term: brand investments translating into business results.

A Surprise Cost: Rewriting Customer-Facing Emails

I asked Mark if there was a cost line-item in the rebrand that came in higher than expected.

I expected to hear about agency or research bills, but Mark said the biggest unexpected cost was rewriting emails.

The inventory of customer-facing email was much larger than they planned for. A rebrand this big touches just about everything. Emails referencing the company name were sitting in servicing systems that hadn’t gotten much attention in recent years.

The saving grace was that AI capabilities improved fast enough during the project to absorb the overage. They used AI tools to rebrand lower-impact assets.

“I think we were a little bit lucky, to be honest with you. The AI capabilities were improving at an exponential pace while our assets we had to rebrand were also going up. Where those lines crossed for us in a way that allowed us to mitigate the budget impact.”

Mark’s one retrospective was wishing they’d spent even more time making the transition for customers who don’t engage monthly, like for borrowers they aspire to engage more deeply. The rebrand is partly about building that relationship, and he’d have invested more in the customer-side experience if he were to do it again.

Is Brand More Art or Science?

I closed the conversation by asking Mark if a great brand is more art or science, and I wasn’t sure what side he’d take.

“We really wanted to make sure our customers and prospects saw themselves in this brand. Now that we’ve done that work, I think the art part starts to pick up a bit more.”

I heard that as “so far this was science, but the art part is about to come into focus.”

You can listen to the full conversation with Mark Elliot here.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

P.S.: Less than 10 seats left for the Summit. Request your invitation here: events.thefreetoaster.com.

We’re less than 3 weeks out. This post has everything you need so you’re ready for the Summit on Wednesday September 23rd.

Please save or print.

The basics

Wednesday, September 23

8:30am to 5:30pm

The Exploratorium, Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, San Francisco

We’re in a space by the water, towards the back of the museum.

There will be people guiding you to the right place. The museum has its own staff and the Toaster team will be in black. Both can help you.

DO NOT enter through main museum entrance.

Getting there and checking in

Show your ID to get your badge when you arrive.

Agenda

8:30-9:30 Breakfast and networking

9:30 - 12:00 Morning Content Sessions

12:00 - 1:30 Lunch & Structured Networking

1:30 - 4:00 Afternoon Content Sessions

4:00 - 5:30 Happy Hour With Passed Appetizers

Breakfast, lunch, coffee, and drinks are all included.

A note on who’s in the room

The point of this event is to curate a room of senior leaders and practitioners in affiliate marketing, on both sides of the marketplace.

We have 150 seats, roughly 85% lenders and publishers. And the remaining 15% were carefully chosen Ecosystem Partners we think are worth getting to know. You’re gonna collect some amazing business cards and LinkedIn QR codes.

Because of the curated and intimate nature of this event, it will be off-the-record. We ask that you do not record any of the sessions.

You can find all the logos attending here: events.thefreetoaster.com

What to wear

Business casual.

The patio is on the water and San Francisco in September does what it wants, so bring a layer. Sunglasses are also probably a great idea.

If you’re attending Day 2

The exec coach (with wifi!) will pick up at 10:00am on September 24th near the Exploratorium. We’ll send an email closer to the date with the exact location.

We’ll spend the afternoon at Ridge Vineyards in Healdsburg.

We’ll enjoy lunch, a wine tasting, and plenty of networking time. No programming, talks, panels, or fireside chats planned here. Just quality time with other leaders in the industry.

The exec coach will drop off in downtown SF (at the pickup point near the Exploratorium) at approximately 5:30pm the same day.

If you’re a lender attending Day 1, and would like to attend Day 2, please email me (carlos@thefreetoaster.com). We still have a couple seats left.

How to connect with other guests

We’ve created a graphic you can post on your LinkedIn to let folks know you’re attending the Summit.

You will receive an email with this graphic.

If you tag us (@TheFreeToaster), we’ll repost it so that all the posts show up on our LinkedIn feed. That’ll make it easy for you to see who else will be attending.

PS: If you didn’t receive the email with the LinkedIn graphic, please email info@thefreetoaster.com.

A huge thank you to our sponsors

This event would not be possible without the support we’ve gotten from our sponsors.

I could not be more grateful to the companies below for their partnership and participation.

Headline Sponsor: Experian

Presenting Sponsors: Engine by Gen and Prism Data

Gold Sponsors: Tare.io, EXL and ICS Corporation

Supporting Sponsors: Spinwheel and Bulldog Media Group

If you have any questions, please email me: carlos@thefreetoaster.com

We’re excited to see you there!

-Carlos & Nick

Hey Toaster Readers,

Another lighter one this week.

We’re 20 days away from the Summit and nearly every working hour is going into operations.

So we’re running last edition’s format again. Below are the stories that caught our eye over the past two weeks, listed out rather than written up. A couple of these (Experian and Synchrony, together) deserve a full write-up, and they’ll eventually get one.

Back in full force after the Summit.

Recent Stories That Caught Our Eye

• Experian launches a Credit Cards app on ChatGPT: consumers compare partner-lender offers (annual fees, intro bonuses, rewards rates, APRs) inside the chat, then get routed to Experian for the offers they’re eligible for. Credit One Bank is the first partner quoted [Experian]

• Synchrony announces a partnership with OpenAI: a ChatGPT plugin that brings Synchrony Marketplace promotional financing and partner offers into the conversation [CNBC]

• Advent and Stripe abandon their $50 billion pursuit of PayPal after the board passed on $60.50 a share [Bloomberg]

• Affirm Card active cardholders more than doubled to 5.2 million (attach rate about 19%) and Card GMV grew 124% to $2.8 billion. Cardholders average almost $4,000 in GMV, more than twice the average active consumer [Affirm]

• Fifth Third launches the Truly Simple card: 0% APR for 18 months on purchases and balance transfers, $0 annual fee, and debt consolidation inside the app [Fifth Third]

• Google improves the Preferred Sources button for publishers; 600,000+ sources have been selected, triple the count from May [Search Engine Roundtable]

• The OCC approves Itaú’s national bank charter for a Miami bank serving wealthy clients tied to Brazil and Latin America [American Banker]

Sponsored by Fintel Connect

Free Report - The 2026 Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) Guide to Affiliate Customer Growth

CPA benchmarks shift every year, and many brands are still asking the wrong question: “What are other brands paying?” The better question is “What business outcome are we optimizing for?”

Fintel Connect’s 2026 CPA Guide draws on proprietary benchmarks and market intelligence from thousands of financial affiliate campaigns across the U.S. and Canada, giving banks, credit unions, and fintechs a clear read on what’s driving CPA and how to build a program that performs.

What you’ll learn:

• U.S. and Canadian CPA benchmarks by product category

• The internal and external drivers actually moving your CPA

• A framework for determining the right CPA for your business, not just the market average

• Three principles for sustained affiliate performance in 2026

Get the report

20 Days Left Until The Affiliate Marketing Summit!

The Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders & Publishers is September 23 and 24 in San Francisco: Day 1 at the Exploratorium, Day 2 at Ridge Vineyards.

We announced more speakers over the past two weeks.

We have fewer than 30 tickets remaining.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community, we’d like to hear from you. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Chime Earnings Presentation Q226

6.52MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Chime Q2 25 10q 0001795586 26 000048

1.06MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Chime Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results

408KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Prepared Remarks

Operator: Good afternoon and welcome to Chime Financial Inc.’s 2nd quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Following the speakers’ remarks, we will open the lines for questions. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and a replay of this call will be available on our investor relations website for a reasonable period of time after the call. I’d now like to turn the call over to Peter Stabler, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Peter Stabler (VP Investor Relations): Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Chime’s 2nd quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Chris Britt, our co-founder and CEO, and Matt Newcomb, our CFO. Mark Troughton, our president, will participate in the Q&A session. As a reminder, we will disclose non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Definitions and reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results can be found in our earnings release and earnings presentation posted on our IR website at investors.chime.com. We will also make forward-looking statements on this call, including statements about our business, future outlook, and goals. Such statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Many of these risks and uncertainties are described in our SEC filings. Including our Form 10-Q filed on May 7th, 2026. Forward-looking statements represent our beliefs. Assumptions only as of the date such statements are made. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Except as required by law. I’ll now hand the call over to Chris.

Chris Britt (CEO): Thanks, Peter. And thank you all for joining us today. Q2 was an exceptionally strong quarter with outperformance across key areas of our business. Active members grew 20%. And revenue increased 27% on a year-over-year basis. We accelerated growth of both card purchase volume and payment revenue. And our enterprise team signed on a top U.S. employer for our Chime Workplace solution. Our strong momentum is translating to the bottom line. With adjusted EBITDA margin expanding to 15% for the quarter, up 12 points year over year. We also posted our second consecutive quarter of GAAP net income. Our results illustrate that Chime is emerging as the clear market leader and brand of choice for banking mainstream America. We continue to take share of primary accounts from large legacy banks. while deepening relationships with our over 10 million active members. The momentum from recent product launches and our ambitious product roadmap gives us confidence in our ability to achieve our vision to be the market leader in primary bank accounts in the US. Enabling financial progress for millions of Americans who are frustrated with incumbent bank brands.

Our new Chime Prime membership tier was a big contributor to success this quarter. Launched in early April, Chime Prime membership is available to any member making $3,000 or more of qualifying direct deposits per month. With 5% cash back rewards in the category of their choice, a 3.75% savings APY, higher MyPay limits, automatic qualification for an instant loan, credit building, And lifestyle perks like Priority Pass lounge access, we believe Chime Prime offers one of the most rewarding ways for mainstream America to manage their everyday spending. The core premise of Chime Prime is to provide even more value to members who engage with us deeply. And to broaden our appeal to an even wider range of consumer segments. 4 months in, it’s clear that that strategy is working. Once again, our fastest growing segment is among consumers with more than $75,000 in annual income. At the same time, the percentage of new direct depositors that reach Chime Prime status is higher than ever. Chime Prime is encouraging members to expand their relationship with us, with more members than ever making Chime their primary financial partner. And because Prime members spend more, have higher product attach rates, and are more likely to adopt our Chime card, they generate substantially higher ARPAM, more than double the average Chime member. Looking ahead, we’ll continue to add new features to make Chime Prime even more compelling. For example, later this quarter, we plan to roll out a revolving unsecured line of credit in beta, offering a new flexible liquidity product for Prime members with larger liquidity needs. Overall, we’re thrilled with Chime Prime’s early momentum. And expect it to become a sustained driver of our expansion into higher-earning consumer segments.

Turning to recent product news, last month we announced the launch of Chime Invest, marking an important evolution for us from spending and savings. towards helping our members build long-term wealth. While there are plenty of investment apps out there, what differentiates Chime Invest is its seamless integration into the banking app that millions of Americans rely on for their everyday money management. Almost 40% of Americans don’t have any equity ownership. So we’re eager to play a role. Helping more consumers participate in the upside of our country’s economic growth. We can not only help our members get started, but unlike standalone investment apps, we can create a more consistent habit of investing when a paycheck arrives in your Chime account. Chime Invest includes managed portfolios created by a registered investment advisor and free self-directed investing. That enables members to choose individual equities and ETFs. We’re also excited to support Trump accounts pending rollover guidance from the Treasury, and we congratulate them on their successful launch last month. With nearly 80% of members already using our high-yield savings product, we’re confident that we can drive adoption and consistent usage of Chime Invest early in our members’ financial journey. We believe this will give Chime members a better shot at long-term wealth creation because, of course, time in the market matters more than timing the market. Like Chime Prime, we expect Chime Invest to play an important role in attracting and retaining a broader segment of consumers to our expanding portfolio of products.

Now transitioning to Chime Enterprise, I’m proud to report some exciting wins for the team. Earlier this week, we announced that Allied Universal, one of the largest employers in the U.S. with approximately 320,000 North American-based employees, has signed on to offer Chime Workplace, Our employee financial wellness suite featuring MyPay@Work. This partnership represents a transformative win and demonstrates that our workplace value proposition can attract the largest employers in the country. We also recently signed a national retailer with about 35,000 employees. And we’ll have more to share in the coming weeks when we launch that partnership. With this growing momentum and strong pipeline, we expect Chime Enterprise to become a meaningful contributor to member growth in 2027.

Turning to our liquidity products, where we continue to see great performance. MyPay transaction profit grew 3x year over year, driven by strong origination volumes of $4.5 billion for the quarter and a sequential improvement in loss rate. And we’re particularly excited about the performance of Instant Loans, our low-cost and flexible installment loan product. Originations grew nearly 70% quarter over quarter to $300 million, with strong loss rate performance seen across our cohorts. Particularly among repeat borrowers. Based on the momentum we’re seeing, we expect Instant Loans to exit Q3 with an annualized revenue run rate of more than $100 million. Our Instant Loan product has the highest NPS across our product offerings and is the foundation of a new lending platform for us. Looking ahead, we see enormous growth potential in expanded loan eligibility, limits, and duration as we extend our lending footprint into higher-income segments with larger liquidity needs. At the core of our competitive advantage is our success in developing primary account relationships. These recurring direct deposits drive more precise underwriting and an advantaged loan repayment position.

The significant scale of our spending and lending platform puts us in a strong position to report on the financial health of mainstream American consumers. While geopolitical uncertainties drive headlines, as with recent quarters, we continue to see strong evidence of a healthy consumer. Adjusted for inflation, direct depositor income, account balances, and discretionary and nondiscretionary spending continue to grow, and we see no signs of stress across the performance of our liquidity products.

On AI, we continue to scale Jade, our AI financial partner, to more members who are using it to understand what’s happening with their money. And help them make better decisions. For example, last week Jade flagged that my food delivery spend was running above my normal pattern and asked if I wanted to set a limit. I accepted, and now Jade tells me when I’m on pace to exceed it. While no single transaction is going to change your life, we all know that smart money moves compound over time and collectively lead to financial progress. AI will continue to make financial advice more widely available than ever. And increasingly free. But what I’m most excited about with Jade is the AI-driven personalized advice and actions that can only take place from within your primary bank account. We’ll be sharing more on Jade soon.

To sum up, Q2 was another strong quarter. Our results and raised full-year outlook reflect the momentum in our business and the strength of our strategy. We recently announced an internal reorganization that will reduce our workforce by approximately 10%. While these decisions are incredibly difficult, they will create a flatter and faster organization. We continue to see that smaller teams with fewer layers that use AI are shipping faster and getting even more work done. AI also continues to drive outsized efficiency gains as we see in our cost to serve. In our roadshow, we highlighted our 3 to 5x cost to serve advantage relative to incumbents. And if you look at where we landed Q2, we’ve now reduced our cost to serve by an average of 10% for each of the last 4 years. This is a reflection of our digital-first model. And this will be enhanced further by AI. We’re still early in our journey to become the leader in primary accounts for everyday Americans. The opportunity ahead is significant, and we believe that we’re well positioned to win. I’ll now turn it over to Matt to cover our financial results and updated outlook.

Matt Newcomb (CFO): Thanks, Chris. Q2 was one of our strongest quarters yet as a public company, showcasing the impact from investments we’ve made in prior quarters across member acquisition, brand, product innovation, and technology. Chime Prime is the latest result of these investments, which in Q2 helped us accelerate revenue growth, accelerate actives growth, including direct depositor growth, accelerate volume growth, and accelerate ARPAM growth. Meanwhile, we are also demonstrating the structural operating leverage in our model. In Q2, we grew adjusted EBITDA margin 12 percentage points year over year to 15%. With 60% incremental margin and delivered our second consecutive quarter of positive GAAP EPS. As we’ve shown quarter after quarter, ours is a business model with strong long-term earnings power and now near-term profits. We expect these strong results to continue and are raising our guidance for the year, which I’ll touch on in a minute.

In Q2, we drove strong results across multiple dimensions of growth: active members, ARPAM, and transaction profit. Starting with active members. We continue to demonstrate that Chime is the leader in new checking account openings in the US, and in Q2 accelerated active member growth to 20% year over year. As a reminder, we have a seasonal business. In particular, tax refund-related activity drives a pull forward of member acquisition and re-engagement into Q1, resulting in seasonally higher quarter-over-quarter net adds each Q1, and lower net adds each Q2. This Q2, we added approximately 200,000 net new active members quarter over quarter. Twice as many as we added last Q2, and 1.7 million over the last 12 months, our most ever. We ended June with 10.4 million total active members. This accelerating momentum was due to a number of factors, but I’ll highlight 2. First, Chime Prime. Which brings together the best of Chime into a new membership tier, is clearly resonating across our member base, particularly higher earners. As Chris noted, in Q2, we added more members depositing at least $3,000 per month than ever before. We’ve also seen higher retention rates for existing direct depositors since Prime’s launch. Second is the continued positive impact from our early engagement initiatives, such as enabling instant funding and mobile check deposits for new members, which make it easy to get started with Chime. These initiatives are helping us draw in more members to Chime and have improved our payback periods to 5 to 6 quarters. But the real power is in the combination. We’ve made it easier than ever to get started with Chime, and now with Chime Prime, we are clearly showing our members that the more they do with Chime, the more they get from Chime. The result in Q2 was accelerating direct depositor growth, with particular strength in late-stage direct deposit conversions, which hit a record high in the quarter. With this momentum, we now expect to add 1.8 million net new active members in 2026, our largest cohort ever and well above our original goal of 1.4 million for the year.

Second is ARPAM. Our direct deposit relationships give us a high-quality, deeply engaged member base and drive strong and sticky ARPAM. We accelerated ARPAM growth to 6% year over year, reaching $260 in the quarter. Notably, in Q2, we accelerated ARPAM growth while also accelerating active member growth, driving both stronger quantity and quality concurrently. In particular, we saw strength with Chime Prime members who to date have over twice the ARPAM of our average active member. Chime Prime improves both conversion to and retention of direct deposit relationships, drives greater wallet share, and helps generate more payments and platform revenue, even net of rewards costs. On the payment side, Chime Prime helped us accelerate purchase and OIT volume growth to 20% year over year in Q2. While we are a nominal payments business, which benefits from some degree of inflation, the acceleration in transaction volumes did not just come from higher gasoline prices like many others have reported. Ours is much more broad-based. Year-over-year growth in purchase and OIT volumes excluding gasoline sales also accelerated to 19%. Chime Prime is also driving Chime Card adoption, which earns higher interchange rates, with credit mix now 27% of total purchase volume. Fueling this growth, we saw incredibly strong member response to Prime’s 5% cashback category of choice rewards offering. This strong engagement, particularly in the gas category, resulted in modestly higher contra-revenue rewards costs than we anticipated in Q2, but we expect those costs to settle lower going forward. In fact, so far in Q3, payments revenue net take rates are pacing to grow 2 basis points year over year. More broadly, we’re excited about cashback rewards as another lever to maximize growth in transaction profit dollars. We’re very pleased with the impact right out of the gate. In Q2, we effectively traded 1 basis point of take rate for 5 points of volume growth acceleration. Which accelerated payments and OIT revenue growth to 21% in the quarter. But we think there is still much more to go. We remain very excited about the multi-year opportunity to expand take rates net of rewards costs as we continue to shift more volume to credit.

Chime Prime also drives platform revenue, which grew 48% year over year in Q2. As Chris noted, Prime members are prequalified for Instant Loans, our 3 to 12 month installment loan product. This helped fuel origination volume growth up nearly 70% quarter over quarter to $300 million in Q2, and we continue to see cohorted loss rates perform very well. With substantially lower loss rates for repeat borrowers. In addition, we continue to drive strong MyPay results. With $4.5 billion of origination volumes in Q2 at loss rates of 90 basis points. All in all, we more than tripled MyPay transaction profit dollars year over year to $73 million in Q2. We’ve also started testing higher MyPay limits. Yet another lever to grow transaction profit dollars. And expect to roll these out in the coming months. Finally, I’m excited to announce a new $500 million warehouse facility with Goldman Sachs to fund the continued growth of our liquidity products. This facility is a testament to the strong progress we’ve already made scaling our liquidity products at low loss rates.

The third dimension of growth is transaction profit. Our low-cost operating model has enabled us to offer what we believe is the most compelling breadth of services for mainstream consumers, which as of Q2, we delivered at 73% transaction margin. Transaction margin grew 4 percentage points year over year, driven by strong loss rate performance. Along with the growth in actives and ARPAM, overall transaction profit grew 36% year over year in Q2. Importantly, this isn’t flash-in-the-pan growth. We believe this is durable growth underpinned by cohorts of deeply engaged, long-lasting primary account relationships. Across our cohorts, we see over 100% dollar-based transaction profit retention, net of churn. Our cohorts nearly triple in ARPAM as they mature, as members attach to more products over time. And strengthened further by Prime, LTV to CACs are now up to 9x. These attractive unit economics are what drive the structural operating leverage in our business. Strong margin expansion concurrent with meaningful investments in growth. Non-GAAP OpEx as a percent of revenue fell by 8 percentage points year over year. With operating leverage across all OpEx categories. Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin of 15% was up 12 percentage points year over year with incremental margins of 60%. We delivered $102 million of adjusted EBITDA and $28 million of net income, our second consecutive quarter of positive GAAP EPS.

Turning to our guidance. In the 3rd quarter, we expect revenue between $680 and $690 million, resulting in year-over-year revenue growth between 25% and 27%. We expect adjusted EBITDA between $105 and $110 million. An adjusted EBITDA margin of between 15% and 16%. For the full year, we expect revenue between $2.725 and $2.745 billion. resulting in year-over-year revenue growth between 25% and 26%. And we expect full-year adjusted EBITDA of between $465 and $475 million. And an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17%. We now expect an incremental adjusted EBITDA margin north of 60% for 2026. Note that our outlook includes the impact of our recent restructuring announcements. While we will reinvest a portion of payroll savings, this restructuring will also drive further operating leverage, particularly as we head into 2027 when we expect to keep payroll costs flat relative Specifically, in Q3 ‘26, we expect to recognize approximately $16 to $20 million of net cash restructuring charges, partially offset by a reversal of approximately $9 to $12 million in noncash stock-based compensation expense, for an expected impact to net income of $6 to $9 million.

Before we open it up for questions, I’d like to say a few personal words. After a decade at Chime, I’ve decided it’s the right time to step down as CFO and spend more time with my family, now a family of 5. It has been the opportunity and privilege of my career to have helped build this company from some of its earliest days. And there’s so much more ahead. I make this transition when Chime’s opportunity is as big as it’s ever been. At a moment when the business has incredible momentum, a strong foundation for continued growth, and an extraordinarily talented team carrying it forward. I’ll be working closely with Chris, Mark, and the broader team over the coming months to ensure a smooth handoff. Chris and Ryan, thank you for your trust. And to all my Chime colleagues, thank you for your partnership. Your dedication to this great company. And for making Chime such a special place to build.

Chris Britt (CEO): I want to thank you, Matt, for your leadership over the past 10 years. Matt has really been central to Chime’s success and a close friend and partner to me since the very early days. He’s worked tirelessly to build and scale Chime for a decade and has now decided to take a well-deserved break. While he will support us through the search for our next CFO and the transition, this will be his last earnings call, and I want to take the opportunity to thank him for everything you’ve done for us. We’ve kicked off an executive search. And our president, Mark Troughton, who many of you know, will be president and interim CFO until we find a permanent CFO replacement. With that, we’ll open it up to Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, press star 1 on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star 2. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question and may rejoin the queue if time permitting. Again, that’s star 1 to ask a question. And our first question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tien-Tsin Huang (JPMorgan): Thanks a lot. All the best to you, Matt. You’re definitely going to be missed, and thanks for all the help over the years. In terms of the question, I was thinking about what to ask. Maybe I’ll ask if it’s okay on the reorg. And the reduction in force, it’s not easy, Chris. I know you mentioned that. Curious why now? What outcomes are you solving for? It sounds like product velocity, more opportunity to invest, and you’ll give some back. As well in the form of earnings. But maybe just if you could help organize that for us, that would be great to start. Thank you.

Chris Britt (CEO): Yeah, thanks, Tien-Tsin. I appreciate it. I think as you can see from these results we just reported, we are truly taking this action from a position of strength. And the way we thought about it is we want to make sure that we are well positioned for this next chapter of growth. And I think we always need to be willing to evolve the organization and be willing to make changes to stay lean, to be flat. And to be more effective. We’re seeing it inside of our company today that smaller teams move faster. Than ever using AI and all the superpowers that that can provide. Small tight-knit teams, we know that we can do even more than ever with lean organizations. And it also, you know, when you have these smaller teams and fewer layers, it allows us To fight bureaucracy that naturally happens when companies start to grow. So we like smaller teams, fewer layers, more accountability. And like Matt indicated, while there will be some, certainly some OpEx savings here, we’re also going to reinvest some of the savings for the next leg of growth.

Matt Newcomb (CFO): Yeah, thanks, Chris. Just to add to that, there will be some reinvestment, but this is another driver of operating leverage going forward, and I would say particularly so So as we head into 2027, when we expect to keep payroll costs flat relative to 2026.

Tien-Tsin Huang (JPMorgan): Yes, that was clear. Thanks for going through that. Just my quick follow-up then. It sounds like the health of the consumer is quite good across your base. Looks like the spend per active is improving. Can we infer from that that there’s stronger spending power in the base? Is that mix? Is that a switch in the product? That’s being utilized here? Just maybe any other color you can add on the health of the consumer. Thanks.

Chris Britt (CEO): Yeah, I’ll take that. You know, I think similar to what you’re seeing across the board from other companies, other, other banking platforms that are reporting, is that while consumers are saying that they feel cautious, what we’re seeing is actually a different story. We’re seeing broad growth in spend across the board, across segment types. So, you know, overall spending is up. Discretionary spending is up in things like entertainment and food delivery and online shopping. Savings balances are up for sure. And while it is true that we see faster growth among the higher-income segments inside of the portfolio of Chime members, there’s no question that the growth is really Broad-based. So, you know, the stories of the consumer demise, you know, I’m 4 or 5 quarters in now, we hear it over and over, but we continue to see a very healthy consumer this quarter once again. And again, we enjoy these primary account relationships, and if and when we ever saw a bump in behavior, uptick in unemployment, we’d be the first ones to see it. We just don’t see it. So I would just say resilient and strong consumer. Spend and health across the board is the behavior we’re seeing for sure.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

James Faucette (Morgan Stanley): Thanks so much. Wanted to ask, I’ll put both my questions together because I think they’re probably related. Comments around attracting users that are income above $75,000 a year, et cetera, seem pretty important. And just wondering, you know, if there are particular products that you can attribute to that kind of attraction. And again, I guess related to that, I’m interested to hear that you’re going to start trialing at least a revolving credit product. Just more details on that and how we should think about that Type of products, potential contribution to growth, et cetera. Thanks.

Chris Britt (CEO): Thanks for the question, James. Yeah, you know, I think it’s the combination of products that are continuing to drive just broader interest in Chime, including among higher-income segments. Obviously, the Chime Prime product with 5% cash back and 3.75% APY and a whole host of perks like Priority Pass lounge access, this is a really powerful combination of services, especially when you include some of the liquidity products we have there, guaranteed access to our instant loan product, and now most recently with our launch of investments and Chime Invest and all the services available through there, we just continue to see that we are growing At the fastest clip among the $75K+ income segment once again. So we feel really good about that, and I think you can see it in the results. You see that these higher-income consumers now have more motivation to put more deposits into Chime. We’re seeing more consumers, more of our new direct depositors than ever on an absolute basis are now qualifying for this $3,000 deposit plus tier that you get. With Chime Prime benefits. So I think you should expect to continue to see more products and services that appeal to a broader segment of consumers, including higher-income consumers. And maybe, Mark, you want to talk about the line of credit launch?

Mark Troughton (President): Yeah, sure. Thanks, Chris. James, I think on the line of credit, you know, we’ve said for some time that there is a huge opportunity in our member base for low-cost, high-quality lending products. And the focus of line of credit is to meet the needs of these higher-income members. In particular, those that are looking for a more flexible type of liquidity. A significant portion of our member base actually prefers a revolving facility to a reducing balance installment type loan. And line of credit is going to offer these members the convenience of having that line of credit attached to their checking account. Where it’ll be always on. Where they can access it just with a swipe of the card. You know, just to reiterate. Line of credit is a Chime Prime product. It’ll only be available to members that direct deposit more than $3,000 a month. And again, we’re doing exactly what we’ve done with SpotMe and MyPay and instant loans. And we’re going to leverage that privileged account data. And that position at the top of the repayment stack. To drive longer relationships and better transaction profit margins.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Darrin Peller (Wolfe Research): All right. Hey guys, thanks. You know, I want to touch on MyPay for a moment again, just because it continues to show strength. But you’ve talked about a few different levers I know over the past few quarters, one of them being flexing loss rates up. Slightly just with higher limits, lower eligibility requirements. We saw loss rates decline again, and I saw, I think, 0.9%, obviously a good sign. But has your view changed at all on having more flexible limits? How should we think about the potential upside for MyPay from here going forward?

Mark Troughton (President): Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll pick that one up. MyPay had another fantastic quarter. Originations were up 15% year over year. We had revenue up 47% year over year. Loss rates came in again below 1%. The result of that was a transaction profit margin of 64%. And a tripling of our transaction profit year over year. You know, so we feel really good about that, as you’ve indicated. As we look forward, we definitely see more opportunity on MyPay. And as an example, we’ve actually just rolled out access to higher limits on MyPay, up to $1,000. Literally, that happened this week. And these higher limits will provide our members even greater access to the liquidity they need. And in turn, it’ll drive greater monetization for Chime. Our focus is on optimizing for transaction profit rather than loss rates. So you will likely see a slight increase in MyPay loss rates for Q3 and Q4, but that’ll be much more than compensated for by increases in higher transaction profit. I also think it’s worth reminding everyone that, you know, MyPay still operates at a price level that is half our competitors. I think it’s just important to Keep that in mind because I think it demonstrates the power of our low-cost model and our privileged direct deposit relationships.

Darrin Peller (Wolfe Research): Yeah, that’s really fair. All right, just one quick follow-up. It’s just on the enterprise side. It was great to see the announcement there of a large partner. So maybe just a quick update on any attach or adoption trends with early partners And, you know, what the pipeline looks like going forward there. And I also just want to reiterate and thank Matt for everything. Matt, you’ve been a huge help. So good luck to you. Thanks.

Chris Britt (CEO): Let me start by just saying how proud I am of the enterprise team and the great progress that they’ve been making and really excited about the pipeline we have. Why don’t you cover this one, Mark?

Mark Troughton (President): Yeah, sure. You know, the progress this quarter was great. We’ve been saying for some time that, you know, the Chime Workplace offering is a broader employee wellness offering. It is fee-free to both employers and employees. And we think it’s much stronger than some of these expensive point solution earned wage access products. And I think you’ve seen that this quarter. You know, what you see here is a resonating yes from the market. And we’re really excited about Allied and the second retailer, whose details we’ll be sharing once we actually roll it out. You know, the pipeline is strong. It continues to grow. We expect to have some more exciting announcements. On enterprise in the coming months. You know, as it relates to the future, we don’t expect enterprise to be a meaningful contributor to member growth in ‘26, but we do see it being a meaningful contributor to direct deposit growth in ‘27. We’re not giving specific guidance related to sort of adoption and conversion at this point, but we will certainly be including the impact of enterprise in our overall member growth guidance for ‘27.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Will Nance (Goldman Sachs): Guys, thank you for taking the question. First of all, Matt, it’s been a pleasure working with you. Sounds like you got your hands full at home, but you’re leaving some big shoes to fill. Second, congrats on all the great business developments. Congrats on that credit line in particular. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about some of the trends that you’re seeing in customer acquisition and direct deposit attach. JPMorgan said on their earnings call this past quarter they added 1.7 million checking accounts last year. You’re basically guiding to that same number as the largest bank in the country. So how are you thinking about the momentum there, the sustainability? of customer acquisition? And then more importantly, on direct deposit attach, you also threw out a stat. I think it was late-stage direct deposit conversion. Maybe just help unpack that and talk about the quality of the account growth that you’re adding. Thanks for taking the question.

Matt Newcomb (CFO): Thanks, Will, and appreciate the kind words there. So we are seeing a ton of momentum on the member growth side. Just as a quick reminder, as you will recall, our business has seasonality. We always see a much more muted quarter-to-quarter growth in actives from Q1 to Q2, and that’s just due to tax refund-related activity. So the best way to look at our member growth is year over year. And we did have a strong showing on that front in Q2. We accelerated member growth to 20% year over year. We added twice as many active members in the quarter than we did in the quarter last year. And it is a record number of actives we’ve added now over the last 12 months, 1.7 million. You know, I think what’s driving this at a high level are a lot of the similar themes we’ve talked about, the strong unaided brand awareness. Our leading NPS score. The Chime message continues to broadly resonate. I think strengthened even further recently with Chime Prime. And we also are just continuing to see the benefit of the early engagement initiatives that we’ve discussed. previously. But I think, you know, one of the things we’re trying to emphasize is that it really is not just the quantity of new member growth, it’s also the quality as well. Again, driven by Chime Prime, we added the highest ever number of members making $3,000 or more in deposits. And as I mentioned, we’re also seeing retention benefits from Chime Prime adoption as well. And all this comes with really strong ROI, transaction profit payback periods of 5 to 6 quarters, LTV to CACs of 9x in our recent cohorts, and it’s this momentum that’s giving us the confidence to raise our full-year active member net add target to 1.8 million, which would be our largest cohort ever and is well ahead of our original goal for 1.4 million for the year. So we’re seeing great progress across the board. You know, the direct depositor progress in particular is It has been great to see it’s not just folks that are coming to us and choosing direct deposit right out of the gate. But now with Chime Prime, you know, maybe they’ve, they’ve tried us out for a few months. Now we’ve given them even more reason to deepen their relationship and choose us as a direct deposit relationship. So, so great progress really across the board.

Will Nance (Goldman Sachs): That’s great. And then if I could just ask a follow-up on Chime Prime, I was wondering if you could talk through some of the learnings in the wake of the launch. And as you think about the customers that have accessed that membership tier. Are you seeing it come more from wallet share expansion within the base? What’s the mix of kind of net new versus wallet share expansion? And then how are you thinking about Kind of marketing to the existing customer base to drive that wallet share expansion and ultimately drive that credit mix higher over time as we look forward. Thank you. Nice job today.

Chris Britt (CEO): Thanks. I’ll take that. You know, I think the results are really twofold. Among our existing member base, we are absolutely seeing real excitement and lots of adoption, and we can actually see that the portion of our member base That are not only signing up for this, but actually adding more deposits into their accounts, and and that’s driving additional engagement and spend. But we’re also really excited about you know we feel like we’re still at the. very early days of having Chime Prime really be a key formula in the top of the funnel growth. Formula. But the results have been awesome. We’re seeing more people than ever depositing three, you know their first deposit more than three thousand dollars, and you should expect to see this be a really key part of our value. Proposition going forward, and and this is you know we are not going to stop. We are going to keep adding additional features to this membership tier that are going to make Chime even more broadly appealing and. And things like, you know, now that we’re rolling out Chime Invest with with managed portfolios, if you’re a more novice investor, all for free, or direct equity purchases, all inside of the app where you get your direct deposit. We we really we really see ourselves just continuing to round out this complete financial services app to to serve all of your needs, including for people that are. At higher income levels. So really excited about what the future holds on this front.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Please go ahead.

Sanjay Sakhrani (KBW): Thank you and congratulations, Matt. It was good to see the loss rate declining in the second quarter. Obviously, as you guys indicated, the consumer is doing pretty well. May I ask, like, does Does that help give you sort of ammunition to expand the credit box? I know you guys talked about expanding the MyPay credit lines, but as we think about growth going forward, does that enable you to do more? And maybe what are some of the learnings as a result of all of this?

Mark Troughton (President): Yeah, thanks, Sanjay. I think, you know, what you should, you should see from this, that we are continuing to optimize. Our credit models and part of the. Play here is we continue to identify new pockets. Of activity. And a good example there is this new launch of $1,000 MyPay limits. Essentially what we’re doing there is we’ve identified broad pockets of people that we believe can handle that $1,000, and so we’re extending more to them. So that’s the sort of repeat approach you have on MyPay. On instant loans, the same thing. We continue to see our overall loss rates actually come down. It’s a little bit masked this quarter because we had a big bump in originations of first-time instant loans. Those first-time borrowers have a significantly higher loss rate than our repeat borrowers who are 50% lower. So we’re seeing really improvement in loss rates. And our underwriting capability across the board.

Sanjay Sakhrani (KBW): Thank you. And just my follow-up. Is that I think Matt talked about. Moderating rewards costs in the second half. Can you guys talk about what’s driving that? Is that sort of an intentional move or is it a mix of redemptions? Just want to make sure I understand the dynamics there. Thank you.

Matt Newcomb (CFO): Yeah, I’ll take that one, Sanjay. So yeah, rewards costs, just maybe to briefly summarize upfront here, rewards costs were modestly higher than we expected in Q2. That being said, the impact that we’ve seen from Prime has far outweighed the slightly higher rewards costs already, and those rewards costs are already coming down in Q3. But let me give you a little bit more detail. On this, you know, as I mentioned, we’ve seen really awesome response to this incredible collection of benefits that Prime provides that has helped us accelerate direct depositor growth. It has captured more market share. And as Chris mentioned, we’re appealing to a broader segment of the market, including higher earners. And that really is a key driver behind the transaction volume growth, active growth, and ARPAM growth, the acceleration that we’ve seen. You know, I think not surprisingly, the 5% cashback offer in the category of your choice has been a real top draw, and that was particularly true in the gas category. Following all the appreciation we’ve seen in gas prices recently. And so that’s really, I think, a big driver of what drove rewards costs modestly higher. And as a result, take rates were slightly lower than we anticipated. But we do believe that that’s a one-off. As I mentioned, we are already seeing overall rewards cost ease here in Q3. Based off of July results, we expect 2 bps of year-over-year expansion in overall payments revenue. Blended take rates for Q3. And so I think, you know, just maybe stepping back more strategically here. The take rate expansion opportunity remains just a huge uplift opportunity for us as we continue to shift more volume to credit. We’re really excited about this as a multi-year tailwind for the business. And we’re continuing to make great, great progress on that front. Credit mix reached 27% in Q2, up from 23% in Q1, and we see a lot of growth ahead. Our newest cohorts continue to adopt Chime Card at high rates. And have about 50% credit mix for those.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Adam Frisch with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Adam Frisch (Evercore): Thanks, guys. And Matt, congrats on your choice. It goes fast, so I hope you enjoy it. You raised the full year revenue midpoint by about $60 million, EBITDA by roughly $47 million against the second quarter beat of $32 million and $27 million respectively. So it seems like there’s real incremental confidence in the back half beyond the flow-through. Some of that is a result of the RIF, as you just explained a few minutes ago. But where else from your broad array of growth and operating leverage do you feel most comfortable with? And I have a quick follow-up.

Matt Newcomb (CFO): Yeah, look, I think the big highlight to emphasize here is this acceleration in volume growth, you know, Prime being a big factor behind that. That has really inflected, frankly, in Q2, and we’re continuing to see really strong momentum here. back half of the year. And so I think that’s probably a number one driver I would point out about the raise for the back half and the flow-through to the rest of the P&L. The second is, you Just continue momentum on our liquidity products. I think Mark went through that as well, but that’s true across MyPay as well as Instant Loans.

Adam Frisch (Evercore): Okay, cool. And, you know, I couldn’t get through a Q&A without asking about Enterprise, but still early days. Great to see ‘27 will see some benefit to new member adds. So what are the early takes, observations, et cetera, that you’re seeing with some of your early partners? Thank you.

Mark Troughton (President): Hey, Adam, I’ll pick that one up. I think, you know, we continue to see strong adoption. And maybe even more than that. What we are finding is that the usage and the monetization of the direct depositors that we’re acquiring through Enterprise actually outperforms what we We see in our consumer channel. So the monetization there is looking really strong.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Andrew Jeffrey with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Andrew Jeffrey (William Blair): Hi, appreciate the question and congrats, Matt. I wanted to ask about Prime in particular, which seems to really be gaining momentum. Can you elaborate on how much Prime is a lever for sort of upgrades from existing members who increase the direct deposit limits, for example, versus a new member? origination vehicle that attracts higher-income users. I wonder how much sort of you think about each of those contributors from Prime.

Chris Britt (CEO): Thanks for the question. It’s really both. We are definitely seeing a strong uptick in existing members who elect to give us even more of their direct deposits. So they now have more reason to do that, and all those reasons will just continue to get better and better. But I think the much larger opportunity Of course, is over time the opportunity to expose this to many more consumers who, you know, maybe considered Chime before but weren’t quite ready to engage. And like Matt indicated earlier, we really feel good about the decisions we made and we talked about. Over the prior quarters around. Allowing members, new members to Chime, to engage with us in a more significant way before getting direct deposit. Right now you can fund the accounts, you can move money to friends, you can You can get access to a range of services before you direct deposit, but now. We have more reasons than ever for people when that. Life change happens when the job switch happens, or they just get fed up with that. One more fee from the incumbent bank, they’re ready to make the switch. There’s a reason to give us their full direct deposit. Like I said, I think we are. And our marketing and growth team would acknowledge this as well. It’s still very early days of having Chime Prime be sort of the hero value prop to come into a Chime relationship. So we think there’s just a ton of runway ahead of us for that. And so I’m probably most excited about that opportunity because inevitably, you know, more and more of the existing Member base will continue to to to come over to this product because it’s just got such an incredibly powerful set of benefits.

Andrew Jeffrey (William Blair): Good stuff. I appreciate it. And just as a follow-up, I appreciate the extent to which improving MyPay credit performance has driven transaction profit growth in the first half and margin, for that matter. As we look to the second half and you lap some of those powerful gains, how do we think about transaction profit and perhaps the contribution from loan marks?

Mark Troughton (President): Yeah, I’ll pick that one up. You know, as we said, yes, we are lapping some MyPay stuff, but the reality is we still see a lot more opportunity on MyPay. As we’ve indicated, you know, we’re testing this new $1,000 MyPay. We’ve actually rolled it out this week. So we expect more goodness from MyPay here in Q3 and Q4. I think that’s probably the way to think about this. At the same time, as we’ve indicated, you’ll probably We see a slight uptick in the MyPay loss rates in Q3 and Q4 as well. But we still think there’s a lot of opportunity in MyPay.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Alex Markgraff with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Alex Markgraff (KeyBanc Capital Markets): Thanks. Hey, Chris, Matt, thanks for the questions. Matt, it’s been a pleasure. Maybe 2 for me. First, starting on Chime Invest, just sort of curious, Chris, on the product vision. I know it’s early, but just sort of thinking about the evolution of the offering and scope versus what we’re seeing at launch, it’s a big category, this sort of wealth management bucket. Just be curious on the evolution there. And then any indication of account flows that you could share that could help us think about where or how members are allocating these sort of invest dollars today? And I have a quick follow-up afterwards. Thanks.

Chris Britt (CEO): Yeah, I’ll take that. I’m so excited about expanding our platform beyond just checking accounts and savings and some of the short-duration lending products that we are obviously very well known for. We now have this opportunity to help our members build long-term wealth. And when we did surveys among our member base, it’s 60% or 70% are already active investors, but more than half of them, more than half of everyone surveyed said that they would like to open up an investment account with Chime. So, and we already have almost 80% of our members using us for savings. And increasingly a lot of consumers think of their brokerage account as a way to do savings. So we obviously need to be there for them. The interest among our existing member base is incredibly strong. And like I said in the prepared remarks, the magic here is going to be this seamless integration that consumers will have with the bank account and the place that you get your direct deposit. Because when you have that, you can seamlessly move money in a more consistent way. And set up that habit, hopefully at a really, really early age, which is, as an aside, why we’re so excited about Trump accounts and we’ll support them when the rollovers are clearer. But yeah, we designed it to make it really simple. Really integrated. You can start with a dollar if you want. If you’re less sophisticated, we’ve got managed portfolios for you depending on your risk tolerance and other considerations. And if you’d rather buy individual securities, you can do that too. In terms of our expectations, we see this as an opportunity to provide existing members more reasons to engage with us for the long term and deepen engagement and drive more wallet share. And we also just think that this is another key product that alongside Prime and instant loans and all these other products that will accelerate our Expansion into these higher income and higher LTV member segments. And we already see that, right? The Prime members that we have are demonstrating ARPAMs that are 2x the rest of our broader member base. So we’re really excited about this and feel like it’s just a natural extension. We’re not endeavoring to create a day trading app or something like that, but we do think that obviously getting exposure to the market at an early age is key to building long-term wealth creation. So of course we have to be in this area.

Alex Markgraff (KeyBanc Capital Markets): That’s great. Thank you. Maybe just one more, just kind of coming back to some comments from last quarter on sales and marketing. I think there were some comments on spending a bit more around Prime, just looking on a dollar basis kind of flattish, but also seeing the benefit from Prime this quarter and the strong net adds. Just sort of curious, is there anything that Really positively surprised. And as we think about those comments from last quarter on incremental spend, anything to think about kind of in second half here on that front?

Matt Newcomb (CFO): Yeah, this is Matt, Alex. So, you know, as we had indicated in prior quarters, you know, we expected to have a marketing push around Prime. On major product launches, we’ve done that historically. For example, with MyPay when that first rolled out, and you know we’ve also done that here with Chime Prime and expect to you know continue to. push this as we work to integrate this further into the top of funnel, like Chris mentioned. So I think that’s sort of the overall trajectory, you know, fairly similar to how we had previously guided.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Joseph Vafi with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Joseph Vafi (Canaccord): Hey guys, good afternoon, and I’ll add my congrats and we’ll miss you, Matt. It’s been a pleasure learning the Chime model and having you walk us through it in detail. Appreciate it a lot. Maybe. Maybe just kind of, we just focus on enterprise a little bit and the large win here with Allied. Could we maybe unpack that win, the sales cycle there? You know, the, you know, the implications for your pipeline, you know, seeing a very large employer like this sign on, any other color, you know, that this may May add to the momentum in signing more customers even this year, and then I’ll have a quick follow-up.

Mark Troughton (President): Yeah, sure, I’ll pick that one up. You know, signing someone like Allied involves a lot of different sort of demand generation tactics. That we employ within the enterprise channel, and those include. Outbound, inbound marketing. Sales calls. And obviously you sort of respond to RFPs. And these things typically, particularly for a large employer like that, these things can run anywhere between 6 to 12 months. I’m not going to go into too many specifics on Allied itself. But I think. The sales cycles in these B2B deals are long. Once you get through the sales cycle, of course, you still have to implement and then drive adoption. Now, the good news. About these sales cycles is that. Once you’re in there. They are self-generating. And you essentially have a captive audience with a really high switching cost. And so, the thing that makes them hard to achieve is also the thing that actually gives them real longevity. And over time, we believe will result in significantly more efficient CACs on real high-value direct deposit customers.

Joseph Vafi (Canaccord): Great, thanks for that. And then, you know, maybe just, I may have missed it, but, you know, the revenue model around Chime Invest, you know, some comments there. Versus being a retention tool and revenue versus retention. And how you’re seeing it strategically. Thanks.

Chris Britt (CEO): You want to take it? Sorry.

Matt Newcomb (CFO): Yeah, yeah. Chime Invest is obviously a great new add to the platform. You should think about this primarily as an engagement driver. As opposed to a direct revenue generator here in the short term. In any sort of substantial or super material way. So, you know, as Chris mentioned, we’re excited to really add this whole new category of benefit for our members directly integrated with the place they manage their money each day.

Operator: Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer portion of today’s call, and I’d like to turn it back over to Chris Britt for any closing remarks.

Chris Britt (CEO): Thanks. I just want to congratulate the team on an awesome quarter. And I think the performance demonstrates that the future is bright here and we’re just getting started. So looking forward to seeing you all out on the road soon. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This brings us to the end of today’s meeting. We appreciate your time and participation, and you may now disconnect.

Hey Toaster Readers,

Hey Toaster Readers,

A quick heads-up: this edition is lighter and a few days late.

Nick’s kids were out of daycare for two weeks and started Transitional Kindergarten this week, and the rest of our hours went into Summit planning. We started announcing speakers (more to come!) and keep adding logos of the companies that will be there.

So we’re trying something different. Below are the stories that caught our eye this week, listed out rather than written up. We’ll expand on the ones worth it in future editions.

Back in full force next week.

Stories That Caught Our Eye

• NASCAR and Avant announce multiyear partnership to launch new co-branded credit card for fans [nascar.com]

• Citi Expands Customer Engagement and Commerce Media Capabilities with Addition of Kard [Citi]

• The Klarna Card reached 6.5 million active users across 16 countries, up from 1.3 million a year ago [Klarna]

• Sezzle pivots to national bank charter [Banking Dive]

• Bunq‘s national bank charter application DENIED by the OCC [OCC]

• Checkr Acquires Truv to Expand Its Verification Platform [PR Newswire]

• Bilt and Equinox Partner and Launch ‘Bilt for the Committed’ to Make High-Performance Living Part of Where You Live [Businesswire]

• ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Lenders Pitch Loans for Needs Like Electricity and Rent [WSJ]

• Airwallex adds Affirm’s flexible pay-over-time options for US shoppers [Airwallex]

• Stripe will reportedly acquire AI gateway startup OpenRouter for $7B+ [TechCrunch]

Speakers at The Affiliate Marketing Summit

We started to announce speakers at our Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders & Publishers.

We’ll continue to announce speakers throughout the next two weeks!

We have less than 49 tickets available.

Who You Can Expect To Be There

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Spinwheel.

Last week, NerdWallet announced Q2 earnings. Revenue came in at $197.3 million, up 6% YoY, beating Wall St’s expectations.

But, Adjusted EPS came in at $0.06, 67.8% below consensus.

And the stock went up.

Last quarter, they beat and the stock got hammered.

But this is a marketing newsletter, not an investing newsletter, so we’ll stay in our lane.

Below are the nuggets we think a marketer at a credit card issuer or personal loan company would care about.

Let’s get toasting!

Summarizing NerdWallet’s Q2

From the Q2 press release (quarter ended June 30th, reported August 6th):

Sponsored by Spinwheel

Now that you have the headline numbers, let’s get into our top observations.

1. Credit cards fell another $8.6M year-over-year

To us, that means the bleeding hasn’t stopped.

“...partially offset by an $8.6 million decrease from consumer credit cards primarily due to continued pressures in organic search traffic that have persisted for multiple quarters.” — Q2 press release

The former flagship business is a declining category, and NerdWallet hasn’t provided clear signs on how it’ll turn it around.

Why you should care: If you’re a card issuer, you need clarity on NerdWallet’s go-forward expectations for the card business. That’ll help you with forecasting, but will also provide clues regarding whether your declining volumes on the platform are because you’re losing market share, or whether you’re holding share in a declining market.

2. NerdWallet is leaning into the insurance agency business

The CEO’s quote at the top of the press release was telling:

“We’re reaching an inflection point in our business. The success of our vertical integration strategy now gives us the conviction to make incremental investments underwritten on a multi-year payback, with compelling returns. We expect to grow this incremental investment fivefold in 2026 versus 2025 as we deepen our owned audiences and build durable, direct relationships with our customers.” — Tim Chen, Q2 press release

Incremental investments underwritten on a multi-year payback.

Our translation?

We like the insurance business. It pays annuities over time vs. the one-shot payouts we get from the cards and loans affiliate businesses.

Why you should care: NerdWallet is deploying spend towards category with multi-year paybacks (our read: insurance, maybe financial advisors). If your product monetizes once at conversion, you might be competing for a shrinking share of their attention.

3. The Personal Loan biz is growing, probably due to expansion in subprime

From the press release:

“...increases of $12.3 million from personal loans as we expanded our marketplace offerings to serve a broader range of borrowers...”

Broader range of borrowers.

Our read?

NerdWallet is leaning into subprime loans.

Why you should care: If you’re a personal loan lender, especially in subprime, and you don’t partner with NerdWallet, now may be the time to lean in. And, bring your best conversion rate. With their focus on paid media vs. SEO, we bet they’ll be ruthlessly prioritizing the offers that convert best (and have the best CPAs).

Which, bring us to our next takeaway.

4. As sales & marketing spend grows, their focus on conversion rate will amplify

S&M spend of $145.4M grew 14% YoY while revenue grew 6% (press release).

We flagged this dynamic in Q1, and the Morgan Stanley concern we quoted then — elevated performance marketing intensity pressuring incremental margins — is now on display.

NGOI margin nearly halved YoY, from 11% to 6%.

When NerdWallet paid ~$0 (on the margin) for an SEO visitor, a “so-so” partner funnel was annoying.

But, when they’re paying market CPCs (which I assume are climbing due to SEO’s decline) and relying on multi-year paybacks, a “so-so” conversion funnel is a total disaster.

Why you should care: Expect tougher bounty/CPA negotiations, and less patience for application flows that perform below the category benchmarks. Your image of NerdWallet should be shifting from content-machine-SEO-gods to math wizards trying to squeeze every dollar of return out of their paid media spend. And there are questions around their strategy around paid media.

In their August 7th research note, Morgan Stanley analysts shared some great insight into this. Rather than summarize, we’ll quote directly. Emphasis added by us, not MS.

“NerdWallet grew revenue $10mm y/y in 2Q26 (to $197mm, +5.6%) on $17mm of incremental sales and marketing (to $145mm, +13.6%), taking S&M to 73.7% of revenue from 68.5% in 2Q25, while performance marketing grew $26.5mm y/y to $116mm, or 58.8% of revenue and 79.8% of total S&M (vs. 47.8% and 69.9% in 2Q25).

These results, coupled with the recent trends on revenue and performance marketing, reinforce our view that sustaining growth may require structurally higher spend as organic distribution erodes. These results, together with the recent rise in performance marketing intensity, reinforce our concern that growth is becoming increasingly dependent on paid acquisition as organic search remains pressured in parts of the business.

Management has said it is investing against internal IRR targets and accepting longer payback periods where recurring relationships can support attractive returns. Yet the company has not publicly disclosed its IRR hurdles, expected payback periods, or realized cohort returns.”

5. Some quick hits before we wrap up

Deposits are booming. Consumer revenue increased year-over-year with “$9.6 million from deposit accounts as partners expanded budgets” (press release). We’ve noticed this a little with my agency, New Market Growth. We’re getting inquires from banks who need help with affiliate marketing for deposits, even though my shop is lending only.

Insurance is stable, but not back to the highs. The carrier concentration issue that tanked the stock in Q1? Tim Chen said that the largest auto insurance carrier relationship “has stabilized but has not yet returned to levels seen earlier in the year”.

SMB is still shrinking. It’s down 11% YoY to $22.1M on organic search declines, “partially offset by an increase in business loan originations” (press release).

The LLMs bring high intent traffic, but low volume. Tim Chen on the call, via GuruFocus: “The traffic is converting well, with extremely high intent from users coming through an LLM wanting to transact in the marketplace. It remains a small part of the business today.”

Last plug. Spots are filling up fast.

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders & Publishers

• September 23, 2026 - San Francisco

• Learn more at events.thefreetoaster.com

Thank you to our event sponsors! Experian, Engine by Gen, Prism Data, Tare, and EXL.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Request your invitation here: events.thefreetoaster.com

Hey Toaster Readers,

Today, we’re excited to share more details about the Summit we’re hosting in San Francisco on September 23, 2026.

We’ll share the venue, agenda, speakers, and registered logos.

Plus, where to learn more and how to request an invitation if this sounds up your alley (fewer than 3 seats remain).

We hope to see many of you there!

-Carlos Caro & Nick Madrid

Founders, The Free Toaster

An Upscale Alternative To The Big Hotel Conferences

Some large banks send 100+ people to Money 20/20 every year.

Run the math on that.

• $3,500 per ticket: $350,000

• $700 per round-trip flight: $70,000

• Two hotel nights at $250: $50,000

That’s $470,000 before Ubers, dinners, $12 lattes at the Venetian, and a week of lost productivity.

And what does it buy?

A spin at the roulette wheel. Thousands of people in one building, and every attendee hoping to bump into the 5 or 10 who could actually move their business.

Sure, we’ve enjoyed Money 20/20 over the years.

But the value was always proportionate to the work we put in before showing up: scheduling the right meetings, with the right people, weeks in advance. All the curation work falls on you. Skip the prep and you fly home with a pocket full of vendor business cards and 300 unread emails.

We got tired of that.

Carlos Caro spent 10 years on both sides of this channel, first leading partnerships at Credit Karma, then at Caribou. In all that time, he never found an industry event that felt like home. Everything was too big, too broad, or too far from the thing he actually cared about: affiliate marketing for consumer lenders.

So we’re building the event we wish had existed. The anti-big-hotel-conference.

The Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders and Publishers goes live on September 23 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, a stunning indoor-outdoor venue a few feet from the Bay.

Here’s what makes it different.

A curated audience of affiliate marketing leaders

We’re capping attendance at 150 and vetting every single guest.

More than 85% of the room will be partnerships leaders at consumer lenders and publishers, the people who collectively steer the $4-6 billion spent in this channel every year. The other 15% must be ecosystem partners that directly add value to lenders and publishers (like credit bureaus, alternative data platforms, and operational vendors).

Every person there is either someone you already know or someone you’ve been trying to meet. One day can replace 5-10 partner visits.

Discussing a unique moment in the industry’s history

SEO is shifting, LLMs are rewriting how consumers find financial products, and the AI era stands to change how lenders and publishers do business together.

Those are the conversations that get buried at Money 20/20 and LeadsCon.

Here, they have 100% of our attention.

A format that acknowledges how busy you are

Breakfast & content sessions to open the day.

Lunch, structured networking, and afternoon content session in the second half of the day.

A happy hour with passed hors d’oeuvres by the water to close.

No sales booths, no off-topic speeches, no wandering a large casino to find the person you’re not sure will attend your coffee meetup.

We plan to discuss the following:

Plus, a networking day in Sonoma on Sept 24th

Do you struggle to find unstructured, quality time with partners?

Then Day 2 in Sonoma is for you.

For an adventurous group of 50 guests from Day 1, the conversation continues on Day 2 at Ridge Vineyards in Sonoma. Day 2 has no official programming: a private shuttle with wifi, a long lunch, a wine tasting, century-old vines, and the kind of setting where a two-hour conversation happens on its own.

You’ll be in good company.

Leaders from Experian, Engine by Gen, Prism Data, Credit Karma, LendingTree, Credible, QuinStreet and the companies below are already registered for Day 1 (and many will attend Day 2 as well).

The Summit is invitation only.

If you lead partnerships, growth, or affiliate marketing at a consumer lender or digital publisher, you’re likely a great fit.

Requesting an invitation takes less than a minute: submit your name here and you’ll hear from us by the end of the next business day.

Our Speakers

A big thank you to our sponsors!

We’re grateful to our sponsors

Headline Sponsor: Experian

Presenting Sponsors: Engine by Gen and Prism Data

Gold Sponsors: Tare.io, EXL and ICS Corporation

Supporting Sponsors: Spinwheel, Bulldog Media Group, and New Market Growth

We couldn’t be more excited to host this. Hope to see you in San Francisco.

Carlos Caro & Nick Madrid

Founders, The Free Toaster

PS: If you have any questions, please email us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Bulldog Media Group.

This week, Carlos drops an editorial piece on where he thinks things are going (or, more accurately, not going) when it comes to the distribution of consumer lending products.

Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

BUT FIRST, A FREE TOASTER EVENT ALERT 👀

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders & Publishers

• 87 out of 150 tickets are spoken for. 63 tickets still left!

• September 23, 2026 - San Francisco

• Target audience: Affiliate marketing leaders at lenders and publishers

• Learn more and request an invitation at events.thefreetoaster.com

Thank you to our event sponsors!

Headline Sponsor: Experian

Presenting Sponsors: Engine by Gen and Prism Data

Gold Sponsors: Tare, EXL, and The ICS Corporation.

Where The World Is Going

To anyone paying attention in tech, the future of digital information (and products that rely on digital information) seems pretty obvious.

You’ll hold up your phone, or smartwatch (or insert newest/fanciest device), utter a request in a sentence or two, and what you want will just HAPPEN.

Unlike the first wave of the internet and mobile, where the magic still required meaningful human interaction, this era will be defined by how effortless and fast things will get.

Instead of spending hours on Kayak to find & book the perfect flight, your AI assistant will know your preferences, constraints, hotel bookings, frequent flier numbers, and budget. And instead of making you do the hard cognitive work of deciding, it’ll just act.

Ticket confirmations will magically appear in your inbox.

What used to take hours and real thinking will now take minutes and no thinking at all.

What This Looks Like In Consumer Finance

In the 2010-2026 internet era, refinancing your credit card debt required real work.

First, you had to go calculate how much debt you needed to refinance.

Then, you had to do some math to figure out how much money you stood to save if you refinanced. After all, you were about to put a bunch of work into this and you had to be sure the cost-benefit of the whole thing made sense.

Next, you had to shop around to see which banks (a) had any offers for you and (b) had the best rate for you. And, you had to do this carefully because generating hard inquiries meant lowering your credit score and reducing your odds of a successful transaction.

Then, you had to compare terms & rates.

The lowest rates had shorter terms and the longer terms had higher rates, but lower monthly payments. Crunching all the numbers to understand the total cost of credit (and whether or not your cashflow could handle the monthly payment) was real work.

Lastly, you had to conduct the transaction.

This meant filling out forms online, and then sometimes talking to humans, tracking down W2s or paystubs, sending bank documents to confirm your identity, and so on and so forth.

To complicate matters, you had to be financially savvy to know what to do. Else, this process had to start with hours of online research or talking to friends that could guide you through the process.

We’re a huge step forward from where the industry was pre-internet, but we can do much better.

Sponsored by Bulldog Media Group

Reach the Borrowers Others Miss

Bulldog Media Group specializes in connecting consumer lenders with less than perfect borrowers — a massive, underserved market that requires precision targeting to get right. With 25 years of financial services marketing experience, they deliver qualified leads through affiliate marketing, targeted email, and data-driven acquisition strategies built for this exact audience.

If you’re a lender looking to scale, these are your people.

Get Qualified Borrower Leads

Our (Fairly Obvious) Future

“Hey Claude, this summer I spent too much on my summer vacation. It’s sitting on my card right now at 29% APR. It’s about $4 grand, but I’m not totally sure the amount. I want to payoff that card in full, and pay that $4 grand off in $100 monthly payments until it’s gone.”

[Claude thinks for 15 seconds]

“Hey there, friend. I found great options for you. (1) A personal loan with Chase, your primary bank. The APR is 9.25%, the monthly payment is $100, and it’ll take 48 months to pay off. It’ll cost you $800 in total interest over the 4 years.

(2) A personal loan with SoFi, a popular digital lender. The APR is 7.00%, the monthly payment is $124, and it’ll take 36 months to pay off. It’ll cost you $464 in total interest over the 3 years.

PS: Your balance on that Chase Amazon card is actually $3,850. I suggest going with a $4,000 loan (most banks like the round numbers), and putting the extra $150 in your checking account.

What option are we going with?”

[human takes 10 seconds to decide]

“Let’s keep everything consolidated with Chase. Option 1.”

“Done. I’ll handle this. You’ll see confirmation emails from the banks in 10 minutes or less. If I need any extra info or approvals, I’ll text you.”

PS: This “future” state is admittedly toned down. The real future of consumer finance is the LLMs knowing your goals, constraints, and preferences, and quietly doing whatever it needs to do with your accounts to make that happen. Some consumers will want to be informed about what their ‘self-driving’ money is doing, and some won’t.

When Will We See This Future In Lending?

We all know consumers are adopting LLMs at unprecedented growth rates.

But, when will the default shopping experience for lending products change?

First, we have to overcome 2 blockers:

Blocker #1: Lenders Are Afraid Of What The Machine Will Say

The big lenders aren’t broadcasting this, but it’s what I hear from friends in the industry.

If an LLM describes a product and gets a term wrong—the wrong APR, the wrong fee, an intro period that expired last quarter—we could have a UDAAP issue.

The CFPB said in 2023 that a chatbot giving a consumer wrong information about a fee or rate can constitute a UDAAP violation.

Now put yourself in the compliance leader’s seat.

Marketing walks in asking to feed product data into Claude or ChatGPT where a probabilistic model will paraphrase it—in a way you can’t preview, at a scale you can’t audit, to a consumer you can’t identify.

I don’t know a single compliance professional that would say “sounds great, ship it.”

There’s a phrase that people kick around in the industry that summarizes what’s going on here perfectly:

“No one at a bank has ever gotten fired for saying no”

--Anonymous

But tons of people could get fired for being an early mover in an industry that operates cautiously towards these sorts of things.

Blocker #2: Consumers Don’t Yet Trust Claude & ChatGPT With Their Financial Data

I’m Exhibit A.

LLMs will do a terrific job of finding consumer lending products for us once we trust them enough to hand over our credit profiles and bank accounts. And then, our consent to conduct transactions on our behalf.

I haven’t done that yet.

And I think about this stuff every week (or every day).

I’m as bullish on this future as anyone you’ll meet. And I have not given an LLM access to my financial accounts.

I draw the line at giving it summarized data from my accounts (without my PII or account numbers), so it can help me with analysis.

But my trust stops there.

So I suspect consumers today share context. But, they’re extremely nervous about sharing credentials.

Now here’s the thing about these blockers.

They each support each other and keep each other in place.

Lenders won’t do what’s required to make LLMs effective acquisition channels until they see the consumer demand. And, consumers won’t feed the LLMs the data and consents required to transact until they see a killer app from the banks.

Chicken and egg.

Seems like neither side wants to move first.

The Mobile Banking Déjà Vu

In the early 2010s, I was at a large Fortune 500 bank when mobile banking was the new, cool thing everyone was nervous about.

Will consumers really bank on their phones?

Will they really check their transactions there?

Do we need to bring all the features from the desktop to the phone or just the ability to pay your bill?

In retrospect, these are ridiculous conversations.

But, I remember being in consensus meeting after consensus meeting about this stuff.

Per the Fed’s surveys, only 22% of mobile phone users with bank accounts used mobile banking in 2011. It took until 2015 to reach 43%.

The iPhone launched in 2007 and it took until 2015 for 43% of consumers to bank on their phones.

ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022. That same 8-year timeline puts us at the end of 2030 before banking through an LLM becomes mainstream.

That feels about right.

So Now What?

Most of the lenders I speak with are still sourcing new customers through the same channels they were using 5 to 10 years ago. Direct mail, affiliates, paid search, paid social, and first-party channels.

AI is taking over the world and we read about it daily.

But, very little has changed in our industry.

I hear about affiliate marketplaces toying with AI, but the changes appear to be very early and experimental.

As a CMO at a credit card or loan company, I wouldn’t expect dramatic changes to distribution in the next 12 months.

I’d expect SEO and paid search to get harder as LLMs eat this traffic.

I’d expect affiliates to continue to think about the future when LLMs take over.

I’d expect direct mail and social to hum along.

So, the 3 things I’d start doing now as a CMO would be:

1. Make sure my organization has a good compliance framework for how we’ll handle LLMs talking about our products

2. Make sure my account opening tech makes it easy for the LLMs and bots to transact with me (the “buyer” is transitioning from humans to bots)

3. Make sure I’m investing in my brand. Ad presentation rates and conversion rates in LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT are going to be 10X higher (or more) when the customer mentions me by name

All of these things are going to feel remarkably “un-urgent” until something suddenly happens that makes them feel urgent.

The “no-regrets” move would be to start now on all of ‘em.

I can’t imagine a world where you won’t have to knock them out eventually.

Catch you next week,

Carlos Caro and Nick Madrid

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at New Market Growth.

Capital One reported Q2 on July 21. We read the press release, listened to the earnings call, the 10-Q, and four research notes, so you don’t have to.

Most coverage focused on the $3.0 billion in net income. We pulled out the five things marketers should actually take from the quarter.

Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

BUT FIRST, A TOASTER EVENT ALERT 👀

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders & Publishers

• New Publishers & Lenders are signing up every week

• September 23, 2026 - San Francisco

• Day 2 (relationship building in wine country) is almost sold out

• Early bird pricing ($999) ends on midnight ET on August 1st!

• Learn more at events.thefreetoaster.com

Thank you to our event sponsors! Experian, Engine by Gen, Prism Data, Tare, and EXL.

Capital One runs one of the biggest acquisition budgets in consumer lending. Once a quarter, its executives explain what that budget is doing.

Here are the five takeaways from this quarter, in their own words.

1. One of the biggest marketing budgets in lending grew by 23%

The Discover acquisition is only half the story.

CEO Richard Fairbank walked us through the marketing line item on the earnings call:

“Total company marketing expense in the quarter was about $1.7 billion, up 23% year over year, driven by the addition of Discover as well as higher legacy Capital One direct marketing in our domestic card and consumer banking businesses, increased media spend, and continuing investments in premium benefits.”

What we found interesting?

👉 Legacy Capital One direct marketing is up, independent of the Discover acquisition.

We’ve tracked Capital One as a mail and media heavyweight since well before the Discover deal.

If you compete with them in channels like Direct Mail, affiliates, paid search or paid social, it sounds like the competition is getting more intense.

2. Consistent with their ‘heavy spender’ strategy, spend is increasing more than balances

The Q2 numbers, side by side:

• Total card purchase volume: $253.8 billion, up 26% year over year.

• Legacy Capital One volume (including Brex and corporate cards): up about 14%, mostly organic, per CFO Andrew Young on the call

• Domestic credit card balances at period end: up 2.6% year over year

Spending up 26%. Balances up 2.6%.

Fairbank described their target as “an enduring franchise with heavy spenders at the top of the domestic credit card market,” fed by premium benefits, lounges, and the travel build-out.

3. Consumer deposit growth is a first class citizen for the marketing organization

Consumer banking was mentioned specifically in Fairbank’s description of the 23% growth in marketing spend. In Fairbank’s words, Capital One wants to “to grow checking accounts on a national scale.”

He continued to say consumer banking now has “an increasing impact” on the total marketing line.

Digging into that statement a little bit, we found:

• Capital One pays 3.0% on its online savings account, the lowest in the peer set BofA tracks

• Bread Financial pays the most at 3.95%

• Average deposits still grew 1.4% sequentially, per the press release

• Rate paid fell 9 basis points, from the same press release

So deposit volume is up and rates are down, in the same quarter.

And, they’re growing deposits with the lowest interest rate in the BofA peer group.

From our 30,000 foot view, it sure seems like they have cracked the code on marketing in the consumer deposit segment. We suspect the money they spend on the brand side of the house could be a big part of their success.

4. Discover’s acquisition marketing is restarting, on a published schedule

Discover pulled back originations starting in late 2023, and Capital One trimmed further after the deal closed. Fairbank calls it “the Discover brownout.”

The result this quarter, per the call: the legacy Discover card book shrank 1.5% year over year while the rest of the book grew about 5.3%. BofA and Morgan Stanley both put the bottom around Q4.

On the earnings call, Capital One walked through the timeline of the re-boot:

• Half of new Discover originations already run on Capital One’s stack

• The rest land “by the end of the third quarter”

• The existing book migrates “in waves: a wave in July, a wave in October, a wave in January”

And they’ve already started ramping up:

“Marketing is mostly a front-book thing. So we are, as we speak, leaning more into the marketing so that we can now generate some very good flow of applicants.”

That’s Discover’s national prime card brand, gone quiet for roughly two years, and now re-entering acquisition channels with Capital One’s models and budget behind it.

If you buy digital media, mail, or affiliate placements in the card segment, this is worth keeping an eye on.

5. Credit is strong, but the rate of improvement may be slowing

The headline numbers, from the press release and the June credit-metrics 8-K:

• Domestic card charge-offs: 4.71%, down 54 basis points from a year ago

• Delinquencies: 3.39%, also down

• Reserve release: $662 million, including $705 million in domestic card reflecting “continued favorable observed credit in the quarter and a modest decrease in the consideration given to economic uncertainties,” per CFO Young on the call

Fairbank on the consumer:

“We don’t, in our own numbers, see this K-shaped economy that a lot of people talk about, although to be fair, we don’t really participate in the lowest end of the marketplace.”

The sell side split on what it means.

Morgan Stanley, in its July 22nd earnings note, read the reserve release as “a sign of confidence in the consumer” and thinks Capital One might have the strongest credit in its coverage.

BofA’s July 22nd note flagged the June data: delinquencies “followed normal seasonality after outperforming seasonality in most earlier months of 2026,” which “at a minimum suggests the rate of improvement in credit is slowing.” Morgan Stanley’s own Consumer Credit Activity Tracker, published July 27th, shows industry card delinquencies still improving through June.

The practical takeaway: Capital One publishes credit metrics monthly in 8-K filings. If your second-half budget assumes credit keeps improving, the 8-Ks may show the pacing before any earnings call does.

Consider checking it monthly.

TOASTER’S TAKE

• Watch the mailbox and affiliate shelves for Discover. The migration waves are July, October, and January, and management says acquisition marketing is ramping “as we speak.”

• The deposit growth results deserve a spot in every neobank’s board deck. Lowest rate in the peer set, deposits still growing. That’s evidence that an industry-leading brand can convince a consumer to take a rate that isn’t at the top of the comparison charts.

• Track the monthly 8-Ks. One issuer’s June seasonality proves little on its own, but it’s the first data point that could put doubt on the “credit keeps getting better” narrative.

Other News

• CFPB late fees, round two. The Bureau has reportedly sent a late-fee Request for Information to interagency review. Synchrony fell 9.6% and Bread Financial 8.3% on the headline. BofA’s exposure math: roughly 12% of Synchrony’s revenue, an estimated 20%-plus at Bread, about 5% at Capital One. An RFI is a question, and the last $8 cap died in court. (BofA Global Research, “Late fee redux,” July 9)

Catch you next week,

Carlos Caro and Nick Madrid

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Spinwheel.

This one is mostly an editorial, and we're putting a prediction on record: we think there will be a Claude Card and a ChatGPT Card. The road there starts with this week's news, Samsung's new Galaxy Card and its too-good-to-be-true rewards program, runs through who really pays for it and why, and ends with the one question that matters for every card issuer: whose card does your AI agent swipe by default?

First section is straight news. Everything after is opinion, and we'll label the line. Oh, and be sure to hold us to the prediction.

Let's get toasting!

BUT FIRST, A TOASTER EVENT ALERT 👀

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders & Publishers

• New Publishers & Lenders are signing up every week

• September 23, 2026 - San Francisco

• Day 2 (relationship building in wine country) is almost sold out

• Learn more at events.thefreetoaster.com

Thank you to our event sponsors! Experian, Engine by Gen, & Prism Data

The Galaxy Card Is Samsung’s Answer to the Apple Card

Samsung is getting into the credit card business.

This week the company announced the Samsung Galaxy Card. Its first credit card, issued by Barclays and running on the Visa network (American Banker). Applications opened July 22, right before Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event (Wired, CNET).

The card lives natively inside Samsung Wallet. You apply there. You service the account there. You redeem rewards there. You never leave Samsung’s ecosystem.

The number to know: 3% cash back on eligible purchases made through Samsung Wallet, no spend caps. That's a full point above Apple Card's blanket 2% Apple Pay rate. Apple only pays 3% at Apple and a short list of partner merchants (Apple). Samsung pays it on everything in the wallet.

And Barclays is doing something no issuer has done before: extending its servicing APIs all the way into Samsung’s operating system.

“Rather than going to our app or our website, you’re now servicing it within Samsung’s ecosystem completely,” Doug Villone, Barclays’ head of US cards and partnerships, told American Banker.

If the Apple Card comparison feels familiar, it should. We covered the messy end of that program’s first chapter in January, when JPMorgan Chase took over the portfolio from Goldman Sachs at a discount of more than $1 billion (Apple Card’s Next Chapter Starts at JPMorgan).

That’s the story.

Sponsored by Spinwheel

Now here’s our Toaster Take.

Samsung Is Paying Barclays’ Rewards Bill To Handcuff You To Your Phone

It's a retention product wearing a rewards costume.

Start with the number that doesn’t add up: 3% cash back on every purchase made through Samsung Wallet. No spend caps.

That doesn’t work on a lender’s margins. Interchange doesn’t cover it.

Neither company has said who funds the gap. But we don’t think there’s much mystery here. Samsung is likely writing the check.

Look at where the richest rate points. Apple pays 3% at Apple. Samsung pays 5% at Samsung: Samsung.com, the Shop App, its stores (terms).

Same playbook, two points richer. The top of the earn table always aims back at the house.

And once you see the subsidy, the rest of the product snaps into focus.

The physical card works anywhere, at 1%. But the 3% only pays when the card sits in Samsung Wallet. And Samsung Wallet only runs on Samsung devices.

Switch to an iPhone? Your everyday spend drops to 1%.

(Technically the 5% on Samsung.com purchases survives the switch. But you just bought an iPhone. You’re not making many of those.)

The math makes it rational. Every Samsung phone is a $1,000+ sale, followed by years of ecosystem revenue. And Samsung is fighting uphill in the US. Roughly 6 in 10 US smartphones sold are iPhones, and Samsung sits second at well under half of Apple’s share (Counterpoint Research via AppleInsider).

Against that, funding a couple points of cash back on a cardholder’s spend is cheap insurance.

There’s a quieter prize too. And Amazon showed everyone how it works.

A co-brand card doesn’t just drive loyalty inside your store. It shows you every purchase your customer makes outside it. That data is worth a lot to a company deciding what to build, stock, and sell next.

Keep that thought. It’s about to become the whole story.

“First In Wallet” Just Changed Meaning

Card issuers have spent decades fighting to be first in the physical wallet. The card you reach for without thinking.

Our take: that fight is moving. And some lenders haven’t noticed.

The fight that matters now is first in the digital wallet. Because the default card in the wallet is the card your AI agent is going to swipe.

Agentic commerce is early. But it’s not hypothetical.

About 31% of US AI users already use AI to find product links. One of the highest-usage AI behaviors across age cohorts. Shopify reports AI-referred shoppers convert at roughly 50% higher rates than organic search, with AI-referred orders up ~13x year over year in Q1. Only 6% of consumers have actually completed a purchase through an LLM so far, so the bottom of the funnel is still nascent. (All per BofA Global Research, “Latest on Agentic Commerce vs Traditional eCommerce”)

But when those purchases happen, the agent isn’t going to deliberate over which of your cards to use.

It will use the default.

Whoever holds that slot gets the transaction.

Chase already owns that position across the Apple ecosystem. As of this week, Barclays owns it across Samsung’s.

Neither bank has framed it this way publicly. We are.

Which brings us to the lesson.

And this part is advice: If you’re a card issuer trying to grow a co-brand business, stop only calling retailers.

The classic playbook is retailers, retailers, retailers. The new call list is technology companies with a vested interest in keeping consumers inside their world.

They’ll do two things a retail partner never could:

1. Hand you distribution inside a platform people touch every day

2. Subsidize terms you could never offer on your own economics

Samsung just showed everyone the template.

Our Prediction: There Will Be A Claude Card And A ChatGPT Card

Now we’re going to speculate. None of what follows has been announced by anyone (that we know of). But we’d rather be on record.

Though one thing was announced: on Tuesday, OpenAI seated Nubank founder David Vélez on its board (OpenAI).

We can only speculate why and here’s what got us there.

We asked ourselves which companies fit the profile we just described: technology platforms with daily usage, deep customer context, and a reason to lock users in.

The answer wasn’t another phone maker.

It was the LLMs.

The scale is already there. The Google Search app’s share of daily active users versus AI apps has fallen from 87.5% in January 2025 to 72.5% in June 2026. And ChatGPT did more than $260MM in revenue in June alone (BofA Global Research, “Apple Inc.: F3Q26”.

ChatGPT counts 441MM global mobile daily active users. Claude is at roughly $59MM a month in revenue, growing daily users at 1,200%+ year over year. It’s momentum BofA attributes to “Claude Code and agentic features” (BofA Global Research, “AI Wars: Claude & Gemini momentum continues, with stable Google growth,”).

These are daily habits at consumer scale, with real willingness to pay.

A daily habit plus a payment credential is exactly the position Samsung just monetized. And the LLMs are further along the daily-habit curve than Samsung Wallet ever was.

Here’s the thing: the incentive is even stronger than Samsung’s.

Anthropic and OpenAI are in the business of monetizing intelligence. The more context they have on you, the more valuable that intelligence gets. The compounding is the point.

The biggest missing context? What you do offline, away from the chat window.

A card is the window.

Samsung wants your purchase data to sell you more Samsung. An LLM wants it because it makes the core product better.

Picture what that unlocks.

You’ve told Claude you’re saving for a house. Claude also issues your card. One morning it opens with: “You spent $300 at Starbucks last month. Want me to block Starbucks until you hit your goal?”

That’s a hypothetical. But that’s the conversation a card makes possible. No bank’s app has ever come close.

Or take the offer side. You ask about rental cars for a trip. Alamo happens to be a card partner. The answer comes back: “cardholders get 20% off, say yes and it’s booked.”

A daily product with full context doesn’t serve ads. It serves outcomes.

The rewards get interesting too. We pay for Claude Max. Offer us extra usage limits as a card perk and we’d chase it. Hard.

Cash back is a commodity. Model access is a loyalty currency no incumbent issuer can mint.

The privacy question is real, so let’s answer it head-on: will consumers want their AI to know this much?

In finances, we think yes. It’s simply going to be too useful not to.

One more thing nags at us.

Google has owned search and a wallet for over a decade and has never issued a consumer credit card. Its closest attempt, the Plex banking project, was scrapped in 2021 before launch, despite a 400,000-person waitlist (CNBC).

We’re surprised the seat is still empty.

Maybe the LLMs Never Need To Issue A Card

The counterargument is Plaid.

We wrote in May about ChatGPT’s Plaid integration making it a distribution channel for personal finance. Permission your accounts, and the LLM gets the spending intelligence with zero plastic. No bank charter. No credit risk. And the consumer can revoke access anytime.

Why issue a card at all?

Add to that: the LLMs are currently retreating from the transaction, not grabbing it. OpenAI has reportedly pulled back from “Instant Checkout” toward retailer-controlled checkout after finding users research in ChatGPT but buy elsewhere (The Information, as cited in BofA Global Research, “OpenAI may shift Agentic Checkout”).

And Google is monetizing its agentic surfaces through ads rather than commissions (BofA Global Research, “The dog days of AI”).

Maybe the LLMs settle in as discovery layers and never touch the payment credential.

Then we argued ourselves back in.

Plaid access is something a user has to grant, account by account. And it can break without warning.

A card is zero friction. One instrument that captures everything, funds its own rewards through interchange, and monetizes through sponsored offers.

And precisely because the LLMs are ceding checkout to retailers, the payment credential is the one durable position left in the stack. Samsung’s logic applies with full force: you issue the plastic because you want the whole picture.

Where we land today: the cards happen.

Ask us again in six months.

A footnote on rails, filed under questions we can’t answer: does a Claude card launch on Visa or Mastercard? Or on stablecoin infrastructure?

Programmable money is the more natural fit for agentic commerce: smart contracts, near-instant settlement. It might be blockchain’s actual consumer use case.

Our guess is boring: launch on traditional rails for acceptance, migrate agentic flows later.

But we don’t know. And neither does anyone else yet.

What Do You Think?

We’d be surprised if Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google haven’t already gamed this out internally.

If you’re working on anything in this space, or you know who is, we want to hear from you. This piece is us thinking out loud, and we’d love to learn more from operators in the space.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Ross, an advisory partner at Arica Consulting with 20+ years running search across Capital One, New York Life, FrontPoint, and Greenlight, has evaluated search agencies from every angle — client, operator, founder, and agency owner. In this deep-dive with Carlos, he shares the exact questions a non-technical CMO can ask to separate the pros from the pretenders.

We cover:

• Why quality score and the keyword vs. search term gap drive everything

• The branded/unbranded commingling trap that hides massive unbranded overspend

• Why optimizing to CPL instead of CPA is the single most common mistakes agencies make

• Reading the change log, auditing Google’s auto-recommendations, and the marginal vs. average CAC test

• How to start from scratch: build an MVP account, one landing page, a few keywords

This conversation is practical, in-the-weeds, and refreshingly honest.

Find Ross at recohen.com or on LinkedIn

******

Come meet Carlos in San Francisco!

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders & Publishers

Sponsored by Experian, Engine by Gen, and Prism Data
San Francisco - September 23rd & 24th

The Exploratorium

150-person, curated room

Early bird tickets ($999) end August 1
Learn more: events.thefreetoaster.com

*****

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

The Free Toaster Newsletter ships every Wednesday at www.thefreetoaster.com, curating the biggest stories at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology.

******

Please Support Our Sponsors

Bulldog Media Group:

Bulldog Media Group is a leading performance marketing company that specializes in online customer acquisition for clients in the financial services industry. Since 2000, they have focused on financial services digital marketing as their core niche.

https://www.bulldogmediagroup.com/

Fintel Connect

Drive thousands of new accounts and billions in deposits with the only partner marketing solution built for fintech and banking – your all-in-one affiliate platform, partner network, agency, and marketing compliance engine.

https://partner.fintelconnect.com/get-to-know-fintel-connect?utm_campaign=13897733-2025%20Partners&utm_source=The%20Free%20Toaster&utm_medium=podcast

Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=july

New Market Growth (Carlos’ agency)

NMG focuses on building affiliate marketing programs for consumer lenders.

www.newmarketgrowth.com

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Fintel Connect.

Quick housekeeping first. The last few weeks have been a slow news cycle, so we’ve been trying something new: taking a single story from the week and going deeper than we normally would. Please let us know if you like this format or not by replying to this email.

We want to hear from you.

This week’s story is “Oportun and Column Announce New Lending Partnership to Expand Access to Responsible Credit.”

At first glance, not that exciting. Just a new partner bank.

Then we dug into the filings and found something strange: for the past nine months, Oportun had a bank partner that wouldn’t hold a single one of its new loans. Pathward originated them, and Oportun bought back 100%. Meanwhile, a growing acquisition machine in consumer lending (referrals in Q1 2025 up 352% year over year) sat idling with nowhere to run.

This is why the Column deal is more than a routine bank partner transaction. It might be the moment Oportun’s marketing team finally got the green light.

TOASTER EVENT ALERT 🚨

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders & Publishers

• New Publishers & Lenders are signing up every week

• September 23, 2026 - San Francisco

• Day 2 (relationship building in wine country) is almost sold out

• Learn more at events.thefreetoaster.com

Thank you to our event sponsors! Experian, Engine by Gen, & Prism Data

Backstory: A Phantom Bank Partnership 👻

Here’s an arrangement that should make any marketer queasy.

Under a September 2025 amendment, Pathward stopped retaining Oportun’s loans. From October 1, 2025, Oportun bought 100% of everything Pathward originated. Then it bought back Pathward’s existing book too, $115.0 million on October 3, 2025, with the remainder acquired on February 4, 2026.

Oportun was renting a charter from a bank partner who wouldn’t hold a single loan.

The impact of carrying all of that shows up in the numbers:

• Originations fell 11% Y/Y in 1Q26 under what the company calls a “tight credit posture”

• FY26 originations guidance sits at just mid-single-digit growth

Sponsored by Fintel Connect

Webinar: Cross-border conversions: winning in Canada’s credit card market

Canada is a high-potential acquisition market, but U.S. affiliates and financial brands need more than a U.S. playbook to win.

Join leaders from Fintel Connect, Finder, and FinlyWealth for a focused 30-minute webinar on how banks, credit unions, and fintechs can use the right affiliate partnerships, localized content, and compliance-ready workflows to drive measurable growth.

What you’ll learn

• Where affiliates see the strongest opportunities

• What top publishers expect from brand partners

• How to navigate Canadian disclosures, CASL, rewards language, and approval processes

Click here to sign up

Column N.A. Jumps In To Save The Day

Last week’s announcement reads like a funding story.

Column N.A., the nationally chartered bank spun up by Plaid co-founder William Hockey (he acquired and re-charted Northern California National Bank), with clients like Brex, Bilt, and Wise, will originate Oportun’s unsecured personal loans and put its own balance sheet to work through debt financing and loan purchases.

This is great news for Oportun.

And it shows they just overcame a growth blocker many fintechs learn the hard way:

Bank or capital markets partnerships, not media buying, are often the real cap on growth.

Oportun Is Operating With Two Partner Banks At Once

Oportun’s own state-licensing page now tells consumers in 32 states that their loan “may be originated by Pathward®, N.A. or Column N.A.”

Seven states remain Pathward-only (GA, IL, NH, NJ, PA, RI, SD).
NM and WI stay on Oportun’s own licenses.

The 8-K adds the fine print. The agreement “includes certain exclusivity provisions with respect to specified loan products and certain future financial products, subject to existing bank partner rights and other exceptions.” That last clause looks like a direct carve-out for Pathward.

And the deal has “an initial term of four years and renews automatically for successive one-year periods.”

Things got a little more interesting when we learned what business lines each partner bank is supporting.

Secured Personal Loans (SPLs) Will Stay In An 8-State Footprint

Here’s something we didn’t realize about Oportun’s SPL business.

Secured personal loans grew 30% Y/Y in 1Q26 with substantially lower losses than unsecured. A deck from 4Q24 helps put that in context: approximately 500 bps lower 2024 losses and approximately 75% higher 4Q24 revenue per loan than unsecured.

It seems like SPLs are Oportun’s best-performing asset.

And the Column agreement covers unsecured loans only. Column “will originate certain unsecured personal loans for consumers in select states”. SPL is live in eight states (AZ, CA, FL, IL, NV, NJ, TX, UT), and its expansion path to roughly 33 more states runs contractually through Pathward.

One door is already written into the contract: the exclusivity provisions cover “certain future financial products,” which is exactly where an SPL program at Column would live.

SPLs will survive. Whether its national expansion goes through Column, Pathward, or nobody is the open question. The timeline to an SPL program beyond 8 states is the other unknown.

Oportun’s Marketing Metrics Were Looking Good…Until They Hit A Wall

Here’s what Oportun’s acquisition engine was doing while originations shrank:

• CAC fell to $117 in FY2025, from $125 the year before, after touching a public-company low of $111 in 4Q24

• Referral-driven originations grew 352% Y/Y to $35M in 1Q25

• Instant prescreen launched in 1Q26

The machine seemed to be working.

But their bank partner didn’t want to keep funding the loans.

Now we need to watch Oportun’s Q2 earnings.

Will they raise FY26 originations guidance? That would tell us that Column’s capacity has given the marketing team the green light.

Support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, please check out our Newsletter sponsors:

• Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect

• Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel

• Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group

And, a big thank you to our September 23rd Event Sponsors!

• Experian

• Engine by Gen

• Prism Data

• New Market Growth

Now They Can Lean Into National Channels, Like Affiliate Marketplaces

Lenders with big geographic gaps cost the marketplace real money. Between state-level eligibility logic they need build and maintain, unserved customer segments, and potentially wasted impressions, regional lenders aren’t exactly what publishers dream about.

A national bank program makes Oportun’s offer easier to integrate, easier to promote, and more valuable to publishers like Credit Karma, Experian, and NerdWallet.

The national footprint makes life easier in other channels, too.

Direct mail, prescreen lists, digital targeting, telesales licensing, and retail distribution locations were all limited by geographic constraints.

The new partnership with Column unequivocally provides oxygen to Oportun’s growth effort.

But, a separate question remains unanswered about all of this.

Why Isn’t Oportun Part Of The Bank Charter Craze?

Last week, we wrote about the parade of fintechs filing for their own bank charters and moving away from the bank partner model.

Oportun might have been too early to the party.

Oportun began its OCC application for a de novo national bank in November 2020, seeking, in its own words, to “offer additional products and services, provide us with new sources of lower cost funding and give our business regulatory clarity”. It withdrew in October 2021 with a stated plan to refile.

It never did refile.

While Klarna, Affirm, and Upstart took what seems to be the popular path, Oportun chose a different road.

We wonder if it’s because Oportun’s business has historically focused on thin files/credit invisibles, with a focus on underserved hispanic audiences, and a products that were north of 36% APR before 2020.

All of these factors could influence a regulator’s likelihood to approve a bank license.

None of those real-life considerations are easy to talk about, but they lurk in the shadows of this new partnerships between Oportun & Column.

Put differently, is Oportun seeing a strategic advantage to sticking with the bank partner model while others move to secure their own charters, or were there structural reasons that took this option off the table?

If you have a POV on this, we’d love to have you on our News Pod to discuss. Reply to this email if you have a hot take you’d like to share.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.

Hey Toaster Readers,

Klarna wants to be a bank. So do 9 other fintechs. In 7 months, many fintech consumer lenders have headed for a regulator’s door, and the partner banks they’ve been renting for a decade should be nervous.

Inside: who’s filed, why the window opened, whether it stays open, and why bank and fintech marketers should be paying close attention.

This week is sponsored by Bulldog Media Group.

The Year Fintech Lenders Stopped Renting Banks

On July 6, Klarna announced in a press release (and disclosed in a Form 6-K filed with the SEC, with American Banker reporting the same morning) that it had filed applications with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to establish Klarna Bank USA, a Utah-chartered industrial bank. “Banking is built on trust,” CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in the announcement, calling a U.S. license “the natural next step” for a company that says 30 million Americans use its products every year and that has extended more than $91 billion in credit to U.S. consumers since 2019, all of it through partner banks.

Interesting timing, we think, given that just a few weeks ago, we covered Klarna launching an FDIC-insured high-yield savings account through WebBank and that Pagaya is suing the BNPL provider for allegedly stealing its underwriting model.

And Klarna is not an outlier. Since December 2025, it’s the ninth major fintech to file for (or buy its way into) a U.S. bank charter. Insured deposits and direct access to the payment rails, the banking industry’s forbidden fruit, are being handed out application by application. The companies queuing up are the same brands that already sit between banks and tens of millions of consumers.

(Don’t Miss Our First Big Toaster Summit)

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders and Publishers

Proudly Sponsored by Experian, Engine by Gen, and Prism Data

Heads up: our Day 2 experience is going faster than we planned, with fewer than 20 spots left.

Our Day 2 is where lenders and publishers trade the conference hallway for a vineyard and build real relationships, not a pocket full of business cards.

We’re spending the day at Ridge Vineyards in Healdsburg, a legendary Sonoma estate that’s been championing single-vineyard winemaking since 1962. It’s designed to be both impactful and entertaining, giving you the time and setting to build partnerships that don’t happen in a Money 20/20 crowd.

Learn more and grab a spot: events.thefreetoaster.com

So…who’s filed for Bank Charters?

The filings cluster into three routes: the industrial loan company (ILC) charter favored by balance-sheet-hungry lenders, the full national bank charter, and, in one notable case, a charter type nobody had touched in two decades.

The OCC saw 18 de novo charter applications in 2025 (that’s nearly equal to the previous four years combined). Klaros Group co-founder Michele Alt expects roughly 25 novel applications in 2026. Approvals are flowing too. The FDIC has conditionally approved ILC bids from Ford, GM, Stellantis and Edward Jones since January; the OCC has granted conditional charters to Mercury and Nubank’s U.S. unit, alongside a wave of crypto-focused national trust banks.

OppFi took a different route, acquiring BNC National Bank in April rather than filing de novo.

And while we have zero insider knowledge of impending applications, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of other fintechs join them. Chime is the most obvious contender, their leadership basically pre-announced it in April. Then there’s Robinhood and Wealthfront, two giants wearing software costumes while a bit portion of their revenue is interest income.

The fence is getting increasingly crowded. Walmart-backed OnePay is expanding aggressively, Dave and Current face the exact same partner-bank margin pressures as Chime, and SMB powerhouses Ramp and Rho are feeling the heat after Mercury’s conditional approval. Even Cash App is a wildcard. This could be a now-or-never regulatory window, and few want to be left behind renting someone else’s banking license.

Sponsored by Bulldog Media Group

Reach the Borrowers Others Miss

Bulldog Media Group specializes in connecting consumer lenders with less than perfect borrowers — a massive, underserved market that requires precision targeting to get right. With 25 years of financial services marketing experience, they deliver qualified leads through affiliate marketing, targeted email, and data-driven acquisition strategies built for this exact audience.

If you’re a lender looking to scale, these are your people.

Get Qualified Borrower Leads

Why are they all filing now?

Three factors converge to make this window imperative.

Funding: insured deposits are the cheapest, most stable money in finance, and a lender that funds receivables through securitizations and warehouse lines can cut its cost of funds materially by taking deposits. “You get access to low-cost funding in the form of insured deposits. That’s pretty cool,” Michele Alt puts it.

Control: a charter removes the sponsor banks that currently sit in the middle of every loan, with their fees, their oversight and their concentration risk. Affirm’s Max Levchin framed his company’s Nevada ILC application as a long-term play for “regulatory clarity” rather than near-term growth.

An Open Door: “Many fintechs and blockchain companies especially did not really have a hope or a prayer of obtaining a bank charter during the Biden administration,” Alt told The Financial Brand. “But they are thinking strategically now and trying to go for the window of opportunity now that it’s open.”

Will regulators keep saying yes?

Credible arguments run both ways, and the outcome will likely be decided application by application.

The argument for continuity is strong. Comptroller Jonathan Gould has called the application boom “a return to the norm for the OCC,” arguing the surge “signals healthy competition, a commitment to innovation and should be encouraging to all of us,” and has blamed years of “anemic chartering” for gaps in credit access. FDIC Chair Travis Hill unfroze the ILC pipeline his predecessors had left dormant and has said a fintech holding deposits inside a regulated bank may pose less risk to the insurance fund than one scattering deposits across complex partner arrangements. Ford, GM, Stellantis and Edward Jones approvals establish live precedent that the FDIC will insure new ILCs, the very question that stalled the class for 15 years.

But there’s a case for caution, too. The Independent Community Bankers of America and the Bank Policy Institute jointly urged the FDIC to reject Affirm’s application and to freeze all ILC approvals until Congress closes what they call the “ILC loophole,” arguing such banks escape consolidated Federal Reserve supervision while leaning on nonbank parents. Senators John Kennedy and Andy Kim have reintroduced the Close the Shadow Banking Loophole Act (S. 3734) to do exactly that. And the OCC itself fired a warning shot in June, publicly reminding applicants it can return filings as “materially deficient.” “The OCC has been getting bad applications from applicants who assume, in the current environment, they don’t have to do the hard work of designing a credible business plan,” Alt said. These reviews routinely run 12 to 18 months, meaning applications filed today may be decided by a differently constituted FDIC board, in a different political moment — and the picture sharpens: the window is real, but it is neither unconditional nor guaranteed to outlast the administration that opened it. Well-capitalized, mono-line lenders with seasoned portfolios and experienced bank management are positioned to get through; thinner applications may simply run out the clock.

Mission Lane: the most interesting filing of the year

Klarna got the headlines, but Mission Lane’s April 2026 filing is also interesting. The Virginia-based issuer, spun out of LendUp in 2018, now serves more than three million cardholders with credit lines of $300 to $3,000 for near-prime and subprime borrowers. Mission Lane applied to the OCC for a CEBA credit card bank charter. It was the first credit card bank charter application in roughly 20 years, according to Michele Alt, whose firm advised on it.

The CEBA charter, a 1987 creation, is a limited-purpose national bank that can issue credit cards nationwide but cannot take demand deposits or deposits under $100,000 (except as secured-card collateral) and cannot make general commercial loans. Its parent escapes Federal Reserve holding-company supervision, and more importantly, it can export its home state’s interest rates to customers in every state.

This is favorable timing for Mission Lane, specifically, due to four factors:

1. Regulatory receptivity to novel charters. A charter type dormant for two decades only gets dusted off when agencies are visibly approving unusual structures. In 2026, they are.

2. This limited charter fits the business. Mission Lane does one thing: credit cards. It doesn’t need (and doesn’t care to be examined for) the full universal-bank toolkit an ILC or national charter implies. A limited charter means a narrower application and, plausibly, a faster path.

3. Its partner-bank model is under structural pressure. Mission Lane originates through Utah’s TAB Bank and WebBank, exporting Utah rates to other states. This is the very “rent-a-bank” architecture that state legislatures and consumer advocates keep attacking. A national credit card bank exports rates under the National Bank Act in its own name, taking that legal risk largely off the table.

4. Funding economics. Subprime card books are expensive to fund through securitization. Large time deposits, which CEBA banks may accept, are cheaper and steadier — a durable margin advantage in a segment where funding cost is the whole game.

There’s also a layer of competitive necessity worth noting. If Klarna and Affirm become banks while Mission Lane remains a borrower in the wholesale markets, it fights the next decade at a structural cost disadvantage.

Why is Upstart taking the harder road with a de novo filing?

While Mission Lane plays the specialized CEBA angle, Upstart went the other direction entirely. In its March 2026 de novo filing for Upstart Bank, the company applied for a full national charter under a traditional Bank Holding Company framework, voluntarily signing up for OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve oversight all at once. That’s the most supervision available in Washington, and Upstart asked for it.

We covered the filing when it landed in March, and the economics explain the choice. Upstart currently operates through 248 state licenses and roughly 100 bank partners, an infrastructure Morgan Stanley estimates costs $200 million a year, or about $135 per loan. A single federal charter cuts that to roughly $50 million. That’s $150 million in annual savings before Upstart changes anything else about how it operates.

The funding side is the bigger prize. Upstart keeps about 14.6% of originated loans on its balance sheet, funded through warehouse lines and securitization, the most expensive money in the room. Swap that for deposits and Morgan Stanley models another $67 million in net interest income versus 2027 consensus. Combined, savings plus income reach $217 million, roughly a 50% upside to 2027 adjusted EBITDA. The BHC route also gives Upstart something the ILC path chosen by Affirm doesn’t: a broader product set and deposit funding as a backstop when securitization markets seize up, the same playbook LendingClub has been running since 2021.

Then there’s the narrative layer. Pure fintech lenders trade at compressed, cyclical lending multiples, and a tech-driven deposit engine gives Upstart a story to tell about being a technology ecosystem rather than a balance-sheet-exposed lender. Klarna is attempting the same repositioning by calling itself a spend-centric business. But unlike the pure story stocks, Upstart filed with $217 million of modeled EBITDA improvement attached. Whether analysts reward the narrative or just price it like a bank, the cost savings clear either way.

Key takeaways for marketers in lending

At face value, this uptick could seem like a dry regulatory development. But for marketing and growth leaders at fintechs and non-bank lenders, it could become a looming distribution shakeup. Here’s what to prepare for:

• Affiliate and comparison channel crowding: Expect immediate deposit-side pressure. While Klarna, PayPal, and Upstart spin up native, chartered savings products, they will likely begin aggressively marketing them into the exact same affiliate networks and financial comparison channels you buy traffic from.

• Near-prime segment encroachment: As chartered specialists like Mission Lane leverage their newfound regulatory advantages to go after the 70 million underserved Americans traditional banks abandoned after 2008, non-bank lenders face a formidable competitor holding a native compliance moat.

• Sponsor bank disruption and tenant churn: Anticipate a shakeup across legacy partner networks as their largest anchor programs migrate to native charters. As historic fee income dries up, these sponsor institutions could be forced to either absorb early-stage programs or pivot to building competing direct-to-consumer lending brands of their own.

A final word of wisdom from Michele Alt: against roughly 4,000 incumbent banks, the new entrants are “tiny,” and will not “go toe-to-toe with the megabanks” immediately. “The thing to watch for is how they grow over the next, say, five years.” The brands filing this year already own the customer’s phone screen. Now they’re coming for the balance sheet. The (maybe) five-year window to respond on brand, trust and relationship starts closing now.

Please support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, consider checking out our sponsors:

• Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect

• Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel

• Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group

• Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth

• Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you.

Sources

• Klarna press release: Klarna submits application for U.S. banking license (Jul. 6, 2026)

• Banking Dive: Mission Lane applies to become a bank (Apr. 22, 2026)

• American Banker: Credit card issuer Mission Lane applies for bank charter

• Affirm: Affirm submits applications to establish industrial loan company (Jan. 23, 2026)

• PayPal Newsroom: PayPal submits applications to establish an industrial bank (Dec. 15, 2025)

• Revolut: Revolut files U.S. bank charter application (Mar. 2026)

• American Banker: Dutch neobank bunq reapplies for a U.S. bank charter (Jan. 2026)

• Banking Dive: Charter application boom a ‘return to norm’ for OCC: Gould

• Banking Dive: FDIC conditionally approves Ford, GM ILC charters (Jan. 2026)

• BPI & ICBA: Comment on Affirm Bank’s application for deposit insurance (Feb. 25, 2026)

• ICBA: ILC loophole advocacy and Close the Shadow Banking Loophole Act (S. 3734)

• Bloomberg: Fintechs call Klaros Group when they want bank charters (Jan. 2026)

• Marketplace: Why fintech firms like Klarna want to become banks (Jul. 7, 2026)

• Future Nexus: OCC hints at trouble for charters (Jun. 18, 2026)

• Banking Dive: Inside the explosion of banking charter applications

• The Financial Brand: Fintech banking suddenly advances on multiple fronts

• FinTech Futures: OCC conditionally approves Mercury charter application

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by New Market Growth.

With the slow news cycle and the July 4th holiday, we decided to reflect a bit more on one story that recently dropped. We think it was easy to skip but there there is something deeper at play that others might appreciate.

Last Tuesday, LendingClub officially ceased to exist and rebranded to Happen Bank. We covered the initial announcement in April, but the dust has settled and we wanted to dig into the strategy underneath. This is one of the clearest examples we have seen of a lender picking a specific customer segment, the “Motivated Middle,” and engineering every product and reward around them. If you market lending or deposit products, you will want to spend five minutes unpacking how Happen ties its rewards directly to profitable customer behaviors.

Let’s get toasting!

(Don’t miss our First big Toaster Summit)

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders and Publishers

Proudly Sponsored by Experian & Engine by Gen

We have a new site! And our Day 2 experience (which has much smaller capacity) is selling faster than we anticipated.

LendingClub Became Happen. The Real Story Is Who It’s Chasing.

Last Tuesday, Scott Sanborn rang the Nasdaq opening bell and LendingClub officially ceased to exist. The company now trades as Happen, Inc. under the ticker HAPN, having completed both a full rebrand to Happen Bank and a stock listing switch from the NYSE to Nasdaq. [American Banker]

We covered the announcement when it dropped in April. So why come back to it now that the paint is dry? Because to us, there’s a more interesting story layered under the rebrand.

This is one of the cleanest examples we’ve seen of a lender picking a customer segment first and then engineering every product, reward, and dollar of funding around that one person. If you market lending or deposit products for a living, this is worth 5 minutes unpacking.

First, what Happened to Lending Club?

Quick scale check: Happen reports 5M+ lifetime members and $100B+ in lifetime originations (sourced from their 2025 10-K).

For readers who know LendingClub as “the P2P lending pioneer”: that company hasn’t existed for years. Happen is a nationally chartered digital bank running a marketplace bank model with two revenue engines.

The first engine is the balance sheet. Deposits fund loans held for investment, generating net interest income. The second engine is the marketplace. Happen originates loans and sells them to investors, collecting origination fees, servicing fees, and gains on sale capital-light fee income.

The loan book is overwhelmingly consumer: unsecured personal loans (debt consolidation is the core franchise), auto refinance, point-of-sale financing, and a newly launched home improvement vertical. A small commercial book focuses primarily on active SBA lending, while existing commercial real estate loans and equipment leases have ceased origination and are being retained to maturity.

In Q1 2026, originations were split roughly down the middle, 52% sold to marketplace investors and 48% retained, which matters for the strategy below. Both engines get stronger when the same borrower gets cheaper to fund and safer to underwrite.

Happen focusing on the “Motivated Middle”

Happen’s own words: it’s a bank built for “high-FICO, high-income, digitally savvy consumers actively managing their financial lives.” Not the underbanked. Not private-banking clients.

Prime borrowers who still actively use credit.

Look around the industry and you see why this lane was open.

Chime and Dave built their businesses on low-to-moderate-income consumers — overdraft protection, early wage access, interchange-funded economics. SoFi staked out high earners with student loan refi, wealth management, and premium lifestyle branding. Chase, Citi, and BofA sit on trillions in near-zero-cost deposits but don’t always succeed in securing the consumer’s lending business.

The middle, the person with a 740 FICO who carries a $25K consolidation loan and a real savings balance, was nobody’s primary target. Happen is planting a flag there.

The sequencing question (Chime in reverse)

Chime did the hardest thing in consumer banking first: winning the direct deposit relationship, then expanding into credit. Happen is running the opposite play, and it’s the same one SoFi, Capital One, and Amex ran before it. Lend first, because that’s where the money is (and, frankly, because a lending license is far easier to get than a bank charter). Then use the loan relationship to earn your way into deposits and checking.

Loan-first is the more logical sequence for profitability.

But it leaves Happen with a real challenge: it doesn’t own the primary banking relationship yet, and the deposit market is brutally crowded. Which distribution channels it picks to close that gap is the thing to watch over the next few quarters.

But first, a quick note from our sponsor:

New Market Growth

New Market Growth helps lenders build and scale affiliate marketing programs on channels like Credit Karma, Experian Marketplace, Lending Tree, Bankrate, Credible, and many more. NMG clients spend $50-$100MM per year in affiliate channels, and the founding team (one of whom is Free Toaster co-founder Carlos Caro), have advised in excess of 50 lenders over the course of their corporate and agency careers.

If you’re a Free Toaster Reader at a lender that spends over $500K per month in affiliate marketing, we’re offering a free, 90-minute audit of your affiliate marketing program. After research we’ll conduct on our side, we’ll book time to share the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities we observe in your program.

Outside eyes could help unlock the growth you’re looking for in H2 2026.

Email carlos@newmarketgrowth.com with subject line “90-minute audit” and we’ll contact you to get the preliminary information we need to get to work.

The flywheel: rewards that pay for behaviors, not balances

This is where the strategy gets concrete. Happen’s two deposit products are engineered so that every reward dollar buys a behavior that improves Happen’s own bottom line.

LevelUp Savings (launched August 2024) pays a higher APY (currently 4% APY) to members who deposit at least $250/month, rewarding the growth behavior instead of the raw balance. It’s built 80K+ accounts and $3.5B in deposits, and savings customers visit 30% more often than the prior product’s.

LevelUp Checking (launched June 2025) pays 2% cash back on on-time personal loan payments made from the account, plus 1% back on gas, grocery, and pharmacy debit purchases. It simultaneously pulls low-cost deposits in, moves loan servicing inside Happen’s ecosystem, and pays the borrower to do the exact thing that keeps charge-offs down. Since launch, account openings are running 6x the prior checking product, and 60% of accounts come from existing members. The cross-sell is seemingly working.

Now the number that left us scratching our heads a bit.

Happen discloses that 70% of LevelUp Savings holders, representing ~95% of balances, hit the $250 monthly threshold. Do the basic math they invite: 95% of $3.5B spread across 70% of 80K accounts works out to an average balance near $59K among threshold-meeting savers. (The disclosed account and balance figures are as of March 31, 2026)

That’s not a mass market audience.

That’s an affluent saver earning 4.00% APY, which raises a question Happen hasn’t answered: why is that customer with $59K in savings taking out a $20–30K personal loan? Either the savers and the borrowers are different pockets of the member base, or the “prime borrower who still borrows” is wealthier than the debt-consolidation stereotype suggests.

TOASTER’S TAKE

The rewards program is designed thoughtfully for the audience (and the P&L). Every Happen incentive pays for a behavior tied to a P&L line (deposit cost, on-time payment, balance growth).

The deposit business doesn’t reduce CAC, it raises the CAC you can afford. When 60% of new checking accounts come from existing borrowers, the lifetime value of a new loan customer goes up. That lets you bid more for media and buy growth on the margin. At scale, the Fortune 500 banks of the world happily push CAC up as long as the marginal customer is profitable. The question for Happen: is that what the next two quarters of marketing spend will show?

The metrics we want to understand this better: checking account volumes (they gave us savings, why not checking?), cross-hold rates, and blended CAC. Until then, we have a number of questions: How many of those affluent savers came from the loan base versus straight rate-shopping on 4.00% APY? Does the flywheel actually convert borrowers into primary banking relationships, or just into high-yield deposits?

Happen’s bet?

That the most overlooked customer in consumer finance is the prime saver who still borrows — and that you win them by paying them to behave in ways that improve your deposit base, your loss curves, and your cross-sell rates all at once.

Only time will tell and the proof will show up in the CAC and cross-sell numbers.

Please support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, consider checking out our sponsors:

• Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect

• Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel

• Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group

• Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth

• Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

The Free Toaster Jobs

The Free Toaster Jobs curates real openings across credit, risk, product, data, and growth, with a focus on consumer fintech and lending. No noise. Just roles that signal where budgets and priorities are moving.

By Toaster Media

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. The Free Toaster will be organizing & hosting curated events this year, and we’d love to work with you as a sponsor.

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Fintel Connect.

The news cycle was light this week so we dropped an exclusive editorial on why personal finance algorithms are about to make traditional landing page optimization completely obsolete. The punchline? Consumers are going to stop choosing their own loans and let AI agents handle decisions for them. Is your lending brand optimized to pitch a machine reader instead of a human brain?

Plus, home equity card startup Trovy just locked down a cool $25M and SoFi rolled out new AI tools to be your financial coach and to automate retail investing.

There’s a lot to unpack. Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please subscribe or forward this email to 1 of your colleagues!

Mark Your Calendars For September 23rd!

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders

Proudly Sponsored by Experian & Engine by Gen

Interest in our inaugural edition of The Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders is heating up 🔥. Thank you!

So far, we have senior leaders from the following organizations registered: Experian, Engine by Gen, Credit Karma, Bankrate, LendingTree, Credible, QuinStreet, Bulldog Media Group, Lending Club, SoFi, Pagaya, One Main Financial, Perpay, Happy Money, Atlanticus, LendingPoint, SuperMoney, Debbie, Portola, PrismData, FICO, and more.

Learn more about the event here!

If you’re a senior leader that buys or sells affiliate media, this is the one event this year you won’t want to miss.

The room is capped at 150 guests and early-bird pricing is active, so consider registering today!

What happens when consumers delegate financial decisions to agents?

Last month, we tracked how ChatGPT is becoming the new distribution channel for personal finance, with Plaid unlocking transactions and Credit Karma plugging in approval odds. We felt a shift like this required an editorial to unpack the ripple effects it’s creating.

The biggest change in personal finance isn’t the AI technology itself. It’s the fact that consumers are going to hand the keys over to AI, letting algorithms choose their loans based on pure data, goals, and constraints. The psychological game of human persuasion is out. The new job is convincing a rational, data-loaded machine to pick you as the best option.

The lending funnel isn’t dying, but your buyer is changing completely as more consumers trust agents to act on their behalf.

Will consumers actually hand over their bank data to a machine? History says yes. Mint hit 20 million users at its peak just by putting spreadsheets in the cloud. When people see value, they share. The question is who’ll be there to earn the trust when agents are eventually adopted by the average consumer.

If you keep optimizing for human emotion, you’re tuning a radio nobody is listening to. Read the full editorial to learn how to set up your brand for the machine era.

Hint: the key is building trust with the consumer before they prompt the agent.

[How Lenders Win When AI Calls the Shots]

Sponsored by Fintel Connect

56% of U.S. bank and credit union executives still build marketing budgets from last year’s numbers. Are you?

Most financial institutions are under pressure to prove which channels drive funded accounts, loans, deposits, and long-term customer value. Yet new research from Cornerstone Advisors and Fintel Connect found that more than half of U.S. bank and credit union executives still determine marketing budgets based on the previous year’s spend.

That may feel practical, but it can leave growth teams overfunding top-performing channels, underinvesting in higher-performing ones, and walking into budget season without a clear cost-per-outcome model.

Fintel Connect’s latest mini guide, Why Financial Marketing Budgets Still Start With Last Year’s Number, shows how financial leaders can shift from legacy budget planning to an outcome-based investment model built around measurable acquisition impact.

Get the guide and rethink how every marketing dollar is being tied to acquisition impact. Read the full guide here

Home equity credit card startup Trovy closes $25m raise

Trovy closed a $15 million Series A funding round, bringing its total capital to $25 million and boosting growth for the financial technology platform that replaces expensive consumer debt with home equity-backed financing. Left Lane Capital led the investment, while existing seed investors Kleiner Perkins, DCM Ventures, and Camber Creek also jumped back into the mix. The startup aims to address a "record" pile of US household debt by helping homeowners tap into their existing equity instead of paying high interest rates. By operating as a licensed lender, Trovy bypasses traditional bank partnerships to give consumers direct ownership of their borrowing experience. Their home equity-backed credit card runs on the Mastercard network via Cross River Bank, and the team plans to launch a flexible loan product called 1Loan this summer. They are also building a comprehensive homeowner hub to manage everything from maintenance reminders to insurance policies. [Fintech Global]

SoFi Launches AI Tools to Coach Your Finances and Automate Your Investments

SoFi, the everything app for digital financial services, recently rolled out new AI tools to help users get a better grip on their money. The company launched SoFi Coach, a chat-based assistant that gives you personalized advice on budgeting, saving, and tackling debt. Users securely connect their accounts from more than "12,000" financial institutions to receive real-time answers about their spending habits and payoff options. During early testing, the tool helped users take "tens of thousands" of financial actions, and "nearly 70%" of engaged testers took meaningful steps to improve their finances. Beyond basic budgeting, SoFi also introduced Composer by SoFi to help retail investors build and automate rules-based trading strategies. You just describe your investment idea in plain English or browse "over 2,000" community-built options, and the platform turns it into a fully functioning plan in minutes. Instead of drowning in spreadsheets or paying a pricey advisor, you can let these straightforward assistants do the heavy lifting for your financial future. [SoFi Coach] [SoFi Composer]

What’s up with banking’s marketing ROI gap?

Banks, credit unions, and lenders are under pressure to acquire more customers, grow funded volume, and prove marketing’s impact. But when attribution is unclear, it becomes harder to know which channels are driving real growth and which ones are simply getting the credit.

If your marketing channels are struggling to perform against a changing market, it’s time to revisit how you measure success. Join Carlos, along with a panel of industry experts on July 13th at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST to decode the marketing ROI gap in banking. Carlos, alongside leaders from Fintel Connect, Peak Bank, and Pagaya, will debate which channels are actually driving funded growth, why lead quality matters more than volume, and how to make smarter budget decisions.

When: July 13, 2026 | 10AM PST/ 1PM EST
Where: Register here.

News Pod #23 - Pagaya Sues Klarna for (Allegedly) Stealing Its Underwriting Model

Pagaya filed a lawsuit against Klarna for (allegedly) stealing is underwriting. Carlos & Nick discuss the implications for fintech marketers that share their underwriting policies with affiliate marketing platforms.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, consider checking out our sponsors:

• Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect

• Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel

• Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group

• Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth

• Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

The Free Toaster Jobs

The Free Toaster Jobs curates real openings across credit, risk, product, data, and growth, with a focus on consumer fintech and lending. No noise. Just roles that signal where budgets and priorities are moving.

By Toaster Media

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. The Free Toaster will be organizing & hosting curated events this year, and we’d love to work with you as a sponsor.

Last month I wrote that ChatGPT became a distribution channel for personal finance. Plaid unlocked the transaction layer, Credit Karma plugged in approval odds, and the personal finance super app started snowballing.

This aftermath of this development is less about the event itself and more about what you do with your distribution program because of it.

Here is the one idea every lending CMO needs to reorganize around. Consumers are about to delegate the decision to AI (the machine). They will arm an LLM with their transaction data, their goals, and their constraints. Then they will trust it to pick.

The old job was convincing a person to choose you: a psychological one. The new job is convincing a machine, loaded with context, to select you as the best among several reasonable options.

That one shift changes everything downstream. The game gets rational. It stops being emotional.

Your funnel survives. Your audience changes.

Good news first: the lending funnel does not disappear. Awareness, consideration, application, approval, funding: all of it still applies. However, who (or what) you are speaking to at every stage changes completely.

When an agent shops on a consumer’s behalf, it’s weighing the same things your funnel always measured. It just calls them something else, and evaluates the same questions with different logic.

1. How relevant is this product to this specific person? That is your click through rate.

2. How much information does the lender ask for, and how much do I already have? That is your application rate.

3. How likely is this person to actually get approved? That is your approval rate.

Your scorecard is intact. You’re simply optimizing it against a machine reader instead of a human one. Lenders who internalize that early will get a head start.

Changing dynamics in distribution channels

Here is how I see the major channels and capabilities moving.

The three “up” rows are where the real work happens.

Application page optimization is fading out. The friction tradeoff will replace it.

For two decades, the application page was sacred ground. You A/B tested button colors, trust badges, and form lengths to squeeze out conversion. When an autonomous software agent handles the form submission process, that front-end design work loses its utility.

What replaces it is harder and more valuable.

The new lever is friction management.

Specifically, how few incremental questions you ask, and how much agent supplied data you are willing to accept. A lender who says “I will take the Plaid verified income the agent already has” beats a lender who re-asks for a pay stub or W2. Less friction, higher application rate.

But there’s real tension here.

Lower friction can mean lower quality fraud and risk decisions. Accepting data you did not collect yourself is a fraud and credit risk call, not a simple UX tweak. The winning lenders are the ones who find the optimal friction point: easy enough to convert, but rigorous enough to keep fraud and bad credit out.

That tradeoff lives at the intersection of marketing, underwriting, data science, and fraud. If you already have a sharp cross functional team managing a channel like Credit Karma, that is the team. The LLM channel might just demand more of that same coordination.

The new top of funnel job is to plant the branded prompt.

This is where the emotional work of connecting to the human happens. Not on a landing page, but before the prompt itself is typed.

Picture the winning prompt.

A consumer opens their LLM assistant and says “here is my transaction data, here is what I want to accomplish, tell me what Chase has for me, then compare it to the rest of the market (unsaid: because I bank with Chase and I trust them)”

If your brand is not in that query, you are already a step behind. The agent might still surface you. But you did not earn the invitation from the human.

So a key job-to-be-done for your brand marketing is to get the consumer to invoke you by name when they put the LLM to work. You do that the only way you ever could. By being genuinely useful. Educate, entertain, inspire, and be trustworthy enough to be memorable.

There is no shortcut into the prompt.

Feed the super app. Do not try to become it.

Most lenders will wonder if they should build the super app themselves. I don’t think they should.

I would not trust a financial products super app built by a Fortune 500 bank brand. Neither would you. We would read it as self-serving, a storefront dressed up as an advisor. The trust goes to the independent brand that charges me a subscription and promises objective, data-based recommendations for my specific situation.

I think the winning LLM surface in financial services is subscription funded, not ad funded. The moment recommendations are paid for by advertisers, consumers will assume the payout shaped the answer. A surface that consumers pay for is a space they can trust.

So the lender’s job is not to win the surface.

It is to be the offer the surface picks. Feed the super app your real terms, your certainty, your machine readable offer, and your brand.

The machine is going to do the rest.

A key assumption

This whole thing depends on consumers handing an LLM the keys to their bank and bureau accounts.

I’m betting they will.

Consumers already gave their accounts to Mint a decade ago and to Monarch today. Mint had 20 million registered users at its peak, built on nothing but a spreadsheet in the cloud and a promise to make sense of your money. When people see value in sharing data, they share it.

The open question is which brand earns the finance-specific trust. Maybe it’s ChatGPT or Claude.

Maybe a purpose built finance assistant has to emerge first. The timing depends entirely how long it takes the provider to earn the trust.

I’m guessing we’ll start to see really kick-ass apps like this (with 5M+ consumer scale), in the next two years.

The one move to make this quarter

If you do one thing, start building your brand.

Too many fintech-lender CMOs are addicted to arbitrage. Spend a dollar on paid search, paid social, or an affiliate placement. Make two back. That muscle is going to atrophy, because the LLM is built to be immune to it.

Think about what LLMs do well: processing a mountain of information to make an objective, data-based decision.

Media arbitrage does the opposite.

It interrupts the consumer to put your thing in front of them and hopes proximity and clever copy sways the choice. LLMs are engineered to ignore exactly that.

Attention is getting harder to buy.

The assets that earn it are a brand the consumer already trusts and an offer that genuinely wins on merits. Both take years or decades to build.

Closing thoughts

No channel is safe forever.

Direct mail held up for five decades, and it’s at risk in a world where AI makes product recommendations frictionless and accurate.

I’m not telling you to kill anything today. What I am saying is to expect legacy channels to deteriorate slowly as humans start figuring out helpful LLMs will be in the context of shopping for financial products.

The lenders who win will stop trying to convince the human, and shift their energy toward winning the agent the human sends in their place.

The marketing funnel is the same, but your (new) buyer is a machine (or a human with a strong bias for doing what the machine says). And the only durable advantage is being the best real answer to the question the consumer actually asked.

That’s where the game is going now.

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/pagaya-sues-klarna-for-allegedly

*****

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders
San Francisco - September 23rd & 24th

150-person, curated room

Early bird tickets end August 1
Learn more: events.thefreetoaster.com

*****

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

The Free Toaster Newsletter ships every Wednesday at www.thefreetoaster.com, curating the biggest stories at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology.

******

Please Support Our Sponsors

Bulldog Media Group:

Bulldog Media Group is a leading performance marketing company that specializes in online customer acquisition for clients in the financial services industry. Since 2000, they have focused on financial services digital marketing as their core niche. 

https://www.bulldogmediagroup.com/

Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=june

Fintel Connect

Drive thousands of new accounts and billions in deposits with the only partner marketing solution built for fintech and banking – your all-in-one affiliate platform, partner network, agency, and marketing compliance engine.

https://partner.fintelconnect.com/get-to-know-fintel-connect?utm_campaign=13897733-2025%20Partners&utm_source=The%20Free%20Toaster&utm_medium=podcast