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Chase’s Flop Shows Startups Can Compete With Big Banks

Rey Mashayekhi
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Rey Mashayekhi
Rey Mashayekhi
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Rey Mashayekhi
By
Rey Mashayekhi
Rey Mashayekhi
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July 28, 2019, 10:00 AM ET
Courtesy of Aspiration

In June, JPMorgan Chase announced it was shutting down Finn, its millennial-targeted mobile banking app, only one year after its launch. The move to scrap the no-fee digital platform isn’t a disaster for JPMorgan—it still leads U.S. banks with around 51 million digital users. But it shows how major banks can come up short in their quest to compete with the wave of tech-centric, online “neo-banks” that are striving for their market share.

These challengers are steadily picking up steam. San Francisco’s Chime, which is targeting young working millennials, surpassed 4 million customers this year. Its competitor in L.A., Aspiration, has accumulated over 1 million customers by building its business around “socially conscious” banking and investment services—offering an alternative for customers who don’t want their money being used to fund, say, oil pipelines. 

A version of this article appears in the August 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Chase’s Finn Flops.”

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Rey Mashayekhi
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