Neobank industry trends in 2026: profit at scale, a charter wave, credit over interchange, AI in production

What is happening in the neobank industry in 2026?

Four things, all visible in the companies' own 2026 filings and in regulators' decisions. First, the large neobanks are now profitable, several of them at a scale that rivals mid-sized banks: Revolut reported £1.7 billion of profit before tax for 2025 on £4.5 billion of revenue (Revolut, Mar 2026), and Nu Holdings, the parent of Nubank, earned $1.1 billion of net income in the second quarter of 2026 alone (Nu, Aug 2026). Second, the companies that started on someone else's licence are buying or applying for their own: Nubank and Revolut hold conditional approvals for US national banks from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Chime, the largest US neobank on a partner-bank model, agreed on 8 September 2026 to buy its partner Stride Bank (Chime, Sep 2026). Third, revenue is shifting from debit-card interchange toward lending and subscriptions. Fourth, AI has moved from pilots to production in support, fraud and underwriting, with AI agents now handling the majority of support conversations at several of them.

The table is the cohort this site tracks: eleven neobank profiles, with licence model, when each turned profitable on its own reporting and its latest result. The scale column is read live from each profile, with the profile's as-of date.

Two neighbours sit outside the cohort. SoFi is a US bank holding company whose consumer app runs on its own national bank, SoFi Bank, N.A.; it reported record second-quarter 2026 net revenue of $1.2 billion, net income of $157 million and 15.8 million members, up 35% (SoFi, Jul 2026). Varo is the reverse case: the OCC presented it with a full-service national bank charter in July 2020 (OCC, Jul 2020), yet it still lost $20.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 while reporting record adjusted operating income of $38.6 million, and raised $123.9 million in February 2026 (American Banker, Feb 2026). A charter does not by itself make a neobank profitable; scale and lending do.

Which neobanks are profitable, and since when?

The profitable group has widened every year since 2021. Revolut called 2025 its fifth consecutive year of net profit, which dates its first profitable year to 2021; 2025 profit before tax rose 57% to £1.7 billion and net profit to £1.3 billion, a 38% pre-tax margin, with 68.3 million retail customers at year-end (Revolut, Mar 2026). Nubank turned a full-year profit in 2023, net income of $1.0 billion against a 2022 net loss (Nu, Feb 2024), and by the second quarter of 2026 earned $1.1 billion in a single quarter with a 33% return on equity, 139 million customers and $45.3 billion of deposits (Nu, Aug 2026). Starling reported its fifth consecutive profitable year in the year to March 2026, though pre-tax profit slipped to £217.1 million from £223.4 million and revenue fell to £887.4 million as interest rates softened (Starling, May 2026).

Monzo first made a pre-tax profit in the year to March 2024; its 2026 annual report restates that year at £13.9 million, after losses of £116.3 million and £119.0 million in the two years before, and shows £60.5 million for FY2025 and £87.3 million for FY2026 on revenue of £1.71 billion (Monzo annual report, May 2026). On Monzo's adjusted measure, which strips out share-based payments, profit was £172.6 million. bunq reported 2024 net profit of €85.3 million, up 65%, its second consecutive profitable year (bunq, Apr 2025). N26 crossed the line last: its first full year of net profit was 2025, €1.6 million on €501.6 million of revenue, followed by €9.8 million of net income in the first quarter of 2026 alone (N26, Jun 2026).

In the US the turn came later and is thinner. Dave posted GAAP net income in every quarter of 2024 ($34.2 million, $6.4 million, $0.5 million and $16.8 million; Dave, Mar 2025), and in the second quarter of 2026 reported revenue of $170.8 million, up 30%, but net income of only $6.7 million because of $36.9 million of non-cash warrant and earnout charges (Dave, Aug 2026). Chime reported $53 million of net income in the first quarter of 2026, which it called its first quarter of GAAP profitability as a public company (Chime, May 2026), and $28 million in the second quarter, a 4% net margin (Chime, Aug 2026). Varo remains loss-making, as above, and OakNorth, a business lender rather than a consumer app, is profitable on the figures in its profile.

How dependent are neobanks on interchange and the Durbin exemption?

Very, in the United States, and much less elsewhere. Chime's payments revenue, which its release says is based on interchange fees set as a percentage of the transaction plus a fixed amount, was $430 million of $670 million in the second quarter of 2026, or 64%; platform-related revenue, mostly the MyPay advance and Instant Loans, was $240 million, up 48% (Chime, Aug 2026). Why the size of the issuing bank matters: under the Durbin Amendment the Federal Reserve's Regulation II caps debit interchange for issuers with $10 billion or more in assets at 21 cents plus 5 basis points of the transaction; exempt issuers are not capped. The Fed's latest report, published in December 2025, puts the average interchange fee on exempt transactions at $0.52 in 2023, against an actual average of $0.222 to $0.241 on covered transactions (Federal Reserve, Dec 2025). Chime's Stride announcement makes the dependence explicit: after the deal Chime “will manage its balance sheet and keep its assets below $10 billion for the foreseeable future” (Chime, Sep 2026).

Percentages are our arithmetic on reported figures (Revolut's “other” is the residual). Monzo and Nubank are lenders funded by deposits; Revolut is the most diversified, with eleven product lines each above £100 million of revenue (Revolut, Mar 2026); Chime still earns most of its revenue when a member swipes a debit card. That is why the whole cohort is moving into credit. Revolut's loan book grew 120% in 2025 to £2.2 billion, mostly unsecured personal loans and credit cards with a first mortgage product in Lithuania; Chime's credit card share reached 27% of purchase volume in the second quarter of 2026; Dave originated $2.3 billion of ExtraCash advances in the same quarter (Dave, Aug 2026). The move from debit to credit is covered in its own explainer, linked below.

Why are neobanks applying for bank charters in 2025 and 2026?

Because a charter lowers funding costs, removes the sponsor-bank fee and lets the neobank lend from its own balance sheet, and because the US regulator that grants national charters has said it wants applications. The OCC said on 11 August 2026 that it had received 40 de novo applications in the previous 18 months, including national trust banks, against an average of fewer than four a year in 2011–2014; that it had decided many complete applications within 120 days; and that, for the first time in five years, a full-service national bank had received final approval and opened. Comptroller Jonathan Gould: “America and the OCC are once again open for business” (OCC, Aug 2026). The FDIC followed with a two-phase deposit-insurance process announced on 10 August 2026: organisers who meet its requirements get a conditional decision within 120 days and can expect full approval within the following year, for applications received after 15 August (Banking Dive, Aug 2026).

The OCC is not approving everything. Its denial of bunq's application on 4 August 2026 cited an initial capital injection of $50 million, later revised to $58.3 million, whose source and availability were never clearly supported (OCC, Aug 2026). Revolut's and Nubank's approvals are conditional: Nubank must fully capitalise the bank within 12 months and open within 18 (Nu, Jan 2026), and Revolut is still working through the FDIC, the Federal Reserve and final OCC approval for a 2027 launch (Revolut, Sep 2026). Chime's route is a purchase of a bank it already uses, which needs OCC and Federal Reserve approval and would make it a bank owner without a de novo application (Chime, Sep 2026). Monzo went the other way in the US: its 2026 annual report describes a “deliberate decision to close our US operations” and points its expansion at Ireland and Spain instead (Monzo, May 2026).

What happened with the UK and EU regulators?

In Europe the story is supervision, not entry. The Prudential Regulation Authority licensed Revolut's UK bank with restrictions in July 2024, the “mobilisation” stage in which deposits are capped (Revolut, Jul 2024), and lifted them on 11 March 2026, when Revolut Bank UK launched for its 13 million UK customers (Revolut, Mar 2026). The ECB classified Revolut Holdings Europe UAB, the Lithuanian group behind its EU bank, as a significant institution under direct ECB supervision from 2024 (ECB, Dec 2023). The FCA fined Monzo £21,091,300 in July 2025 over financial-crime controls (FCA, Jul 2025). BaFin ordered a special monitor at N26 in December 2025, its second special oversight since 2021, after a special audit found “serious deficiencies” in risk and complaint management and in the organisation of the lending business, and barred N26 from Dutch mortgage lending (Banking Dive, Dec 2025). A neobank that becomes a bank inherits the full weight of anti-money-laundering, governance and conduct supervision.

What did Synapse change for partner-bank neobanks and deposit insurance?

Synapse Financial Technologies was a banking-as-a-service middleware firm that sat between fintech apps and their partner banks and kept the ledger of who owned what. When it went bankrupt in 2024, its records did not match the banks', and end users of apps such as Yotta and Juno were locked out of their money. Two years on, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has allocated a total of $55.2 million from its Civil Penalty Fund to repay them, the latest tranche of nearly $9 million announced in late August 2026, while thousands of users were still out as much as $95 million after the partner banks' own reconciliation, and some have won small-claims cases against Evolve Bank & Trust, Yotta's partner bank (Banking Dive, Sep 2026).

The lesson for the neobanks in this cohort is structural. FDIC deposit insurance protects depositors against the failure of an insured bank; it does not protect them against the failure of a non-bank in the middle that loses track of whose money is whose. Chime's own disclosure is precise on the point: member deposits are “FDIC-insured through The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A., Members FDIC, up to applicable limits” (Chime, Sep 2026). Owning the bank removes the middle layer, which is part of why Chime is buying Stride and why the cohort's charter applications cluster in 2025–2026. Chime expects more than $100 million of net synergies, from sponsor-bank fee savings, more lending and cheaper funding (Chime, Sep 2026).

In the UK the deposit-insurance question moved in the other direction: the PRA raised the Financial Services Compensation Scheme limit from £85,000, set in 2017, to £120,000 from 1 December 2025 (Bank of England, Nov 2025). That applies to the licensed UK neobanks (Monzo, Starling, OakNorth and, since March 2026, Revolut Bank UK, whose launch made its deposit accounts FSCS-protected for the first time; Revolut, Mar 2026). What is not on the public record: none of the US partner-bank neobanks publishes how its deposits are spread across sponsor banks or how reconciliation with them is tested, and the CFPB has not said when the Synapse reimbursements will be complete.

How are neobanks using AI in production in 2026?

Mostly in three places: customer support, fraud and financial crime, and credit underwriting, with AI-assisted software development a fast fourth. The table is computed from the site's eleven neobank profiles: each row counts the use cases its profile records as “In production” and shows the headline AI figure the company itself has published, with its date. Across the cohort, 124 of 157 recorded AI use cases are in production; the rest are pilots, roll-outs or announcements.

Three patterns stand out. Support is where AI is most measured: Nu says AI agents handle more than 60% of customer-support conversations in Brazil “at or above human parity” (Nu, Aug 2026), and Monzo's annual report says its AI self-service handles 62% of inbound chats while AI coding tools write 22% of committed code (Monzo, May 2026); the table shows comparable figures at Revolut, Chime, bunq and N26. Underwriting is where AI is most proprietary: Nu's NuFormer foundation model is in production for credit cards in Brazil and Mexico and unsecured lending in Brazil, with SME and Colombian cards in testing (Nu, Aug 2026), and Dave began rolling out CashAI v6.0, the model that sets ExtraCash limits, in 2026 (Dave, Aug 2026). The build-or-buy split is in the profiles: Nu and Revolut train their own models; Starling builds on Gemini, N26 and bunq on Claude.

What the record does not show is just as useful. Varo and Starling have published no AI outcome figure; most support-automation numbers are the companies' own, unaudited and defined differently (share of chats handled, share resolved, share of interactions “powered by” AI); and no neobank has disclosed the error or complaint rate of its AI agents.

Which neobanks are listed, and what did the 2025 IPO and deals show?

The listed cohort is small and US-traded. Chime sold its IPO shares at $27, above the marketed range, raising $864 million; on its first day of trading, 12 June 2025, the stock opened at $43 and valued Chime at $18.4 billion, against $25 billion in its 2021 private round (Reuters, Jun 2025). Nu Holdings trades on the NYSE and is the largest by earnings, with $1.1 billion of quarterly net income (Nu, Aug 2026). SoFi, a bank holding company with a national bank, reported $1.2 billion of quarterly net revenue (SoFi, Jul 2026). Dave, Nasdaq-listed and describing itself as “one of the nation's leading neobanks”, reported its ninth consecutive quarter of at least 30% revenue growth (Dave, Aug 2026). MoneyLion left the market: Gen Digital, the owner of Norton and LifeLock, completed its purchase on 17 April 2025 for $82 a share in cash, about $1 billion (Gen Digital, Apr 2025).

The rest of the cohort is private: Revolut, Monzo, Starling, N26, bunq, Varo and OakNorth. Their figures come from annual reports, call reports (Varo files them as an FDIC-insured bank) and press releases, so the private UK and European neobanks report once a year, months after year-end, while the listed ones report quarterly. Each company profile linked in the first table carries its latest valuation and funding with a source.

What happened in 2026, and what should you watch next?

• Charter conversions. Nubank, N.A. must be capitalised by about January 2027 and open by about July 2027 under the OCC's 12- and 18-month conditions; Revolut targets a 2027 opening; Chime expects to close Stride in the first half of 2027. Each still needs FDIC and Federal Reserve decisions.
• The FDIC's two-phase process. Applications received after 15 August 2026 should get a conditional answer within 120 days, so the first decisions under it fall around the end of 2026.
• Interchange. Chime will stay below the $10 billion Durbin threshold; any change to Regulation II's exemption would hit it hardest, with interchange at 64% of revenue.
• Credit quality. Every profitable neobank is growing loans fast (Revolut +120% in 2025, Nu +37% year on year to June 2026); the next test is the loss rate on those books through a slower economy, which none has yet faced at this size.
• Europe. N26 under a BaFin special monitor; Monzo expanding to Spain; Revolut operating as a licensed bank in more than 30 of its 40 markets and aiming for 100.
• AI disclosure. Quantified AI claims are moving into results releases (Dave's Q2 2026 release reports the CashAI v6.0 roll-out; Nu's reports its AI support share), which brings them under securities-disclosure scrutiny for the listed names.

Not on the record as of October 2026: a date for FDIC decisions on Nubank's or Revolut's US banks, or a stand-alone MoneyLion result since April 2025.

1. Nu Holdings Ltd. Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results — Nu, Aug 13, 2026 (nu.com)
2. Nu Holdings Ltd. Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Results — Nu, Feb 22, 2024 (nu.com)
3. Nu Secures Approval to Establish US National Bank — Nu, Jan 29, 2026 (nu.com)
4. Revolut reports record profit of $2.3bn for 2025 as revenue surges to $6bn — Revolut, Mar 24, 2026 (revolut.com)
5. Revolut receives UK banking licence — Revolut, Jul 25, 2024 (revolut.com)
6. Revolut Launches UK Bank — Revolut, Mar 11, 2026 (revolut.com)
7. Revolut Receives Conditional Approval from U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to Form a National Bank — Revolut, Sep 3, 2026 (revolut.com)
8. Significance Assessment: 2023 at a glance – moving to 2024 — European Central Bank, Banking Supervision, Dec 21, 2023 (bankingsupervision.europa.eu)
9. Chime valued at $18.4 billion as shares soar in Nasdaq debut — Reuters, Jun 12, 2025 (reuters.com)
10. Chime Reports First Quarter 2026 Financial Results — Chime, May 6, 2026 (investors.chime.com)
11. Chime Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results — Chime, Aug 5, 2026 (investors.chime.com)
12. Chime Announces Agreement to Acquire Stride Bank — Chime, Sep 8, 2026 (investors.chime.com)
13. Monzo Annual Report and Accounts 2026 — Monzo, May 19, 2026 (monzo.com)
14. FCA fines Monzo £21m for failings in financial crime controls — Financial Conduct Authority, Jul 8, 2025 (fca.org.uk)
15. Starling Delivers Fifth Year of Profitability and Accelerates Global Growth Strategy — Starling, May 21, 2026 (starlingbank.com)
16. Dave Reports Fourth Quarter & Full Year 2024 Financial Results — Dave Inc. via GlobeNewswire, Mar 3, 2025 (globenewswire.com)
17. Dave Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results — Dave Inc. via PR Newswire, Aug 5, 2026 (prnewswire.com)
18. Gen Completes Acquisition of MoneyLion, Accelerating the Company's Leadership in Financial Wellness — Gen Digital via PR Newswire, Apr 17, 2025 (prnewswire.com)
19. N26 Delivers Over €500M Revenue and €350M Gross Profit in 2025, Hitting First Full Year of Net Profitability — N26, Jun 25, 2026 (n26.com)
20. BaFin hits N26 with additional oversight — Banking Dive, Dec 15, 2025 (bankingdive.com)
21. bunq completes first phase of US banking license filing as it reports its second consecutive year of profits — bunq, Apr 15, 2025 (press.bunq.com)
22. Corporate Decision #1384: Denial of application to charter bunq US Bank, National Association — Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Aug 4, 2026 (occ.gov)
23. Acting Comptroller of the Currency Presents Varo Bank, N.A. Its Charter (News Release 2020-99) — Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Jul 31, 2020 (occ.gov)
24. Varo raises $124 million despite widening net losses — American Banker, Feb 2, 2026 (americanbanker.com)
25. SoFi second-quarter 2026 earnings release (8-K Exhibit 99.1) — SEC (SoFi Technologies 8-K), Jul 29, 2026 (sec.gov)
26. OCC Commends FDIC Reform, Advances Priority to Reinvigorate De Novo Chartering (News Release 2026-67) — Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Aug 11, 2026 (occ.gov)
27. FDIC tweaks de novo application process — Banking Dive, Aug 13, 2026 (bankingdive.com)
28. Synapse victims look to small-claims court — Banking Dive, Sep 17, 2026 (bankingdive.com)
29. 2023 Interchange Fee Revenue, Covered Issuer Costs, and Covered Issuer and Merchant Fraud Losses Related to Debit Card Transactions — Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Dec 16, 2025 (federalreserve.gov)
30. PRA confirms FSCS deposit limit to be increased to £120,000 from 1 December — Bank of England (PRA), Nov 18, 2025 (bankofengland.co.uk)