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Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2026

Mar 4, 2026

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Good afternoon, everybody. We'll go ahead and get started. Thanks to everybody for joining us here in person at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference and those joining via the webcast. Very excited this afternoon to speak with Chris Britt, CEO of Chime. Before we get started with Chris, just a couple of things. I'm James Faucette. I'm the Senior Fintech Analyst here at Morgan Stanley. Before we launch into our conversation with Chris, I do have a disclosure I'm supposed to read. Please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley representative. Chris, great to have you here. It's always exciting to at least for me to talk to you.

I think the vision and the business you've been building for years now is quite compelling. Maybe you can just go for the benefit of all of us, provide an overview of the business and its strategy from your perspective.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. For sure. Thank you so much for hosting. This is always such a great conference, and proud to be here representing the team at Chime. For those of you in the audience who don't know our business as well, we're really a disruptor in the consumer banking and payments space. Over the past few years, we've made great progress in becoming a destination of choice for consumers who are deciding to switch their primary account relationship. We started the business with a vision of serving the roughly 200 million Americans that make up to about $100,000 a year and largely live paycheck to paycheck. That's really remains our sweet spot, although we're starting to move a little bit higher on the income spectrum recently.

We go to market with a suite of services that are helpful and easy and free and address the most acute pain points of everyday consumers, helping them make financial progress, avoid fees, develop savings, improve their credit. It's working. You know, the feedback we get from our members is like 97% of them say that we're helping them make financial progress. And they just love banking with Chime. They're leaving the traditional incumbent banks to switch over to work with us.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

One of the things. Look, there's been a lot of players that have tried to go after this market. I think one of the things that's always resonated with me, around Chime has been that for most of your customers, and even those that aren't your customers in that target demographic, moving to Chime is almost always the smart financial thing to do for them personally. You know, that's my impression, though. What do you find in terms of the brand? What resonates with the Chime brand? Or what about the Chime brand resonates with your consumers? Why do people show up at your doorstep, if you will, or your virtual doorstep to begin with?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah, it's a great question. A lot of, investors and I guess, investors and competitors have always asked the question. Like, what is the thing? Why are they

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

C oming to us?" It isn't a thing. It is not a thing. It is a holistic suite of services and probably most importantly, a mission to authentically help people make progress in their lives. you know, it started off with no-fee banking, not a prepaid card-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

an actual bank account with FDIC insurance and Regulation E protection, dispute, you know, provisional credits on disputes, and all things you'd get from a Bank of America or a Chase account, that sort of thing. It evolved to getting paid early. We kind of invented getting paid two days early, taking advantage of how the ACH system, the sort of latency in the system-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

and giving people access early. That was a big one. Then we evolved that over time to do things like making overdraft totally fee-free. This was a massive industry in the United States with banks just really preying on people that live paycheck to paycheck. Then more recently, things like credit building and larger lines of credit, giving people access to their payroll on demand. We are constantly innovating in ways that make Chime the no-brainer place to develop your primary direct deposit relationship. That, if there's any takeaway for investors out there, is that's the difference between Chime and other fintechs.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We are not a point solution that just offers a thing or a service. We are the place and a brand that people think of as primary banking. You can see it in the stats, not our stats. If you look at third-party research on unaided brand awareness, what banks come, what brands come to mind when you think of online banking? Today, Chime only trails Chase on that regard.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

If you look at account openings, we actually, third-party research from J.D. Power came out and said that Chime opens up more bank accounts in America every month than any brand in America, and about 40% higher than the number two player, Chase.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Wow

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

in that regard. We're expanding market share with a wide range of services, but overall like a brand halo that is trusted and is associated with primary banking relationships.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Love it. Coming off your recent Q4 call, help us frame the top two or three priorities for 2026.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Well, we were really excited about the call.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

That was our third quarter as a public company, third quarter of beating and raising. We announced 25% top line growth and a 10% adjusted EBITDA margin.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

incrementally up 50% year-over-year, so on the adjusted EBITDA front. Lots of great progress. Going into this year, you know, the thing that's more important than anything is continuing to innovate in consumer products that resonate with consumers so that we can fuel and extend our lead in capturing more market share of primary bank accounts. You know, last year we launched Chime Card, which is a new version of our secured credit card that gives people-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

rewards and higher yield on their savings. We're gonna be launching a new, more premium tier of service that will provide even more rewards and more APY and a host of services and make Chime the most rewarding place to bank. We announced our plan to get into investment accounts, to support Trust Accounts, to have joint accounts, custodial accounts for kids. There's a whole host of product initiatives that will drive our growth this year. I'd say the second area is our new channel, the Enterprise Channel.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

which is still in its early days.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yes.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We're planting seeds and early momentum in that area has been very promising. There's clearly ways to go on that front. That'd be sort of the second area of focus. The third area would be, as I imagine you probably have every company talk about, is how we use AI to create a better experience for our members and to improve the operations of the business. We announced that in Q2 we'll be launching the next evolution of our AI co-pilot.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

which we call Jade.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Which is gonna move beyond just being sort of reactive, answering, customer inquiries

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

but more proactive and sort of nudging people to make smart financial decisions to move their lives forward. Then we're also deploying AI across the business. You know, we're already very lean, and we've seen the success of AI across the business. You know, if you look over the past three years, we've reduced our cost to serve by 30% and improved our average revenue per active about 25%. You can expect to see continued momentum on that front while keeping our, you know, sort of payroll and employee envelope consistent.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's great. That's great. Let's go back and kinda when you gave the, you know, the priorities and places where you're making progress. Product velocity, I mean, you can't help but notice the number of new products and new offerings that you're bringing to market. You mentioned that you're expanding the envelope or the TAM, if you will, of customers, and where you can deliver value. It seems like a lot of that is being powered by your Chime Core. Just talk about and remind investors what that is, its benefits to the company financially and particularly from a product introduction and rollout perspective.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

This has been a huge unlock for us, and it's something that we spent a few years working on and we think is quite a bit differentiated in our sector. You know, when you operate a banking and a payments company, typically you rely on a third party.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

processing for ledgers and connections into the networks and so forth. We embarked on audacious path over the past few years, and we finally reached the conclusion of now operating Chime Core as our core ledger and a processing platform. That's allowed us to not only reap the benefits of cost saves, but also product velocity and unlock. You know, just to remind investors, we operate at a cost to serve that is about a third of a big money center, you know, sort of traditional bank.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

per active checking account member and about a fifth of a regional bank. We have a massive cost structure advantage. We estimate that the benefit financially of running our own processing and ledger-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

is about a 60% cost save.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Wow.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We've realized a good chunk of that.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

already. More important than the cost save, you know, we've operating a business with about a, you know, close to 90% gross margin and, you know, sort of 70% transaction margin. More important than the cost benefits, I would argue, is the unlock in terms of product velocity. We don't have to rely on a third party and to get in their queue for a product enhancement or a feature. We run it in-house. I can prioritize what features get launched and prioritized at what cadence. I appreciate you saying that. I think the market is, you know, sort of giving us that feedback as well that they've seen just, you know, the second half of last year launching Chime Card, launching Chime Plus, all the work in the enterprise channel-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Some of the products that I mentioned earlier that we've sort of teased to come out over the course of Q2 and beyond.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great. Let's talk about Chime Card. We've been really impressed by that traction to date. And you know, I think this is in some ways it can be a little bit crowded or confusing because every fintech seems to have their flavor of a card, but your traction in particular seems incredibly strong. Talk about why you're excited about that opportunity and you know, any insights you can give as to, once again, what attracts a Chime customer to the Chime Card offering.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Sure. Well, when we started the business, it was a checking account and debit card.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

The credit card product we have today is actually a secured credit card.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

The consumer sets money aside, and you can run up a balance on your card that is equal to the amount that you have in the account. It has the benefits of the consumer to be able to, you know, sort of have a credit card but not take on a whole bunch of risk. We're able to support to report that successful repayment of the card each month.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

to the bureaus, and it results in a positive credit score of up to about 70 points. With this latest Chime Card launch that we launched in the second half of last year, we've now made it the most rewarding way to do your everyday spend on a secured card. We've added a couple percentage points of cash back in rotating categories. The most essential kind of everyday categories.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Where you're most likely to spend

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

so things like fuel, groceries, utilities, cable, that sort of thing. It's been a great driver of growth and just another reason to come to Chime to not just, you know, think about saving money and getting your financial responsibility on a better track, but also to reap the rewards. I think we're excited about the impact that we've had on the business as well. Not only does it help the members get a better credit score and get those rewards, but because it's a credit card product, we actually get higher interchange rates that allows us to deliver even better benefits back to our member. We reported last quarter that we shifted the percentage of total purchase volume on our secured credit card from 16% of total purchase volume to 21%.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Wow.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

It's a pretty substantial change, and I think something that you should expect to give us a healthy tailwind for actually years to come.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

When you look at the top of the funnel, people who haven't yet established, you know, maybe aren't ingrained in the debit card usage behavior.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep, yep.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

At the top of the funnel, we're seeing over half of our new members take the product, and they're putting about 70% of their spend on that product, which is almost double the interchange of a debit card.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

It's pretty exciting when you think about the future cohorts and how they can start to stack and become a larger percentage of our member base. It's a pretty attractive tailwind for our business.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

No, it's really impressive. You know, I think when we look at some of the others that have rolled out in the market is that their mix has been decidedly different. You know, I think a lot of benefit obviously to you financially and behaviorally. If that's where we're at already, what can you do to drive adoption higher? What incremental things can you attach to the card or what would make sense at least?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. you know, we've only had this in market for a few months, so there's clearly optimizations at the top of the funnel.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

I would say if you were to sign up new to a Chime, I know you're an active member for years now.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah, yeah. For years.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

If you were to sign up at the top of the funnel new, you would be sort of driven down a path it would be like the sort of a suggested path would be to use this as your primary way to do your everyday spend. We give everyone the option to get a debit card.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Some people just wanna have that. We're cool with that. I think, look, there's more work we could do on the install base of customers that are using debit cards primarily.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

There's been a very real trend over the past two, three decades where mainstream America prefers to pay with debit cards.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

They are seeking the control that they would get from a product like that. That's the great thing about this product is.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Kind of gives you the control of a debit card, but also gives you the benefits of credit building.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Rewards. There's gonna be, you know, sort of Golden Gate Bridge painting exercise of just trying to remind people that, "Hey, if you had paid with the-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

The Chime Card, you would've gotten rewards on your Chevron purchase...

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Whatever it may be. In addition to that sort of bigger picture, what we're doing is, in Q2, we're gonna launch a more premium tier of rewards.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We haven't given all the details yet, suffice it to say that there will be even juicier rewards on spending. We're gonna give even more control to our member to decide what category, or merchant that they want to earn the rewards in, and we're gonna give higher yield savings and just other sort of perks and lifestyle benefits that you might more closely associate with a traditional, you know, Amex card or something like that.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We're pretty excited about having an offering that will appeal to our existing members who, some of them can give us more of their deposits. It's gonna basically be unlocked if you do more deposits with us.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Also appeal to higher income segment, which we're actually getting great traction with. We've announced now three quarters in a row that our fastest growing segment is for among members who self-declare that they make $75K or more.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right. Along those same lines, and you mentioned in terms of credit building, et cetera, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask to, you know, and even if we're looking well into the future, what's your appetite for unsecured credit products, et cetera? You know, that's something that, you know, would typically we associate with an even higher income bracket.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. I mean, look, we are already, you know, moving into unsecured credit, as it relates to our, You know, we basically do cash flow-.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Underwriting-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Of our SpotMe overdraft service, our MyPay.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

As well as our Instant Loans product. Those are becoming, you know, bigger and bigger businesses.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

I mean, MyPay last year, I mean, talk about, you know, hitting it out of the park.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Amazing. Amazing.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We went from essentially a standstill product-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

To close to $500 million revenue run rate on a lending product, short-term lending product that is far and away the lowest cost consumer price product.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yes.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

In the category, and brought our loss rates from 1.7% down to-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

1% last quarter. I mean, the team, the risk team absolutely killed it this year, and I'm so excited about that, you know, sort of building our muscle in this area, proving that we have the ability to underwrite consumers in our, in our segment really, really well, and I think that's just the beginning. We're gonna push more into this installment loan product called Instant Loans-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

For a subset of our member base.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

It's longer duration loans, three to 12 months, but still lowest cost in the market. We certainly see a future where, you know, we'll get into things like, you know, unsecured lines of credit and I'm sure over time, eventually an unsecured credit card as well.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right, right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We will do it in a Chime-like way, where there's probably some element of at least to start that, you know, the goal is always primary account relationship.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We'll give it to people that use us for direct deposit.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

To do their everyday banking.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Let's talk about MyPay. I mean, I think this is another incredible example. I mean, I know personally, Some people that operate in essentially the payday lending space and if you contrast that with MyPay, once again, I think this is an example where for that cohort or constituency of customers using MyPay is a better financial decision in almost all cases. I think the growth that you talked about, really underlines that as a key point. You just mentioned it, but to repeat it, as part of the last quarter, you talked about how MyPay had reached about a 1% loss rate.

It certainly, We'd always, in our forecast, had anticipated that the loss rates would come down. They came down a lot faster than we had expected, which was a nice surprise. You've also shared that you plan to implement some new variable pricing around that product. Talk about like, A, why you think that you're able to drive down the loss rate so quickly, secondly, why is now the right time to introduce some variability to the pricing model there?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We thought it was important to change the pricing. There's clearly a tremendous amount of daylight between how we price our product.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Our competitors, so we already have that going for us.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Certainly.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

There's a lot of space there.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. We certainly got a lot of investor feedback on that fact as well. More importantly than just the opportunity to monetize better was improving the customer experience. The way the product used to work was that it was a flat $2 fee regardless of transaction size. What you end up with a pricing model like that is you end up having people that take smaller draws, essentially subsidize people that we give larger draws to.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

The pricing isn't exactly fair, if you will. We also wanted to make some changes based on some feedback that we heard from members, which they found it a little bit annoying that, you know, the way the product works is over the course of the pay period, you get incrementally more access to this short-term line of credit.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Presumably what you've earned but have yet been paid.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. Up to $500.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

You get paid on the 15th of the month, in our case, probably the 13th of the month.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

because we pay you early. You kind of get reset to a low level. A lot of our members were frustrated that they would be reset down to a low level.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

This new pricing allows us to make the product experience better because we don't have to bring it all the way back down. The progress on risk loss was just, you know, smarter, you know, it's like any risk product. Like, you're gonna have higher losses and cut them in half.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

as you make more progress and figure out your scoring and underwriting ability. What I'm most excited about is, look, we got to the 1%. We now have flexibility. It won't be exactly 1%. It'll probably be a little higher sometimes and slightly lower sometimes.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

What we've really directed the team towards now is now that we've proven that we can manage the loss rate, let's focus on maximizing transaction profit dollars.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

That means, like, This is like a 60% transaction margin product already. How do we make the product available to more people? How do we think about potentially being more aggressive with certain segments in terms of giving them access to even larger lines?

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We'll be flexing on that a little bit, and that may charge it, you know, lead it to go up, the loss rate to go up slightly. At the end of the day, it's the transaction dollar amount that is most important to us.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it. Got it. Let's talk about Chime Enterprise. Chime Enterprise, in my mind, should dovetail really nicely with the MyPay product eventually and, you know, and the ability for enterprises to offer that to their employee base and hopefully, and as I envision it, turn into another source of customer acquisition for you. I know that you've talked about Chime Enterprise being one of your top priorities. Talk about recent progress there and what we should be doing as outside observers and investors as how to measure and meter that progress.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah, it's a good question, and I'm. It's a relatively new line of business. I'm always trying to manage investor excitement, but also temper it with the reality.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

-of enterprise sales.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Oh, I can get excited.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. For sure.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We felt the excitement, and we get a lot of questions about this, but we continue to, you know, be more excited than ever. Like every Chime product, not only is it gonna be the best consumer experience, but it's gonna be the lowest cost.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We think that combination is a winning formula. It's worked in all of the other areas that we've competed in, and we believe it's gonna work in this area as well. Our message has absolutely resonated with the employers that we talk to. We're right in the mix on, you know, a number of RFPs. We announced a number of new employers just in the last couple of weeks here. We developed important strategic relationships with Workday and UKG.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep. Yep.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We're in the payroll system, which allows us to, you know, if you're working at an employer that turns on a Chime Enterprise version of MyPay, you don't get capped at $500, and you also don't get charged a fee because we know that you've worked the hours.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We know that the direct deposit.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

is coming to Chime. There's a cost of capital that we incur, but a very low amount of risk involved.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

It's an incredibly compelling product to pitch to employers.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

They hear and they see from their employee base, I mean, and a lot of the employers that we pitched or have turned on, Chime is already the bank account that 10% or more of their employees already use.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

For that population, the experience becomes better. We introduce new people to Chime that maybe have seen an ad or seen our brand somewhere out in the wild, maybe on the Portland Fire or MLS.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

A couple brand partnerships we just announced. We also re-engage some members that maybe, you know, had a Chime account a few years ago, but for whatever reason, changed their jobs and stopped using it. Feedback's been great and we expect to have some announcements real soon that, you know, think of it as like planting seeds.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

building the pipeline.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

As that grows, help us envision a little bit what that monetization path looks like, right? If you're not charging the employee, if you will, and there's larger limits, but hopefully lower losses. you know, what's the revenue contribution? How does that come through?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

You know, I think if there's anything that's differentiated Chime over the years is not just our ability to attract a large amount of consumers, but serve them in this primary account capacity of close to two-thirds of...

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

The people that use us that way. If you think about this channel, definitionally, every person that we sign up through this channel is a direct depositor.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Is a primary account relationship. That drives outsized amounts of transaction activity and spend and engagement. We can monetize not by having to charge a fee on the draw like all of the competitors in the EWA space do.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right, right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

just by monetizing the everyday transaction activity.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We're seeing, you know, much higher levels of monetization right out of the gate in the enterprise channel than we do through the consumer channel for sure.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Um.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

No.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. It's pretty exciting. Even beyond that, you know, you think about our offering relative to the competitive landscape. You know, they monetize on one-off transactions a few times.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right, right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

while the employee is at that employer.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Well, if they leave, it's over.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

With Chime, if you leave the employer, you still have a Chime account. Wherever you work, whether or not they're an enterprise client or not, you can get access to MyPay.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

It costs a little bit more, and there are a few limits than you'd get from the enterprise edition of it, but it's still a compelling offering. That gives us the opportunity to monetize the relationship and develop longer-lasting partnerships with consumers for a longer period of time.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Like it. Like it. We spent, you know, the first part of our conversation this afternoon talking about Chime-specific things that you're doing, the products that you're doing, how well you're executing, et cetera. Per usual, there's always a wall of worry to be climbed in the, in the market, et cetera. I would say right now, most of that wall of worry, at least as it relates to Chime, is probably more macro-related. Let's hit on a couple of those topics. Let's start with consumer health. It seemed like from your perspective and, you know, you guys have great representation in that core segment of your market and visibility. You noted that remained strong in Q4.

What are you seeing so far to start this year and kinda anything that you would call out, for better or worse in consumer behavior and spend trends?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. I'd say the wall of worry was even more pronounced in the prior quarter.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Where I think there was a little baby bathwater situation of people thinking, like, the consumer was really going sideways. On that call, we made very clear that we're seeing a resilient consumer. We announced that again in this past call. We see spend up on a per member basis. We see, and that's across discretionary and non-discretionary.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Discretionary, yeah.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Most of our spend, just to reset everyone, is non-discretionary.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

which is, you know, obviously a very resilient form of spend.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Something that lasts for many, many years. We again, you know, continue to see a healthy consumer. Average savings account balances are up. Average checking account balances are up. Spend is up. People are doing things. They're using rideshare. They're going out to restaurants. They're indulging. They're, you know, paying for the delivery of Instacarts and DoorDashes and all these sorts of things. We continue to see a healthy customer base despite the skepticism and people thinking that they may be going sideways. I'll also note, you know, we're seeing consistent deposit trends of payroll.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

When there are upticks in unemployment, we will see people getting unemployment benefits.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

It's obviously something that our, you know, economics team looks at all the time, and we have not seen any uptick. We still continue to feel optimistic. We're pretty close to full employment here.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

I know there's a lot of concern around white collar, maybe our jobs, but for the customers that we serve, that we have not seen any impact yet.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

To be clear, just make sure that I caught two things that you said there. First, discretionary, you're seeing increase in discretionary spend-?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yep.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

right now.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yep.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

The second thing was that you were seeing increase in balances. I guess presumably, that statement or that data comes from really before we started to get to the biggest part of the tax refund season. This is usually a period of the year where we start to see some of that benefit. It sounds like that's the case.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. It's, it is. You know, we after this meeting, I will go back to the computer, and we will hit refresh, and we will look and see how those are coming in. We expect it to be another solid tax refund season. Obviously, the One Big Beautiful Bill, we expect will allow us to see a little bit of upside.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

I think the actual timing of tax refunds this year is slightly delayed.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Slightly later, right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We don't have 100% full visibility. We're optimistic, but it's a little bit still too early to say, like, emphatically that this is the all-time best or, you know.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

some sort of statement like that.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Two more topics I want to hit in the last few minutes. Other existential wall of worry element, AI, you mentioned. Maybe the white-collar jobs get displaced, et cetera. You know, how do you work between any headwind from that versus really getting leverage?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

I know you called it out a little earlier, but I'd love a little more detail there.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. I mean, we look at the opportunity with AI, as a huge tailwind for our business. We are gonna be a winner in this, in this, incredibly important development that's happened to our economy and to the world. We think of the opportunity to sort of give everyone inside of the company an Iron Man suit and to give us all superpowers. We are already. I shared some of the stats around, you know, cost to serve save and RPAM increase and some of our vision around having a more proactive partner, co-pilot, if you will.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

All these things are starting to come to life right now. As we think about just the envelope of the company, you know, we're already operating. We don't need to make some sort of drastic changes. We already You know, last quarter on a run-rate basis, we're about $1.6 million of revenue per Chime employee, about $1.4 million of gross profit per employee. We've announced our intention to essentially keep the employee base, or at least the envelope of payroll costs, essentially flat while we continue to grow the business. We're gonna see more and more leverage. We're gonna see the ability for not just engineers and product folks. Obviously, we'll get a lot of benefit from that.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Just really across the board. You think about things like compliance reviews and making sure you don't have UDAAP violations.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

All the things like. You still need some element of human involvement, but there's so many ways to make these processes more and more efficient. I think interesting in our category, you know, at the end of the day, we do still operate in a highly regulated business.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

that requires deep interactions with banks, with regulators, and so it's not something that can just be AI'd overnight.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

It takes a long time to get all that stuff right and make sure you're dealing with disputes in a legally compliant way.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

All these sorts of things. We certainly think that AI can make all those processes more efficient, and we're on the forefront of doing that, you know, we think a heck of a lot faster than probably a traditional bank would be able to.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it. Last couple minutes here. You've charted an aggressive path towards profitability and one I think that investors are excited to watch. What are the drivers for that? What has to happen to get to the level of profitability you think that you can and should be at?

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Yeah. In our roadshow, we talked about long-term adjusted EBITDA margin of 35%.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We haven't really changed it since.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Uh-huh. Right.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

acceleration of AI. We have had questions about that.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

I'm sure.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

We're gonna keep it at that for now. You know, I think what needs to happen is we need to continue to operate with discipline. We need to keep OpEx costs in line. We need to. That's something that we've been very deliberate about. More than just talking, I think we're doing. You know, we've shown a 50% increase in incremental adjusted EBITDA last year. We're gonna show it again this year. We need to continue to grow the top line of the business. It's that combination of expanding our active member base-

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

engaging them more, continue to drive RPAM, through product attach, but, increasingly showing the actual operating leverage in the business. By using AI and being this sort of asset-light technology company that happens to operate in the bank account business, we think it's an incredible combination that, we're seeing a lot of, excitement, enthusiasm for.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Great. Well, that's all the time we have. Chris, thank you for being here, being part of the Chime team and joining us here at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Thanks, James.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Really looking forward to the rest of this year.

Chris Britt
CEO, Chime

Appreciate it.

James Faucette
Managing Director and Senior Fintech Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thank you.

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