The deal marks a milestone in SoFi’s evolution into a private bank for millennials, but it won’t solve the challenges of the alternative lender’s funding model.
First Interstate missed out on two chances to snag Cascade before agreeing to buy the company in November, showing the importance of staying in touch with a target.
Social Finance continues to expand outside student loans, buying Zenbanx, a digital bank and money transfer startup; prepaid card provider fined $13 million over 2015 system outage.
Arkadi Kuhlmann, the founder and CEO of the neobank Zenbanx who pioneered branchless banking at ING Direct, explains why he stopped pursuing a bank charter and made a deal with Social Finance.
The acquisition should allow the San Francisco-based online lender to fulfill a long-standing goal: offering a deposit account to its young, upwardly mobile customers.
