San Francisco-based Varo Money has become the first U.S. consumer fintech firm to be granted a national bank charter, enabling the digital challenger to offer a full suite of FDIC-insured services. It was granted the charter by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and has secured regulatory approvals from the FDIC and Federal Reserve to open Varo Bank N.A. Varo Money currently provides a range of savings, loans and account-based services through a relationship with The Bancorp Bank. Varo Bank will enable it to expand its services to target a broader set of customer needs including credit cards, loans, and other savings products.
The CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google were grilled in front of a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee antitrust subcommittee. Meanwhile, all four reported stronger than expected first quarter financial results demonstrating the resilience of their business models to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. And PayPal topped earnings and revenue expectations amid booming growth in online transactions. The firm’s CEO said that the COVID-19 crisis has meant a “tipping point” for digital payments that, over the past three to five months, drove an acceleration in e-commerce penetration that could have otherwise taken three to five years to accomplish.
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