In 1954, the bank that would become Stride opened a drive-in in the alley behind its headquarters. There is something pleasingly practical about that detail. Customers had cars. Banking required a visit. Put the two together. Decades later, the same institution would help put banking inside another company’s app. The distance between those ideas is smaller than it looks: move the service closer to where the customer already is.
- Stride combines everyday banking with accounts, cards and payments for fintech partners.
- Its expertise grew through ATM operations and payment processing, well before today’s apps.
- Chime’s proposed acquisition would turn a longstanding partner into an owned bank.
The alley was an early clue
Stride began in Enid in 1913, founded by A. E. Stephenson as Central State Bank. It obtained a national charter in 1921 and trust powers in 1926. Its own data processing followed in 1967; online banking arrived in 1998. The pattern matters more than the dates. This was a local institution repeatedly taking on the machinery of banking, rather than leaving every technical task to somebody else.
By the time Central National Bank became Stride in 2019, the name was catching up with the business. The rebranding announcement described investment in technology and infrastructure, national customers, prepaid cards and real-time payments. It also made an unusually useful clarification: the name change involved no sale or change of ownership. The company was explaining a direction it had already begun to take.
A loan book gets smaller. The ambition gets wider.
The route was hardly smooth. A 2020 Bank Director account describes the damage following Oklahoma’s 1980s banking crisis: Stride’s loan portfolio contracted by two-thirds in six months, and a third of employees were laid off. That experience helped push its leaders toward diversification. Operating ATMs for other banks became an early experiment. When that business became commonplace, Stride moved on, carrying experience in compliance and program management into payments.
A later interview with chief executive Brud Baker reveals the lasting caution. Stride had rejected prospective partners that lacked a convincing commitment to compliance. It also turned away some lenders whose managers had never lived through a full credit cycle. That is a distinctive hiring criterion for a business relationship: show us what happened when conditions stopped being friendly.
“Consumers should not have to choose between innovation and consumer protection.”
Jimmy Stallings, Stride President of Payments, 2023
Your card has more than one company behind it
Consider the division of labor in the Chime relationship. The 2023 extension of their agreements specified that Stride would hold member checking and savings deposits and issue debit and secured credit cards. Chime could concentrate on the experience people see. Stride handled banking functions underneath it. For the customer, an apparently simple product depended on companies doing different jobs.
Affirm supplies another example. In April 2025 it added Stride as an issuing partner for the Affirm Card, a debit card whose users can request installment financing for eligible purchases. The customer sees Affirm. Issuing the card still needs a bank. Lyft Direct’s program documents likewise identify Stride alongside Payfare. These relationships put the bank within products whose audiences already exist.
Stride’s current payments offering includes physical and virtual cards, ACH transfers, wires, settlement accounts and API integration. Its lending group supports consumer and small-business credit programs, with oversight covering underwriting and servicing. A fintech shopping for a partner is therefore buying access to a collection of capabilities. The comparison set includes sponsor banks such as The Bancorp Bank, another Chime partner.
The other customers still need a banker
Meanwhile, Stride’s conventional customers have problems that no elegant interface makes disappear. A trucking operator needs equipment finance. A healthcare practice needs money for an acquisition or working capital. A rancher needs livestock credit; a grower needs financing before the crop produces revenue. Stride maintains specialist offerings for each. Its agricultural page adds a telling detail: its agriculture lenders are producers themselves.
That expertise gives the bank a practical way to compete for borrowers who want someone to understand the business behind the application. Healthcare financing covers facilities, equipment and operating credit. Transportation lending includes trucking equipment and receivables. Wealth management extends into trusts, estates, retirement, farms and oil-and-gas interests. Investment products carry different risks from insured deposits; Stride explicitly separates them in its disclosures.
There are two customer relationships here: people and businesses using banking directly, and companies distributing financial services through their own brands. Stride earns interest income and service income. The latter makes operational expertise commercially useful beyond the branch network. Its public materials do not offer a standard price menu for a fintech partnership; product scope and responsibility matter too much for an app-store comparison.
The partner wants to own the plumbing
In September 2026, Chime agreed to acquire Stride for $590 million in cash. Chime described ownership as a route to lower funding costs, fewer partner-bank fees and faster product development. It expected more than $100 million in net synergies. Those are the buyer’s expectations, not achieved results. The proposed purchase gives a dollar figure to something that a consumer rarely sees: the bank behind the interface.
Cash consideration announced September 2026
Subject to regulatory approval and other conditions
As of October 25, 2026, the transaction remained pending. Chime’s customer notice says accounts continue working as usual. If completed, Stride would become Chime Bank, N.A. The distinction matters to anyone reading a partner’s name on an account: an agreement about future ownership does not itself change today’s banking arrangements.
There is a useful business lesson here, with limits. Stride found new buyers for work it already knew how to do. Another company supplied distribution; the bank supplied specialized operations. Copying that requires patient investment in people, systems and oversight, plus the willingness to reject business. Without those conditions, reaching more customers simply gives operational mistakes a larger audience. The alley made banking more convenient. The machinery behind it made the next expansion possible.