Item — HN Reader

The fancy new X1 credit card is issued by Coastal Community Bank, a local bank in WA state. It seems an odd pairing, that a "revolutionary" new credit card aimed at techies is partnered with a seemingly random bank.

Banking is weird. Like, how did they find this bank? What makes it better than other random local banks across the country? Is there a marketplace for these banking partnership opportunities?

2 comments

Fintechs can’t just start up and operate as banks, because regulations are really high on who can accept deposits (for obvious reasons, this is a post about FTX). They get around this by using banking-as-a-service providers, which are essentially commercial banks that accept deposits from fintechs and allow them to get cards and deposits through their infrastructure. The Bancorp Bank is the biggest one but there are a lot of them, I’ve seen Column posted a lot here and Coastal Community Bank also appears to be one

price, morals, the usual.