Fintech

Neobanks, wallets, payments, and lending. Debit interchange is the workhorse — neobanks sit in the Durbin-exempt tier (~1.1–1.5% per swipe), which is precisely why the model works — but ARPU is still a fraction of incumbent banks, so primacy (being the customer's primary account) drives LTV. For lenders, net charge-off and delinquency are make-or-break. Few clean public benchmarks exist; read named company comparables instead.

Fintech businesses — neobanks, wallets, payment processors, lenders — operate across very different revenue models, but share a common structural challenge: incumbent banks have deep relationships and diversified revenue, while fintech entrants typically start with a single monetization wedge and need to expand from there.

The Interchange Engine

For neobanks and debit-focused wallets, interchange is the primary revenue stream. Operating in the Durbin-exempt tier (typically smaller issuers), these businesses earn roughly 1.1–1.5% per swipe — a margin that works at scale but requires high transaction volume per account to build meaningful ARPU. That is why total payment volume and funded account rate matter: a funded account that transacts regularly is the unit of value, and primary account rate (primacy) is the multiplier. When a neobank becomes a customer's main checking account, spend volume and transaction frequency both jump, and cross-sell of savings, credit, and investing products becomes tractable.

Lending Risk and LTV

For lenders woven into the stack, net charge-off rate and delinquency are existential metrics. Credit losses can absorb the entire take rate on a loan book if underwriting is loose, which is why lending benchmarks are read against named comparables rather than generic industry ranges. Take rate and interchange revenue take are the two sides of the revenue equation across payment and lending products — together they determine whether unit economics can scale to a viable business before needing to widen the product set.