The digital banking service Varo Money announced last night it had received preliminary approval for a national banking charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department.

As Bank Innovation previously reported, Varo raised $45 million for this purpose in January. Square CEO Jack Dorsey said his company was still considering this same path in August. Yet as of mid-August, the OCC said it had received no applications for its “fintech charter,” applications to which re-opened in July. The charter was originally offered in 2017.

It is not clear if this preliminary charter approval refers to the OCC fintech charter, which does not offer deposit insurance. Bank Innovation has reached out to the OCC for comment on this.

Varo’s stated mission is to bring relationships back to banking via a digital, mobile-first interface. The company site states, “We envision a world where every customer has the tools they need to get ahead financially and technology that enables more personalized help for more people. By integrating basic banking products (deposits, savings, and lending) with financial health tools (cash flow projections, spend tracking, and smart alerts), we’re reimagining what banking can be.”

The company offers a Visa card in partnership with the Bancorp.

“This is a historic moment and marks the start of a new era in banking,” said Colin Walsh, co-founder and CEO of Varo Money in a press release. “We founded Varo because we saw that banks weren’t serving the majority of their customers very well, and we wanted to fix that. So we decided to build a bank from the ground up with the goal of improving consumers’ financial health through better technology and a more efficient business model.”

Varo was founded in 2015 and has raised $79 million in funding. In addition to contacting the OCC, Bank Innovation has reached out to Varo Money for further comment and will update this story if appropriate.