T-Mobile, with 76 Million Customers, Taps BankMobile for Banking Services
BankMobile, the mobile-first bank launched and (still) owned by Customers Bank, appears to have scored T-Mobile as client.
BankMobile indicated in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it will provide banking products to T-Mobile’s 76 million customers in the U.S.
T-Mobile is a subsidiary of the German telecommunications firm Deutsche Telekom AG. BankMobile was launched in January 2015.
In a presentation, Wyomissing, Pa.-based Customers Bank CEO Jay Sidhu told analysts yesterday, and disclosed in a Form 8-K filed with the SEC, that BankMobile signed a letter of intent with T-Mobile in 2016, and plans to release an offering “in the coming weeks.” Few details of the proposed service are available at this point.
Bank Innovation reached out to both BankMobile and T-Mobile for comment and will update this story as necessary. BankMobile noted only that it was “not disclosing any additional information at this point.”
T-Mobile has flirted with other financial offerings, launching a prepaid card in cooperation with The Bancorp back in 2014.
It also appears the T-Mobile disclosure may have been made too soon. The presentation offers the following points on a slide that also contains the language, “T-Mobile partnership”:
- A major national brand
- Significant digital distribution
- Very competitive bank account product offerings
- Very easy to open accounts digitally
- Substantial subscription model benefits
- A win/win/win for us, our partner, and the consumer
T-Mobile’s name is mentioned three times in the presentation. Another slide details significant spending on “R&D, technology and product development for White Label,” about which more will be shared “later this year.” In yet another slide, it was announced that Customers will employ its “banking as a service model” to deploy a full-service bank for its unnamed partner.
BankMobile’s cost of acquisition is listed in the presentation at $19 (presumably per customer) versus $100 or more for traditional banks. Customers Bank also noted that it planned to hold onto BankMobile for another two to three years.
In March 2017, it was announced BankMobile would be sold to Flagship Community Bank in Clearwater, Fla., but that deal stalled in August 2018. The decision reflected “complications with regulatory process for spin/merge,” as well as the value expected to come out of the bank’s “first White Label partner” — apparently, T-Mobile.
Customers said its assets would stay below $10 billion — there are regulatory ramifications for staying below that amount — and that BankMobile was one of its three core businesses, along with private and commercial banking, and digital direct banking. Customers listed $9.9 billion in assets in a June 2018 press release that, along with other press announcements, has since been removed from the bank’s website.
T-Mobile confirmed it had a partnership with BankMobile, but said “there’s really nothing else to talk about here.”
This story has been updated to include T-Mobile’s response.
