EXCLUSIVE— Mobile-only bank account Chime hopes to sign 100,000 new accounts on its platform by the end of January 2018, in keeping with the growth that has lead the banking service to open 750,000 accounts so far, the bank stated.

Chime’s banking services, including its Visa-branded debit card, are provided by The Bancorp Bank.

Chime, which offers a mobile savings and checking account to its users — sans overdraft, monthly, or foreign transaction fees — is “on track” to open those 100,000 new accounts on its platform, brisk growth set to outplace many of its competing challenger bank services.

Chris Britt, CEO for Chime, attributed the growth to several features on the Chime platform, including its popular automated savings feature. Britt told Bank Innovation in an emailed statement:

Automation is a great way to help people get into a healthy rhythm of saving money and we offer two features today that help our members save automatically: “Save When I Spend” rounds up every transaction to the nearest dollar and transfers it into a Chime Savings Account and “Save When I Get Paid” automatically transfers 10% of every paycheck into your Savings Account.  Together these features helped Chime members save over $72 million dollars in 2017 alone.

As well as the importance of automation, Britt also cited Chime’s commitment to a low or zero fee structure, a gamble many neobanks are turning towards even as traditional banks, such as Bank of America, reinstate traditional checking or bank fees.

Citing previous studies on the matter conducted by Chime, Britt told Bank Innovation:

Bank fees are at epidemic levels in the United States and unfortunately traditional banks have adversarial product structures that rely heavily on fees and profit from people’s misfortune or mistakes. Last year, Chime’s Bank Fee Finder Report found that Americans pay an average of $329 a year in bank fees.

When you put that in the context of the fact that 57% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, it’s clear that traditional banks don’t help Americans lead healthy financial lives. The recent news and furor around Bank of America eliminating their fee-free accounts is just another example.  In today’s connected world, bad actors with adversarial products are being exposed and people are quick moving to better alternatives.

To learn more about the latest developments in challenger banks and online banking, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to request an invitation.