Banks Owning Charter and Tech
Celtic Bank
Owning both the charter and the software turns a sponsor bank from a back office dependency into the product itself. Column and Lead can let a fintech plug into one system for account opening, ledgering, payments, card issuing, and compliance, instead of coordinating among a bank, a middleware layer, and outside processors. That usually means faster launches, fewer handoffs when something breaks, and more room to win large fintech programs outright.
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Column rebuilt a community bank around APIs, then won major direct relationships with Brex and Mercury. Its model is concrete, one integration gives a fintech FDIC insured accounts, Fedwire and FedNow access, card issuing, and in house compliance, while Column keeps the economics through usage fees, interchange share, and net interest income.
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Lead Bank followed a similar path, but with a more lending heavy mix. It serves programs like Affirm and generated an estimated $170M of revenue in 2024, versus about $55M for Column, showing that an integrated charter plus software model can scale beyond deposits into credit products where underwriting and compliance need tighter control.
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Celtic is different in the workflow. The fintech owns most of the customer experience and often the underwriting logic, while Celtic originates the loan, handles regulatory obligations, and sits in the fine print as lender of record. That partner model is powerful, but it leaves more of the stack outside the bank than Column or Lead do.
The market is moving toward fewer, deeper bank partners that can act like software companies. As more fintechs want one counterparty for deposits, payments, cards, and lending, integrated banks should capture larger share of wallet per customer, while traditional sponsor banks will be pushed toward narrower compliance and balance sheet roles.