SOUTH BRONX / SDNY, Oct 16 – Inner
City Press and Fair Finance Watch have filed a protest and
comment with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
on OCC Control Number 2026-5.53-347983, a “Substantial
Change in Assets / Material Increase in Assets†filing for
Stride Bank, National Association of Enid, Oklahoma
(charter 12044). It is a stealth application, by a
bank sued for an Iran-linked hack. They ask that the OCC
set and extend a comment period, hold public hearings,
and, on the current record, deny the application.
The OCC’s page
for the filing does not say who the applicant is or what
the transaction is. The fields for the comment period
start and end dates are blank. But it is widely if not
completely reported that Chime Financial, the fintech with
some 10 million members, announced on September 8 that it
will buy Stride for $590 million in cash. Stride has about
$5.4 billion in assets. Chime says the bank would become
“Chime Bank, N.A.†and that it expects to close in the
first half of 2027.
Citing under 12 C.F.R. § 5.53(e), the OCC
has claimed that these filings are exempt from the OCC’s
rules on public notice, decisions and hearings (§§ 5.8,
5.10 and 5.11) unless the OCC applies them because of
significant or novel issues.
Inner City Press / FFW wrote that a
national bank in Oklahoma becoming the charter of a
national app-based company is such an issue. It also said
that processing it “through a page of blank fields†is not
transparent. The letter collects the record on
Chime. In 2024 the CFPB ordered Chime to pay a $3.25
million penalty and at least $1.3 million in redress for
delaying refunds to consumers whose accounts were closed.
In February 2024 California’s Department of Financial
Protection and Innovation fined Chime $2.5 million over
its handling of consumer complaints.
In 2021 more than 900 CFPB complaints in 15
months, many about closed or frozen accounts.
Also troubling to Inner City Press / FFW is
this, from American Banker on May 4, 2026, by Carter Pape:
“Customers sue Chime over alleged Iran-linked hack.†Three
proposed class actions say a pro-Iranian group, Team 313,
breached Chime on April 1 and took Social Security numbers
and other data. “Chime told customers during the April 1
outage that their money and personal information were
secure — directly contradicting the breach allegations now
in court.â€
A bank regulator asked to approve a change
in control should ask about that, in public.
The letter also asks about the community
effect in Enid and Garfield County. What happens to the
bank’s local lending, branches, employees and Community
Reinvestment Act commitments? Is a national bank serving
Oklahoma communities to be used as a platform for a
national app-based customer base?
That brings in the OCC’s CRA proposal. On
July 31 the OCC and FDIC, without the Federal Reserve,
proposed to revise the CRA rules (OCC Docket ID
OCC-2026-0694), keeping assessment areas tied to a bank’s
physical facilities. Banks between about $1.65 billion and
$10 billion in assets would move out of the large-bank
framework and lose the separate investment and service
tests. Stride, at about $5.4 billion, is in that range,
and Chime has said it intends to stay below $10 billion.
So a bank with ten million customers nationwide could be
judged on the area around an office in Enid. Inner City
Press / FFW says that turns CRA and assessment areas into
a mockery. And the OCC has not given Inner City
Press / FFW a single document in response to its timely
FOIA request about the CRA proposal.
Inner City Press / FFW asked the OCC to
extend the comment period. The OCC did not, and the
comment period closed on October 13. Records about how the
agency prepared the proposal were requested precisely so
the public could comment on them. The OCC’s silence, on
FOIA as on the Stride notice, speaks for itself.
