Chime

Instacart

Chime

Chime makes money almost entirely from interchange fees. Every time a Chime member uses their debit card, the merchant pays a swipe fee (typically 1-2% of the transaction).

Chime keeps a portion of that interchange. The model only works at scale — Chime needs millions of members making thousands of transactions to generate meaningful revenue.

But with 22 million members, the math works. Chime also earns interest on member deposits and fees from optional instant transfer services.

Instacart

Instacart operates as a marketplace connecting consumers with personal shoppers and grocery retailers. Revenue comes from multiple streams: delivery fees and service fees charged to consumers (typically $3.99+ per delivery), tips to shoppers (passed through, not revenue), retailer partnerships (grocers pay Instacart for access to the platform and fulfillment services), and advertising.

Advertising has become the crown jewel. Instacart Ads lets consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and Nestlé pay for sponsored product placements within the Instacart shopping experience.

When someone searches for "chips," Doritos can pay to appear first. This is incredibly valuable because it's advertising at the exact moment of purchase intent.

Ad revenue was $871 million in 2023 and crossed $950 million in 2024.

The retailer partnership model is key. Unlike DoorDash or Uber Eats (which listed restaurants without permission early on), Instacart works with grocers as partners.

Over 1,500 retail banners including Costco, Kroger, Albertsons, and Publix have formal partnerships. Instacart provides the technology and shoppers.

Grocers provide inventory and stores.

Chime

Chris Britt spent years working in financial services — at Visa, Green Dot, and other companies — and kept seeing the same thing: banks made a disproportionate amount of their revenue from fees charged to their least wealthy customers. Overdraft fees alone generated $35 billion annually for US banks.

The average overdraft was $36 for a $24 transaction — that's a 150% fee. Poor people were subsidizing free checking for rich people.

In 2012, Britt co-founded Chime with Ryan King (CTO) to build a bank account designed for people living paycheck to paycheck. The core promise was radical: no monthly fees, no minimum balance, no overdraft fees, ever.

You'd get your direct deposit up to two days early (because Chime could release funds as soon as they were notified of a pending deposit, while banks sat on the money for two extra days), and you could overdraft up to $200 without any penalty through a feature called SpotMe.

The product launched in 2014 and grew slowly at first. But the target market — working-class Americans frustrated with bank fees — was enormous.

Once people tried Chime and realized they'd never see another $35 overdraft fee, they told everyone they knew.

Instacart

Apoorva Mehta was a 26-year-old Amazon engineer in Seattle who quit his job in 2012 to start a company. The only problem: he had no idea what to build.

Over the next year, he started and abandoned roughly 20 different projects. A social network for lawyers.

A way to track restaurant wait times. Nothing stuck.

Then one day he was too lazy to go grocery shopping. He looked for a service that would shop for him and deliver everything to his door.

Nothing good existed. The existing options were grocery store delivery services that only worked during specific windows, had limited selection, and required ordering days in advance.

Mehta wanted to order groceries the way he ordered everything else online — immediately, from whatever store he wanted.

He built a prototype in 2012 and applied to Y Combinator. The demo was rough — he ordered a six-pack of beer through the app and had it delivered to a YC partner's house during the application process.

It worked. He got in.

Instacart launched in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 with a simple promise: order from your favorite local grocery store and have someone shop for you and deliver within an hour.

Chime

Chime grew through massive direct-to-consumer advertising. TV commercials, YouTube ads, podcast sponsorships, Instagram campaigns — all hammering the same message: no fees, get paid early, no overdraft penalties.

The message resonated with a demographic that traditional banks ignored or exploited: working-class Americans earning $30,000-$75,000 per year.

The "get paid early" feature was the killer hook. Chime releases direct deposits up to two days before payday.

For someone living paycheck to paycheck, getting paid on Wednesday instead of Friday is life-changing. It reduced the need for payday loans and covered emergency expenses.

The feature spread through word of mouth faster than any ad campaign.

Simplicity was a deliberate choice. Chime doesn't offer investing, crypto, or dozens of products.

They do one thing — be a great bank account for everyday Americans — and do it well. While competitors like Cash App and Revolut chased feature bloat, Chime stayed focused on the core banking experience.

Instacart

Instacart grew by solving a problem one city at a time. They launched in San Francisco, proved the model, then expanded to other major metros.

Each new market required recruiting shoppers, signing up retailers, and building enough consumer density to make the economics work.

The COVID-19 pandemic was the inflection point. Grocery delivery went from luxury to necessity overnight.

In March 2020 Instacart announced it would add 300,000 shoppers, then raised that by another 250,000 weeks later. Order volume increased 500%.

Years of planned growth happened in weeks. The pandemic proved that grocery delivery wasn't a niche — it was the future of how a significant chunk of the population would shop.

The enterprise play is the long-term moat. By providing white-label technology to grocers, Instacart becomes embedded in their operations.

Even if a grocery chain wanted to build its own delivery service, they'd need years and hundreds of millions to replicate what Instacart provides. The more deeply integrated Instacart becomes in grocery operations, the harder it is to rip out.

Chime

Chime is not actually a bank. They're a fintech company that partners with Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank to hold deposits and issue cards.

This distinction matters because Chime doesn't have the regulatory protections and permissions that come with a bank charter. In 2021, the state of California ordered Chime to stop calling itself a bank in advertising.

The regulatory status limits what products Chime can offer and adds counterparty risk.

Unit economics have been questioned. Chime spends heavily on customer acquisition — hundreds of dollars per member through advertising.

If members don't use their Chime card frequently enough, the interchange revenue doesn't cover the acquisition cost. Chime needs high engagement to make the model work, and some members treat Chime as a secondary account rather than their primary bank.

The path to IPO has been repeatedly delayed. Chime was expected to IPO in 2022 but the fintech market crash made that impossible.

The company listed on Nasdaq in June 2025 at $11.6 billion, well below its 2021 peak of $25 billion. Public markets now price it in the open, which is a harsher judge than a private round.

Instacart

The post-COVID hangover was brutal. After pandemic demand normalized, growth slowed dramatically.

The company's valuation dropped from a peak of $39 billion in early 2021 to about $10 billion at IPO in September 2023. Investors who bought at the peak saw a 75% paper loss.

The narrative shifted from "essential infrastructure" to "nice-to-have luxury."

Unit economics are perpetually tight. Paying a person to walk through a grocery store, pick items, bag them, and drive them to someone's house is expensive.

Unlike meal delivery (one restaurant, one bag), grocery delivery involves dozens of items per order, refrigeration requirements, and substitution decisions. Every order that requires a shopper to call the customer about an out-of-stock item eats into efficiency.

Amazon is the existential threat. Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods delivery, and Amazon's own logistics network represent a competitor with nearly unlimited resources and a Prime membership base of 200+ million.

Amazon has been willing to lose billions on grocery delivery to build market share. Instacart's advantage is retailer partnerships — Kroger and Publix use Instacart specifically because they don't want to help Amazon dominate grocery.

Chime

Chime Spending Account is the core — a fee-free checking account with a Visa debit card. Chime Savings Account offers automatic round-ups and a competitive APY.

SpotMe lets members overdraft up to $200 with no fees — Chime covers the difference and deducts it from the next deposit. MyPay gives members access to earned wages before payday.

The Chime Credit Builder card helps members build credit by reporting on-time payments to all three bureaus — no credit check required, no interest, secured by your own money. Instant Transfers move money between Chime members instantly.

Instacart

Instacart Marketplace — the core platform where consumers order groceries from 80,000+ stores for delivery or pickup, with personal shoppers fulfilling orders. Instacart+ — subscription service ($9.99/month) offering free delivery on orders over $35, reduced service fees, and credit back on pickup orders.

Instacart Ads — a retail media platform letting CPG brands run sponsored product listings, display ads, and coupons within the shopping experience. Instacart Platform (Enterprise) — white-label e-commerce technology that lets grocers build their own online ordering and fulfillment powered by Instacart's infrastructure.

Caper Cart — AI-powered smart shopping carts (from the 2021 Caper AI acquisition) with built-in screens, barcode scanners, and payment that let shoppers skip the checkout line.

Chime

DST Global, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, Coatue Management, Dragoneer

Instacart

Sequoia Capital was an early and consistent backer. Andreessen Horowitz invested in growth rounds.

D1 Capital Partners led the 2021 round that valued Instacart at $39 billion. Existing investors including Valiant Capital, T.

Rowe Price, Fidelity, and Tiger Global participated across rounds. Y Combinator was the starting point (Summer 2012 batch).

The September 2023 IPO on NASDAQ priced at $30 per share, valuing the company at approximately $10 billion.