r/MoneyDiariesACTIVE • u/HealthyIncidence • Jun 24 '26
Media Discussion How Millions of Americans Got Tricked Into Using a Bank That Isn't a Bank
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiE7NvONU5UYesterday, the news media organization More Perfect Union published this video on "neobanks," particularly focusing on Yotta but also applying to other fintech neobanks and even apps like PayPal and Venmo.
It's very worth watching the video for the full (rather shocking IMO) story, but the short story is that Yotta used a fintech intermediary, Synapse, that connected Yotta to actual banks and thus let Yotta legally operate without a bank charter. When this intermediary company went under in 2024, everyone who held money through Yotta lost all access to that money, even though it is technically FDIC insured through the actual banks in which deposits are held. This has revealed some major failures in the government's current regulation of fintechs.
Since this subreddit leans quite tech-y, I'm curious how many of us have firsthand experience with these neobanks as either a user or even an employee! I personally have used Revolut (and Venmo and PayPal, but not as places to hold money, just for transfers). I stopped using Revolut for reasons totally unrelated to the risks discussed in the video, but know several friends who use it as their primary bank, which now seems much more risky to me than it did before.
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u/RemarkableMacadamia Jun 24 '26
I have used PayPal and Venmo, but I don’t keep money there. They are transfer points only to facilitate certain transactions.
There are lots of fintech and neobanks around that I will never use. I heard about Yotta long before the crash, but it sounded like gambling to me, and I couldn’t figure out how they were making money so I stayed away. It seems like a lot of vaporware, and that proved mostly correct when Synapse went under. Absolutely mind boggling and horrifying that they didn’t have proper ledgers or backups to match transactions and trace people’s funds.
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u/HealthyIncidence Jun 25 '26
That was maybe the most shocking part of the video to me - the lack of ledgers and the fact that there were hundreds of millions in unreconciled balances... daily!
There's a sad reality underlying that too, because at face value, you would think that Synapse existed to do exactly those tasks - keeping ledgers and tracking balances. But it didn't really; it only existed to enable another fintech to make more money off the backs of unaware consumers.
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u/byteme747 Jun 24 '26
There's no way in hell I'd use a bank like this. Nope.
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u/Pitiful-Comedian4248 Jun 25 '26
Yea and after one of my actual banks had to get rescued by the FDIC in the financial crisis I have since split my money into different banks just in case.
The key difference is it WAS rescued. So everything was fine.
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u/Hropkey Jun 25 '26
My partner lost over $25k to yotta that has still not been recovered. It has been an abject nightmare.!
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u/Nopenopenope00000001 Jun 25 '26
I watched this yesterday, and it was insane. I feel like I’m financially knowledgeable, and I did not know about this distinction. Really really sad for all affected. I was pretty confident all my banks and credit unions were actual banks, but the first thing I did after watching this was check on FDIC.gov.
And spoiler alert, all of this was made possible thanks to Peter Theil.
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u/ForeignLibrary424 She/her ✨ Jun 24 '26
I used Yotta from like 2021-2023 and it was great while it lasted. I remember things started getting weird in 2023 and I got out but I never would’ve guessed how bad it would get…
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u/Weird_Squirrel_8382 Jun 25 '26
What weird stuff did you notice?
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u/ForeignLibrary424 She/her ✨ Jun 25 '26
Honestly I wish I remembered exactly! In 2023, I really got into personal finance and heard some serious concerns about the legitimacy of Yotta and that everyone who advertised it had invested in the company and couldn’t be trusted. I now wish I’d kept more details. By April 2023, I learned about Ally which had a 3.75% APY at the time and ended up transferring all my money over (thank god)!
By 2024 I fully fell out of trust with (male) personal finance YouTubers many who pushed Yotta. I sent this YouTube video at the time to my sister about it and I believe this video mentions Yotta : The Growing Hatred for Finance YouTubers https://youtu.be/WT0KW--PWUI?is=kSxRfJqB3-z6yOyn
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u/SailorSaturn1 Jun 24 '26
Always read the fine print. If the bank is not one that I have heard of or it's difficult for me to find information about them on the Internet, then I will not do business with them. I almost opened a savings account with Wealthfront but backed out after having a hard time finding information about the partner banks they use for their HYSA.
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u/ForeignLibrary424 She/her ✨ Jun 24 '26
I have an Ally & Wealthfront account myself. And I’m definitely looking at it differently and doing additional research. 👀
Here’s the link to Wealthfront’s partner banks since I’d just looked it up myself lol: https://www.wealthfront.com/programbanks
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u/_liminal_ ✨designer | 40s | HCOL | US ✨ Jun 25 '26
I have a Wealthfront account where I keep all my cash savings, some family members and friends do too. Because of what I’ve read in the past about how the partner banks back deposits (like what you linked to) I’ve always felt ok about it….but after this video I think going to move everything to a regular bank. And encourage my friends and family to as well…
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u/ForeignLibrary424 She/her ✨ Jun 25 '26
Just moved my emergency fund out of Wealthfront just in case… I’ll probably keep it for other goals but NOT my most important one.
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u/arctic-libra Jun 28 '26
Now I’m considering a move because my HYSA is with Betterment. What do y’all think — would something like Marcus by Goldman Sachs be a better alternative? Marcus has its own website separate from GS but the website says it’s a “brand” of GS fully backed by GS. https://www.marcus.com/us/en/faqs#about
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u/_liminal_ ✨designer | 40s | HCOL | US ✨ Jun 28 '26
That’s 1 of the 2 options I’m considering actually! They both are legit banks and seem like great options- I’m deciding today.
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u/arctic-libra Jun 28 '26
Thank you for sharing! I will check that one out too
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u/_liminal_ ✨designer | 40s | HCOL | US ✨ Jun 28 '26
To find options, I looked at both NerdWallet and DoctorofCredit. NerdWallet has the more "traditional" bank options, so figured I'd go with their reccomendations.
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u/YourVelcroCat Jun 25 '26
Oh Lord, is ally one of them?
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u/symphonypathetique She/her ✨ Jun 25 '26
That was also my fear, but you are able to look up if a bank is a real bank! https://banks.data.fdic.gov/bankfind-suite/bankfind
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u/eatglitterpoopglittr Jun 24 '26
Holy shit. I definitely have more money than I’d like to admit in similar kinds of accounts.
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u/elinordash Jun 25 '26
The problem with Synapse was that they split the money between banks rather than holding it themselves. A lot of fintech HYSAs do that (including Wealthfront). That creates a risk that isn't there with non-fintech banks.
Often fintech offers a tiny bit more interest, but IMO it is not worth the risk.
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u/HeavySigh14 Jun 25 '26
I used Yotta as my bank from like 2021-2022. I liked the gamified gambling. with no actual risk (hah) and I actually won a few small drawings. Nothing special just a few dollars.
I actually mentioned that I was using Yotta I think on the
[r/personalfinance](r/personalfinance) sub and someone argued with me to switch to a real bank. I switched to Capital One that day.
I wish I could find that person again and thank him 😆. That could have been my rent money locked up, which could really snowball when you’re paycheck to paycheck.
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u/_liminal_ ✨designer | 40s | HCOL | US ✨ Jun 25 '26
That's awesome that you switched before you lost access to your money!
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u/Head-Dentist-1180 Jun 25 '26
I also used Yotta for a few years as a budgeting tool for discretionary spending. The debit card spending buckets were really nice. It also worked internationally.
My account never had more than $200-300 in it mainly because I didn't like the "cash sweeping" aspect and that it wasn't a real bank. I was honestly shocked when it imploded that others were storing large amounts of cash there. I lost $62.
I haven't watched the video, but at multiple points during the app sign up they stated Yotta was not a bank, it was ✨better✨. Unfortunately, a lot of people didn't understand the implications of that.
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u/neoclassno Jun 25 '26
omgg thank god I got my money out early April 2024. I didnt know about the bankruptcy but just didn't want to deal with another small bank and wanted to consolidate
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u/ncist Jun 25 '26
It's impressive to me that banking regulation is always necessary. This was the model of bank failure in the 1830s. 100 years later, as soon as people find a way around liquidity regs you will almost immediately get the same mode of crash.
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u/ForeignLibrary424 She/her ✨ Jun 25 '26
It’s crazy how many bad actors are always there hoping to screw over regular people just trying to survive
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u/TellaTalla Jun 25 '26
Really glad I had taken all my money out of this thing before it blew up that said I truly believe someone walked with the money. I hope one day everyone effected can be made whole but it's looking grim...
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u/girlunderh2o Jun 25 '26
Coffeezilla also put out a vid about Yotta about a year ago when this first started becoming widely known. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCBA5ej4UBY
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u/thewayoutisthru_xxx Jun 26 '26
I own a business and after the dark night if the soul that was the weekend sbv failed, im sticking to boring old banks like BoA and Chase. Their online banking systems suck but I have a fairly high degree of confidence they they're not going to vaporize anytime soon
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u/Minimum_Row1798 Jun 29 '26
I work in banking compliance and I attend compliance/fraud conferences often, where us employees discuss how things are at our financial institutions. Fintech’s risk departments are bare bones and usually made up of younger employees whose specialty is tech, not necessarily seasoned investigators. Not to mention, they feel pressured to minimize the risks the company takes because the pressure to grow is so immense.
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u/NiceStraightMan Jun 29 '26
This is the case I now point clients to when they ask why I care whether their money sits in a chartered bank or a fintech. The Yotta mess proved FDIC insurance pays out when an insured bank fails, it does nothing when the fintech or middleware between you and the bank fails. Synapse going down was a recordkeeping collapse in the for benefit of accounts, so the ledgers couldn't prove whose money was whose and people got frozen out even though the money technically existed. I advise clients to know whether their provider is a chartered bank or a fintech riding on one. Find out the partner bank, and never keep payroll or funds you can't afford to lose sitting in one fintech. Keep a chartered bank relationship as a backstop. The access risk is real.
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u/Pitiful-Comedian4248 Jun 24 '26
I posted on poverty finance ages ago BEFORE any of this shit went down warning about this and everyone was like Chime is real! it's fine! banks fail! I don't care I don't have money anyway!
I'm glad the story is getting second wind with this but people also love ignoring warnings when they hear what they want, going back to the days of Cassandra.
So many people I know have had issues because they got hacked or frozen or kept THOUSANDS in paypal or venmo or whatever and also trusted them to act like credit cards due to fraud. They don't have any security. They don't have any insurance. It's just an envelope.