JPMorgan is killing Finn, its digital bank targeted at smartphone users, less than a year after the product launched nationwide
Finn was a bit of a hybrid, offering customers a digital app loaded with features as well as teller access. Photo: Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal By David Benoit and Peter Rudegeair Updated June 6, 2019 8:28 a.m. ET JPMorgan JPM 0.36% Chase & Co. is killing an experiment to attract younger customers to a new digital-banking app a year after making it available nationwide.
With branches on the decline nationwide, banks are trying to strike a balance between the mobile and online offerings younger users want and having tellers and other specialists on hand in bricks-and-mortar locations that help with more complex matters. Finn users will have to download Chase’s mobile app and wait to receive a new debit card, but their account numbers and direct-deposit details won’t change. They won’t have to pay the roughly $5 monthly service fee that JPMorgan charges for its most basic accounts. One perk being buried with Finn is free access to a network of partner ATMs for those outside of Chase’s branch network.
Yet Finn, which was built on top of the same back-end infrastructure as Chase’s namesake mobile app, allowed its customers to visit Chase tellers, get checks and use its ATMs. As a result, a Finn account looked a lot like a typical Chase account.