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Hello! Kiah here. Welcome to Fintech Takes Banking, my weekly newsletter where I highlight things I think are interesting or important for bankers and the surrounding environs.  

A quick disclaimer: Today’s newsletter is about one bank, which happens to be the institution I personally bank at. This newsletter is not an endorsement of that institution, and there's not a universe where this institution asked me to write this newsletter.

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You don’t always know when something small will irrevocably touch your life in a way that leaves you forever changed.

Something someone said, a choice you made, a book you read. These changes aren’t always big or visible. Sometimes the change is small — it’s a new way to see something, an invisible association now legible to you. It can come in an equally small package: a fortune cookie, a passing remark, a tweet.

Say this tweet.

What a silly thought! Hahahaha, of course, right right: The largest bank in the country opens branches next to a fast-food fried chicken restaurant! As if, on some floor at JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s 270 Park Avenue headquarters, a conference room filled with employees tasked with entering a new midsized U.S. city opens the Chick-fil-A locator for that city in one browser tab and Google Earth on the other to figure out where to plop their branches.

The thought is absurd and amusing in a way that resonates with my particular approach to covering banking. It is amusing to repeat; I’ve never failed to delight someone by telling them this. Especially nonbank people! It’s become a recurring bit for me. But — important to me as a journalist — was it true?

Knowing how much I love this little fact, Jev doctored this parodied image for me and it is my actual and current header on Twitter. I promise I will stop referencing my Twitter after this.

Chase moved to Nashville about the same time I did, in 2019. Entering the Athens of the South was part of a broader effort to expand into top U.S. markets and increase its presence in others, according to a March 2019 press release. Other cities included Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina, Greenville in South Carolina, Kansas City, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis. It also planned to open branches close to large universities, including Auburn University in Alabama and my alma mater, the University of Nebraska. The release said it expected to open 90 new branches in new markets that year.

One of those branches wound up being close to where I live. Seeing as I already had half a dozen credit cards from the bank, I figured a deposit account and having access to an ATM even closer to me would make my life a little easier. I switched my accounts from another moneycenter bank to Chase in 2022.

The branch near my house is across the street from a Chick-fil-A. Stopping at different Chase branches to withdraw or deposit cash made me more aware of locations throughout Nashville, and I slowly realized my branch wasn’t unusual. Tyler’s observation about Chase opening near Chick-fil-As seems to be true in Nashville.

A best-efforts Google map I made of Chick-fil-A locations (in red with utensils) and Chase branches (in blue). I used the locations from each company’s site but also making maps is a little tedious. Some locations may be in development, located in a school or mall or be ATM standalones.

To my relief, the funny little anecdote I would repeat is true for me! But merely mapping them out doesn’t actually explain what’s going on. Is this a freak coincidence? Is it deliberate? If it’s intentional, what’s the relationship between these two businesses, or is there a secret third thing? Is this only true for Nashville, or could I find this relationship in other metro areas?

I conducted an unscientific poll, which is to say I asked my coworkers spread across the United States. Without anyone making a map for me, here are the cities where they reported at least one Chase location being close to a Chick-fil-A:

• Des Plaines/Niles, Illinois
• Austin, Texas
• Canton, Ohio
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Jersey City, New Jersey
• Bakersfield, California

It’s not a coincidence that Chase’s branch expansion began in earnest in 2019. In 2018, Bloomberg News reported that the bank had been released from a nonpublic order from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that prohibited it from opening new branches for the previous six years. The article said the order was “punishment for violating banking rules” — exactly the kind of vague characterization you’d expect related to a nonpublic order, but I guess you could take your pick as to what rules the bank maybe violated between 2012-18.

The article attributed the order’s lift to regulatory changes associated with first administration of President Donald Trump. It said the branch expansion plans — which aimed for 400 branches in as many as 20 new markets over five years — were the first time the bank had opened branches in a new state in more than a decade.

So that explains the timing of the expansion. But still… branches? Really? In 2018? Bank branches in the United States peaked in 2010, according to research from Rajesh Narayanan, a finance professor at Louisiana State University who joined me on an episode of Bank Nerd Corner to chat about it.

At the time, Chase had 62 million household customers and 4 million small business customers. I hadn’t lived near a Chase branch in Virginia but was a Chase customer by at least 2016, thanks to credit card partnerships and easy online and mobile banking. A bank investing so much in physical footprints was cutting against the direction of most institutions then — and now.

Interestingly, the release mentioned that Chase was expanding in cities where it already had “hundreds of thousands of consumers and local businesses.” One could theorize that the time the bank had spent not building branches had forced it to grow wallet share through other products — in my case, cards — and it now had data to know where current customers lived. Maybe they would move their deposits if a branch was close by. Rajesh’s research found that deposit behavior, not lending, seemed to determine where banks would open and close branches. And to Chase’s credit, the gambit worked for me.

“To us, this is so much more than building branches. This is about new customer relationships, better access to credit and local jobs,” said Thasunda Duckett, CEO of Chase Consumer Banking in the March 2019 press release.

There is no respectable, sane way to ask the Chase media relations team if the bank’s branch proximity to Chick-fil-A is deliberate or a mere coincidence, but I bravely did not let that stop me. Predictably, the response from a bank spokesperson ignored this element of my request for comment.

“Chase chooses where to build branches using market data, economic trends, and local community insights - prioritizing convenient, accessible sites where we can best meet the needs of that community,” the spokesperson said in an emailed response. “[W]e’re expanding access to financial services by putting more people within a reasonable drive time of a branch - located near the everyday corridors where people live, work, and shop - so customers can get in-person support when they want it.”

That is a believable, straightforward and deeply underwhelming answer. But surely the market presidents in the expansion areas know where their branches are! Surely they have eyes! Surely they eat lunch or want a spot of breakfast catered for branch staff!

In August last year, Chase opened its 1,000 branch since its 2018 expansion efforts, having gone from having a physical presence in 23 states to 48 states over that time. The branch, which is its 24th location in the Charlotte metro area, is near a Chick-fil-A, according to an Axios Charlotte article.

Tom Horne, head of consumer branch banking at Chase, was at the opening. He told Axios that branch locations are a "deeply analytical process” and that the bank studies a “markets' affluence and population trends and examining corners with high traffic.”

Guess what corners have high traffic?!

“Does it make sense to put a branch on this corner or this corner?” Horne asked in the article. “Well, this corner because it's next to a Chick-fil-A. Branches always do well when we put them next to a Chick-fil-A.”

Chick-fil-A is a popular fast-food restaurant — an undisputed fact if you’ve ever tried to eat there at mealtime or needed to avoid cars backing into a street due to drive-thru orders.

“Chick-fil-A notched $21.6 billion in U.S. sales in 2023, the highest per-restaurant total in the American fast-food industry, even accounting for the chain’s longstanding practice of staying closed on Sundays,” The Wall Street Journal wrote last year. The Journal article covered how the fast-food franchise approaches operations and drive-thru science, including an anecdote about an operator in Rockford, Illinois, using drone and security camera footage to identify bottlenecks and slowdowns.

“I always joke and say, if there’s a Chick-fil-A there, we want to be there, too,” Jennifer Roberts, CEO of Chase consumer banking, told CNBC in 2024. “Because Chick-fil-A’s, no matter where they go, are always successful and busy.”

I opened Google Maps and saw there’s one Chick-fil-A in Rockford. A mile and a half down the road, there’s a Chase Bank.

WE LOVE A HYPOTHETICAL

Question: If your best commercial client needed to move $4 million instantly and settle in stablecoin, could you do it?

I'm hosting Fast Rails, Frozen Books with Qolo to dig into why that gap exists, and what banks can do to close it.

Join me!

FROM THE VAULT

What I’ve been reading, watching and listening to this week:

🦜 A bird in a little submarine!?: Don’t mind if I do. Very cute story (with video and many photos) of a small parrot with a big personality who seems to love his owner and is very curious. You’re welcome.

🍞 In News You Can Use: Caity Weaver admirably attempts to identity and eat the best free restaurant bread in America. I texted three groups of friends about this article, imploring them to try the bread she mentions. FWIW, I recall the best free chain restaurant bread being Macaroni Grill. (Content warning about mention of parental death.)

🎙️ On Bank Nerd Corner: I’m bringing you another conversation from CBA Live 2026, this time with Brian Fritzsche, associate general counsel at the Consumer Bankers Association. We talk about the fraud ecosystem, potential policy responses and why a centralized fraud data repository remains elusive despite private market solutions.

🛫 Catch me at: New York Fintech Week with my friend and coworker Alex Johnson. First up is Innov8 Village Happy Hour on April 29, in partnership with Team8. I’ll also be talking smack courtside during the Fintech Takes 3v3 Classic on April 30.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts on this piece, or if there’s a Chase Bank/Chick-fil-A combo where you live. Next week, we will get into a broader conversation about the role of branches in 2026. I did actually interview experts for this story, but figured it was better to really delve deep into this relationship before bringing them in. 🙂

– Kiah

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