Coastal Financial Corp., a $2 billion community banking company in Everett, Washington, was a typical community bank seven years ago. It wasn’t looking to launch a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) division, where the bank would lend out its charter, payment rails and other bank exclusive products and services to third parties.
But that is exactly what the bank did.
When asked if he knew anything about BaaS prior to 2015 — the launch year of Coastal’s BaaS program — CEO Eric Sprink confessed, “Nope — we stumbled into it.”
