The hook
SoFi is the only company in America that holds a , runs the behind roughly 8 billion transactions a year, and now issues its own — all inside one app where a 28-year-old can a student loan, buy a dollar of stock, and earn 4.5% on savings before lunch.
It went from 600,000 members and $250 million in in 2018 to 15 million members and $3.6 billion last year — growing about 41% a year and, unusually for its size, speeding up rather than slowing down.
Why it exists
SoFi started in 2011 with a simple frustration: the best student borrowers were paying sky-high interest rates because banks weren’t really competing for them. Four Stanford classmates connected willing alumni lenders with current students at lower rates. The pilot was $2 million. It worked — and the company never stopped adding things people could do with their money.
SoFi is trying to become the one app your whole financial life runs through — and unlike most companies making that promise, it actually owns the bank, the payment plumbing, and increasingly the . Own the rails, not just the storefront.