Which Bank Is Behind Your App? Pass-Through Coverage Checked

Which of these are you?

• You use one app and want to know what insures it. Start with the structure table below, find the bank, and confirm it on BankFind.
• You use two or more apps, or an app plus a direct bank. Go to the shared-sponsor table and the worksheet. This is where hidden overlap lives.
• Your balance in any one app is above $250,000. Read the failure paths first. The limit is not the only question at that size.
• You want to know what happened when a middleware company failed. Chapter 4 covers Synapse and Evolve and the rule changes since.

What does FDIC insurance actually attach to in an app?

It attaches to the bank that holds the deposit. A nonbank app is never insured itself. Your money may be covered through the app, up to $250,000 per owner per bank per ownership category, when the FDIC's conditions are met. It does not cover the app's own insolvency.

The FDIC states both halves in its consumer guidance of May 31, 2024: when a nonbank places your funds at an insured bank, you may qualify for pass-through coverage up to $250,000, provided the nonbank keeps records identifying the account owner and the specific amount each person owns, and there are other requirements as well. It also states that deposit insurance does not protect against the insolvency or bankruptcy of a nonbank company. If a nonbank fails, recovery runs through court proceedings and may take considerable time.

That makes four different structures hide behind the same words "FDIC insured". Our own registry of apps (19 entries, researched 2026-09-02, each with a confidence flag) sorts them like this:

Three details from the registry show why "confirm in the app" is not boilerplate. Cash App's disclosures say a balance is FDIC-insured only if the account has an active Cash Card or is a sponsored account or a sponsor of one, so a plain balance is not stated to be insured at all (confidence high, re-read 2026-10-03). Chime assigns each account to one of two partner banks at signup (confidence high, 2026-09-02). Albert uses different banks for its cash and savings products, so a customer with both can have balances at more than one bank (confidence medium). These are statements about structure drawn from each company's own help pages on the dates shown. They are not safety ratings, and partner relationships change, so treat the registry as a place to start looking, not as a substitute for the app's current terms.

What has to be true for pass-through to work?

Three rules in 12 CFR Part 330 do the work, and each one points at a record. The FDIC recognizes a fiduciary claim only if the relationship is disclosed in the bank's account records. The details and each person's interest must be ascertainable from the bank's records or from records kept in good faith by the depositor or another party who undertook to keep them (12 CFR 330.5(b)(1) and (b)(2)). And money held for you by an agent is insured as if you had deposited it yourself (12 CFR 330.7(a)).

The Liquidity chapter lists the conditions in plain words, so this chapter does not repeat them. What it adds is the distinction that decides most real outcomes: the ledger versus the bank balance.

• The ledger is the app's record of what each customer is owed. It is what your screen shows.
• The bank balance is what the partner bank actually holds in the pooled account, usually titled for the benefit of the app's customers.
• Custodial pooling is allowed to work on fractions. When an owner's funds are commingled and part is deposited without allocation, the owner's insured interest is the same fractional share as that owner's share of the total (12 CFR 330.5(a)(2)).

When the ledger and the bank balance agree and the ledger identifies each owner, the arithmetic is the one you already know. When they disagree, the question of whose money is whose becomes a claims process. The CFPB described exactly that mismatch in the Synapse case, where partner banks held less in consumer funds than Synapse's records showed.

The CFPB's June 2023 report adds the point that matters for planning. It said that pass-through eligibility is extremely difficult to verify before a failure, because the FDIC or NCUA makes that determination only after one. You can check that a named bank exists and is insured. You cannot check, in advance, that the records will hold up.

How do you find the bank behind your app?

Read three places, in this order, and write down the exact bank name. The app's FDIC or "how your money is held" help page comes first, then the account agreement, then the legal footer or card issuer line. Then confirm the name on BankFind or by calling the FDIC at 1-877-ASK-FDIC.

Look for specific phrases, because vague language is the warning sign:

1. A named bank, not "partner institutions". "FDIC-insured partner banks" with no names gives you nothing to add up.
2. Titling language. Wording such as "for the benefit of" customers tells you the money is pooled and that the ownership records are doing the work.
3. A program bank list. If the app sweeps across several banks, the list and your allocation determine your coverage (chapter 5).
4. Product-level assignment. Some apps use different banks for a spending account, a savings account and a card. Each product needs its own line in your notes.
5. Conditions. Look for any requirement that must be true for the balance to be insured, as with the Cash Card condition above.
6. A transition notice. In our registry, Dave's disclosures describe a move from one partner bank to another that was announced in 2025 and left the current bank unclear for some accounts (confidence low). If an app says it is changing banks, the bank you read last quarter may not be the bank holding your money now.

Write the result as one line per account: app, product, named bank, date you read it. That list is the input to the worksheet below, and it goes stale, which is why the date is part of the line.

Which apps share a sponsor bank?

Several do. In our registry, eight banks are named for two or more apps, counting only entries that list banks individually. The table shows them with the apps involved. It is size and structure data about who partners with whom, researched 2026-09-02 from each company's own pages. It says nothing about the condition of any bank.

A name in this table does not mean your balance is there. A multi-bank sweep spreads each customer across banks, an app with two banks may assign you to the other one, and relationships change. What the table tells you is where to look first. If two apps you use appear in the same row, find out whether your balances actually sit at that bank.

Two rules in the regulation then decide the arithmetic. Deposits you hold in the same right and capacity at one insured bank are added together, while separately chartered banks are insured separately (12 CFR 330.3(a) and (b)). And funds an agent deposits for you are insured as though you had deposited them in your own name (12 CFR 330.7(a)). So an app balance that belongs to you as an individual counts toward the same single-ownership limit as your own checking account at that bank.

How do you count it? A concentration worksheet

List every balance by the bank that holds it and its ownership category, then add within each bank and category. Insured is the smaller of the total and the limit; uninsured is the excess. The calculator below applies this model, and the worked example uses the same tested function.

Formula for one bank and one category: insured = min(total, $250,000 x owners), uninsured = total - insured. For a single-ownership bucket the multiplier is 1.

Take a hypothetical household. App B and App C both place your money at Bank A, you also have a direct single-owner account at Bank A, a joint account with your spouse at Bank A, and App D holds money at Bank E.

Step 1: Bank A, single category. The total is 90,000 + 75,000 + 110,000 = $275,000. The limit is $250,000, so $250,000 is insured and $25,000 is uninsured.

Step 2: Bank A, joint category. $300,000 across two owners has a $500,000 limit, so it is fully insured. A different ownership category is a separate bucket at the same bank.

Step 3: Bank E, single category. $60,000 is under $250,000 and fully insured.

Totals: $635,000 held, $610,000 insured, $25,000 uninsured. No single position looked large, which is why this goes unnoticed.

The fix is to move $25,000 of the direct Bank A balance to Bank E. Bank A's single bucket drops to exactly $250,000 and Bank E's rises to $85,000. The total held is unchanged at $635,000 and the uninsured amount falls to $0. If the same three balances were at three different banks, nothing would be uninsured, which is the point of finding out where they are.

How fast the uninsured amount grows once you cross the line:

The calculator is a simplified screening model. It groups balances by bank name and category, so type the same bank name for every account at that bank. It assumes equal shares on joint accounts, does not model accrued interest at the edge of the limit, and does not model every account type or trusts with more than five beneficiaries. It is not an FDIC determination. For a balance that matters, use the FDIC's own EDIE estimator.

What are the two ways this fails?

An app balance can fail in two different places, and only one of them is what deposit insurance is built for. Keep the two apart when you plan.

What should you do with the result?

Use a simple decision rule on the list you built. First, for every bank that appears more than once, add the balances in the same ownership category. If any total passes $250,000 per owner, that excess is uninsured, so move it, retitle it or add a bank. Second, for any app whose bank you cannot name from its own disclosures, treat the balance as outside any limit you can count. Third, for any pooled balance you could not do without for several weeks, consider keeping it at a bank where you are the named account holder.

None of this says an app is unsafe. It says what the insurance does and does not do, and where the number you can rely on comes from.

One more habit costs nothing. When you review the list, compare the app's displayed total with the balance on the monthly statement from its card issuer or the bank statement the app provides, if it provides one. Large unexplained differences are the signal to ask the app which ledger you are looking at.

Several of our existing pages cover specific cases. The comparison of two business banking apps is a named two-company case, and the piece on cross-border wallets covers a different exposure, storage versus transfer. The plan chapter turns your list into a standing review.