On Tuesday the San Francisco bank announced a partnership with software provider Column Tax to let account holders prepare and file tax returns through their Varo app.
Michael Flippo - stock.adobe.com
Varo Bank is following in the footsteps of challenger banks to offer free tax filing services for its users.
On Tuesday the San Francisco bank, which started as a neobank before receiving a national charter in July 2020, announced that it was partnering with software provider Column Tax to let account holders prepare and file tax returns through their Varo app.
Software providers such as Column Tax and April work with companies to integrate tax preparation and filing into their apps — sometimes for free — and make the experience smoother by pre-filling fields with customer data. Industry observers also see this as a field that is ripe for participation from financial institutions, which are typically organizations that consumers already trust with their money and that are deeply intertwined with a customer's spending, saving and wealth management decisions.
However, Varo says it is the first chartered bank to offer this.
William Trout, director of securities and investments at Datos Insights, is not aware of other chartered banks doing the same thing.
"They are, however, embracing related services around tax refunds and are likely to look to partnerships to roll out support similar to that offered by Varo," said Trout. "The idea will be to help consumers adopt more sensible withholdings strategies and keep more of their paychecks in their, and the bank's, pockets."
For now, the partnerships typically exist between these embedded "taxtech" providers and fintechs such as MoneyLion and Acorns. Challenger bank Current announced on Tuesday that it too was partnering with Column Tax to offer free embedded tax filing through the Current app. The company said that last year close to half of its users worked at least two jobs; the partnership with Column Tax is meant to make the tax-filing process simpler and less expensive for them.
Gavin Nachbar, co-founder and CEO at Column Tax, said the company has more than doubled the number of partners for the 2024 filing season. April says it has more than 20 partners spanning banking, payroll, savings, lending and other platforms.
The Long Island bank is the latest financial institution to use new equity to restructure its balance sheet and unload low-yielding assets. Its stock price tumbled after the shares were priced at a considerable discount.
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