OnePay will let eligible customers borrow between $1,000 and $50,000 without leaving its banking app, under a new tie-up with online lender Upgrade unveiled this week. Rates on the loans run from 7.74% to 35.99% annual percentage rate (APR). Some approvals can land the same day, drawn from spending data OnePay already holds on file.
It is the newest link in a financial services chain Walmart has assembled almost entirely through partners, ever since regulators forced the retailer to abandon its own bank charter bid in 2007.
OnePay Opens a $50,000 Loan Window Inside Its App
The mechanics are simple by design. Customers apply inside the OnePay app, and because OnePay already holds their transaction history, the form fills in faster than a cold application at a bank or credit union.
Underwriting draws on signals OnePay already tracks: average daily balance, how often an account overdraws, and regular spending patterns. For some active customers, that is enough to generate an offer the same day.
Getting access to credit in America today is harder than it should be.
The line belongs to Omer Ismail, OnePay’s chief executive. He said credit that is simple and transparent, offered where customers already are, matters more than it ever has, and that the Upgrade partnership gives OnePay users another way to borrow without leaving the app.
“Our personal loans offer consumers the breathing room they need to get on the best financial path,” said Renaud Laplanche, Upgrade’s co-founder and chief executive. “We’re proud that this partnership makes that resource more accessible to millions of OnePay customers.”
Upgrade, based in San Francisco, has spent nearly a decade building consumer lending and banking tools. OnePay is renting that machinery instead of building one of its own.
The Charter Walmart Never Got
OnePay’s approach, leaning on a partner’s balance sheet and expertise while keeping the customer relationship, has a direct precedent at Walmart. In July 2005, Walmart applied to Utah regulators for its own industrial loan company (ILC) charter, a license that would have let it take deposits and make loans without becoming a full bank holding company.
The reaction was fierce. Community bankers and labor unions warned Walmart would open branches inside its stores and crush local banks.
Congress held hearings. Then-House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank pushed legislation to ban commercial firms from owning ILCs, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) froze all applications while it studied the question.
Walmart withdrew its application in March 2007. Sheila Bair, the FDIC chairman at the time, said Walmart “made a wise choice,” adding that the retailer did not “need an ILC to play an important role in expanding access to financial services by partnering with banks and others.”
Walmart’s own explanation had always been narrower than critics feared. Jane Thompson, then president of Walmart Financial Services, said the company wanted the charter “to reduce credit and debit card transaction costs,” not to open bank branches.
Regulators and lawmakers did not buy it. Walmart withdrew and stopped fighting.
Congress’s own research service later chronicled decades of industrial loan charter battles, noting that Walmart’s bid was the moment an obscure banking policy debate became a matter of broad public concern.
Two Decades of Partners Instead of a Charter
Losing the charter fight did not end Walmart’s financial ambitions. It changed the method.
Walmart had already built the Walmart MoneyCard with Green Dot, a prepaid card program that grew into the largest retailer-exclusive reloadable account in the country.
The two companies kept renewing the deal, most recently in a filing extending the MoneyCard agreement seven years and spinning up a Walmart-majority-owned fintech accelerator called TailFin Labs. Banking Dive reported at the time that the 2015 renewal alone gave Walmart 6 percentage points more revenue than the contract it replaced.
Walmart went further with venture firm Ribbit Capital, launching a separate startup staffed in part with executives poached from Goldman Sachs’s Marcus consumer bank. That startup acquired a smaller fintech called ONE and eventually took the OnePay name.
OnePay’s card history follows the same pattern of swapping specialists instead of owning the lending. Synchrony issued Walmart’s store cards until Capital One won the business in 2018. Walmart cut ties with Capital One in 2024, and Synchrony came back, this time as OnePay’s partner, on a Mastercard-branded card launching this fall inside the OnePay app.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) loans for Walmart purchases now run through Klarna, which replaced Affirm in the role. Deposit-style accounts run through bank partners Coastal Community Bank and Lead Bank. OnePay itself is not seeking a bank charter.
Laid end to end, the sequence looks like this:
- July 2005: Walmart applies for an industrial loan company charter in Utah.
- March 2007: Walmart withdraws the application after regulators and Congress push back.
- 2017: Renaud Laplanche founds Upgrade, months after leaving LendingClub.
- 2021: Walmart and Ribbit Capital launch the fintech startup that becomes OnePay.
- 2025: OnePay lines up Synchrony for credit cards and Klarna for installment loans.
- 2026: OnePay adds Upgrade personal loans of up to $50,000.
Laplanche Has Rebuilt This Kind of Company Before
Upgrade’s own history mirrors the deal it just signed. Renaud Laplanche built LendingClub into America’s largest online personal loan platform, then led it through the biggest US internet IPO of that year in 2014.
He left LendingClub in 2016 amid what American Banker described as a scandal, and settled with the SEC in 2018 over a narrow set of securities activities he was not performing at Upgrade anyway. He had already started the new company within months of his departure.
Upgrade grew fast. It has issued more than $42 billion in credit to over 7.5 million customers. Laplanche now oversees Upgrade’s business strategy as chief executive. He has taken the company’s valuation to $7.3 billion, up from roughly $6 billion in a 2021 round led by Coatue Management and DST Global.
Two Fintechs, Neither One a Bank
Ismail wants OnePay to be the platform tens of millions of people use to manage their money, the way WeChat does in China, something no US fintech has pulled off yet.
He made his case for a US financial super app this year, pointing to embedded distribution through Walmart, and through workplace platforms like UKG and Workday, as the fix for fintech’s biggest cost problem: winning customers one at a time.
Set the two companies side by side:
| Metric | OnePay | Upgrade |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2021, as Hazel | 2017 |
| Key backers | Walmart, Ribbit Capital | Coatue Management, DST Global, Ribbit Capital |
| Users or customers | 6 million monthly active users | 7.5 million-plus customers |
| Valuation | $4 billion (January 2026) | $7.3 billion |
| Scale claim | $50 billion in annualized payments | $42 billion in credit issued since 2017 |
| Core products | Debit banking, credit cards, BNPL, crypto, now personal loans | Personal loans, credit cards, checking and savings accounts |
One name shows up in both backer rows. Ribbit Capital, the venture firm known for early bets on Robinhood and Credit Karma, holds a stake in OnePay alongside Walmart and a separate stake in Upgrade alongside Coatue and DST Global. Whichever way the loan volume flows, the firm has money on it.
Who Actually Carries the Risk on a 36% Loan?
Upgrade holds the lending license and carries the direct regulatory exposure on every loan it originates. OnePay supplies the customer relationship and the underwriting data, average daily balance, overdraft frequency, spending habits, without ever registering as a lender itself.
It is also the same split Sheila Bair blessed back in 2007. Regulators scrutinize licensed lenders like Upgrade for how they price and collect on loans. Retailers and the fintech partners supplying customers and data get a lighter touch, even when their brand and their information do most of the work.
The top of OnePay’s new rate range, 35.99% APR, lands just under the 36% cap that federal law already applies to loans made to active-duty service members and their families. Outside that carve-out it is perfectly legal. It sits at the edge of what regulators and consumer advocates have treated for years as the line between mainstream credit and high-cost credit.
OnePay’s growth has followed one habit through every product line: find a specialist, plug it in, keep the app.
- Deposits and cards: Green Dot built the original MoneyCard; Synchrony and, briefly, Capital One issued the credit cards.
- Installment purchases: Klarna now powers Walmart checkout financing, after Affirm held the role.
- Checking-style accounts: Coastal Community Bank and Lead Bank hold the deposits behind OnePay’s banking features.
- Personal loans: Upgrade now originates and services the new loans from $1,000 to $50,000.
Every one of those partners holds the banking license or lending registration tied to its piece of the product. Walmart and OnePay hold neither.
Digital banking vendors elsewhere are making an identical trade. Backbase, a core banking software provider, paired with Unblu this year to bring human-linked chat into self-service banking, instead of building live support from scratch. Fintech is rebundling the services it once split apart, one specialist contract at a time.
CNBC has reported that OnePay plans to add cryptocurrency trading and wireless service next, more products stitched into the same app. Each addition is likely to arrive through another specialist instead of a Walmart-owned bank, the formula that has held since Hazel’s first days in 2021.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial or lending advice. Loan amounts, APRs and approval speed vary by applicant and creditworthiness; anyone considering a loan should compare offers and consult a financial professional. Figures reflect terms available at publication in July 2026.
