OnePay

Is OnePay safe?

For a modest everyday balance in a OnePay deposit account, mostly yes, but you are trusting two small banks and an app's records, not a bank of your own. OnePay is the brand of One Finance, Inc., which Walmart describes in its annual report as "our OnePay fintech venture". It says plainly that it is not a bank. Approved deposit accounts are held at Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank and are FDIC-insuredDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary on a pass-through basis. A separate product, the OnePay Cash balance, is not insured at all.

We score OnePay 55/100, below Chime (62), which uses the same partner-bank model with larger partner banks and far fewer uninsured deposits at them, and above Evolve Bank & Trust (46).

Deposit account or Cash balance: check which you have

This is the most important thing to know about OnePay.

• OnePay deposit account. Held at Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank. Your share of the pooled account is insured up to $250,000 per depositor per bank, "if certain conditions have been met". Some money can be swept to other FDIC-insuredDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary banks.
• OnePay Cash balance. Offered by Payment Progress LLC, a licensed money transmitter. Its agreement says the money is not a deposit, is not eligible for pass-through insurance, and is pooled and invested under state money transmitter rules. Your balance is an unsecured claim against Payment Progress, and it earns no interest.

If Payment Progress failed, a Cash balance would depend on state money transmitter protections, not the FDIC. Keep only spending money there.

The partner banks

Both banks are well capitalised by regulators' measures, but both are small and depend on deposits gathered through fintech partners. Coastal is the weaker of the two right now. Its parent, Coastal Financial, reported a net loss of $42.1 million for the second quarter of 2026, mainly from $68.8 million of charges tied to one fintech partner whose losses were not expected to be fully covered under its indemnity. The charges cut its capital ratios by about one percentage point.

Coastal's uninsured deposits also more than doubled in six months, to 27.7% of deposits. In September 2026 it disclosed that Bluevine, another partner with about $447 million of deposits at the bank, had agreed to be bought by Valley National Bancorp. Coastal said it did not expect a material effect on its liquidity, and its cash and borrowing capacity of $2.12 billion exceeded its uninsured deposits.

Fraud and complaints

In March 2024 ProPublica reported that One, as OnePay was then called, was hit by fraud and customer complaints after a Walmart-controlled partnership bought it in 2022. It found that One weakened user security and outsourced support, that thieves drained some customers' accounts, and that fraudsters opened fake accounts to divert the pay of Walmart delivery drivers. The CFPB received 89 complaints about One in 2023, more per customer than at most large neobanks for which data was available. One told ProPublica that complaints per customer had fallen.

OnePay now lists multi-factor authenticationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary, login risk analysis, alerts and biometric login. We found no public enforcement action against One Finance, and no large data breach.

How to use OnePay safely

• Open the account details in the app and check whether your money is in a deposit account at a named bank or in a Cash balance.
• Treat OnePay as a spending account. Keep savings at a bank where you are a direct depositor, such as SoFi Bank or Varo Bank.
• Count other money you hold at Coastal Community Bank or Lead Bank, including through other apps, against the same $250,000 limit.
• Turn on multi-factor authenticationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary and alerts, and never read a one-time code to a caller.

How we scored it

Liquidity (60), conduct (60) and deposit protectionDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary (58) are OnePay's best factors, and none is strong: insured cover is pass-through, and the Cash balance has none. Digital security (50) and stability (50) are the weakest, for the fraud wave reported in 2024 and a young model never tested by a bank failure. Capital (52) reflects small, unrated partner banks and Coastal's 2026 loss.