Chime Invest Adds Commission-Free Stock Trading From $1

The Neobank-Becomes-a-Brokerage Move

Chime (NASDAQ: CHYM) announced Chime Invest on July 20, 2026, adding investing directly inside the app millions of people already use for checking and direct deposit. Two paths ship together: self-directed trading of US stocks and ETFs commission-free starting at $1, and Managed Portfolios run by Atomic Invest, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Neither has an account minimum.

• Commission-free self-directed trading of a broad selection of US stocks and ETFs, starting at $1
• Managed Portfolios are expert-built and risk-profiled, run by SEC-registered adviser Atomic Invest
• Managed Portfolio fees: 0% for Chime Prime members, 0.10% annually for Chime Plus, 0.25% for all other members
• No account minimums on either product; securities are SIPC-protected up to $500,000, rolling out to members over the coming weeks

Why the $1 Minimum Is the Interesting Number

Because it is the number that decides who can participate. Fractional-share trading has been available for years, but a $1 entry point inside an app people already open to check their balance removes the last two frictions that matter: opening a separate account somewhere else, and needing enough money to make it feel worthwhile. Chime's whole customer thesis is people whose relationship with a brokerage historically started too late.

The Managed Portfolio fee ladder does something similar. 0% for Prime members, 0.10% for Plus, 0.25% otherwise — the top of that range is roughly standard robo-adviser pricing, and the bottom is free. Bundling the advisory fee into an existing membership tier is a distribution strategy more than a pricing one.

What Does Atomic Invest Do Here?

Atomic Invest is the SEC-registered investment adviser building and running the managed portfolios, with Chime supplying the interface and the customer relationship. That split — a consumer app front end over a licensed adviser and broker-dealer back end — has become the default structure for embedded investing, and it is why a company can go from "no brokerage" to "brokerage" in a product cycle rather than a regulatory epoch.

Securities are SIPC-protected up to $500,000, which is the standard coverage limit and covers the failure of the brokerage, not market losses.

Part of a Broader Build-Out

Retail and institutional trading infrastructure has had a busy month. Longbridge launched an AI-native investing platform with a similar "put the tooling where the user already is" thesis, and Alpaca's $135M raise is aimed at the API layer underneath products exactly like this one. The pattern across all three is the same: the hard part of consumer investing stopped being execution a long time ago, and is now distribution and onboarding.

General access rolls out to Chime members over the coming weeks. More in our stock trading coverage.

*This article is news reporting, not investment advice.*

Sources: Chime Newsroom — July 20, 2026; Morningstar / Business Wire — July 20, 2026; StockTitan — July 20, 2026.