Chase Partners With AutoFi to Expand Digital Car Purchases

Chase Auto Finance is partnering up with AutoFi, the fintech company that connects dealerships with lenders and buyers online for vehicle purchasing, the companies announced today.

This will make Chase the first national bank on the AutoFi platform, which had previously been partnering with captives such as Ford Motor Credit Co.

“Our vision is to give dealers the tools to be able to enable digital car buying for all their customers across all their inventory,” Kevin Singerman, chief executive of AutoFi, told Auto Finance News. “For us to achieve that vision and to make it industry standard, we need to build out a network of banks that are able to support digital automated car buying and Chase is a huge, key part of that.

AutoFi raised $10 million in Series A funding to be able to expand outside of Ford Credit in Augugust 2017, with the goal of using the funding to grow and accelerate its lender, manufacturer, and dealer partners. With Chase now a partner on the platform, Singerman foresees an increase in the “clickable pool” of dealers that AutoFi can bring a solution to, and expanding that pool to dealers that may have a very close relationship with Chase and the bank’s supported brands.

“It’s our goal to get as many people around our table as possible, so that we can deliver a complete solution for an industry [and] for a dealer who may be supporting multiple brands,” Singerman said. “In our minds, for Chase and AutoFi together, this is a material step in that direction.”