Americans’ banking habits are changing, and with the emergence of new fintech companies, neobanks, and retailers like Walmart and Target offering payment cards, there is an abundance of platforms for consumers to store and move money through. To highlight the most prominent financial service providers used and preferred by consumers, TIME partnered with data firm Statista to survey over 20,000 consumers in the U.S. on their ratings of their financial services providers based on digital services, customer service, value for money, and trust. The top companies were then ranked in their relevant categories.
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Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined America’s Best Financial Services of 2026
Many of the top financial services providers across multiple products and categories are credit unions: Navy Federal Credit Union is no. 1 in Credit Cards, no. 12 in Retirement, and no. 8 in Certificates of Deposit; State Employees Credit Union is no. 1 in both Checking Accounts and Loans, and no. 4 in Debit Cards; Suncoast Credit Union is no. 1 in Savings Accounts. Although surveys tend to surface the biggest credit unions, these types of banks are becoming increasingly popular, especially as they relaxed membership criteria, and business lending rule changes in 2017 gave them more capacity to offer commercial loans. This is part of a larger shift consumers are making towards banking with smaller, community-based institutions. According to a January 2025 research note from the Federal Reserve, “credit unions have grown their household portfolio lending at a faster rate than U.S. banks since 1990 on net,” and the reason is because credit unions “may be providing more desirable terms than banks, expanding their services over time, or offering credit to borrowers to whom banks are not willing to provision credit.”
Unlike large corporate and national banks, credit unions are nonprofit cooperatives insured by the National Credit Union Administration that pool community resources for lending and more. “Banks are about profits. They may provide nice services, but they’ve become very technical in the way that they approach lending and other services, and then charge certain higher rates,” says Jeffrey Robinson, a professor at Rutgers Business School. “Credit unions have better rates, are not as concerned about making massive profits back to their shareholders, and can take input and feedback from the people who are also members.” It’s become a valuable alternative for people in an “anti-billionaire or anti-corporate mindset,” he says.
Another financial behavior shift that’s happening, particularly in the younger generations, is towards digital wallets and digital-first banks like Acorns, Ally, Chime, and Venmo-owner PayPal—that number is growing year over year, according to research by the Federal Reserve. As preferences change, both legacy banks and fintech companies are trying to adapt, expanding financial service options to meet consumer demands. For example, Cash App, which was launched for peer-to-peer payments, started offering investing and stock trading options in 2019. Traditional banks can still reach these younger generations, Robinson says, if they combine the convenience of digital banking with financial literacy education on longer-term saving strategies for big purchases like houses or for retirement. One way to achieve this is for legacy banks to partner with fintech startups to combine offerings. For example, the full-service Stride Bank (no. 1 in Debit Cards), announced last April that it was partnering with pay-over-time pioneer Affirm to “reach to more consumers and merchants.”
See the full list of America’s Best Financial Services below:
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