Dive Brief:

• Digital bank Chime is now valued at $5.8 billion, representing a 287% increase in just nine months, according to CNBC.

• The San Francisco-based startup recently closed out its Series E funding round after raising $500 million, sources told the network Thursday.

• Chime's latest round, which was led by DST Global, is the biggest single equity investment for a challenger bank, according to CB Insights.

Dive Insight:

The branchless bank is making impressive gains as it claims its share of the growing digital banking landscape.

Chime's latest valuation represents a dramatic climb from earlier this year, when the bank raised $200 million in March at a $1.5 billion valuation.

Chime CEO Chris Britt plans to use the capital to develop new products and double the bank's employee count by the end of 2020, sources said.

The funds will also go toward a new Chicago office. Chime will also weigh acquisitions of other fintech firms, sources told CNBC.

Chime's October service outage that kept customers from making purchases and accessing cash seems to have had little impact on investors. 

The incident, which occurred while the bank was in the midst of the funding round, was attributed to an outage at Galileo, the application programming interface-based payments platform that powers Chime.

The Salt Lake City-based company also powers other digital banks and fintechs such as Monzo, Revolut, Robinhood, TransferWise and Varo.

Chime said the outage did not affect any personal or transactional information.

The digital bank is adding around 150,000 direct deposit users a month, sources told CNBC.