Trump Media and Technology Group is expanding into financial services and aims to launch a fintech brand, Truth.Fi, this year, the company announced Wednesday.
The company’s board approved an investment of up to $250 million to be custodied by Charles Schwab and allocated to customized, separately managed accounts, exchange-traded funds and bitcoin or other similar cryptocurrencies, according to Wednesday’s release.
Schwab will “broadly advise” Trump Media’s investments and strategy, the company said. The release did not detail specific investment vehicles, but the company said products would focus on “American growth, manufacturing, and energy companies as well as investments that strengthen the Patriot Economy.”
A spokesperson for Charles Schwab said the company doesn’t comment on client activities.
"We look forward to launching Truth.Fi, introducing TMTG's investment vehicles, and unlocking synergies," Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California, said in the release. "Truth.Fi is a natural expansion of the Truth Social movement. We began by creating a free-speech social media platform, added an ultra-fast TV streaming service, and now we're moving into investment products and decentralized finance.”
President Donald Trump indirectly owns nearly 115 million shares of the company, held in a revocable trust, according to CNBC. The president’s foray into financial services comes a day after Trump adviser Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, announced it is teaming with card network Visa to launch a digital payments tool – which the social media firm’s CEO labeled an “everything app” – this year.
“Developing American First investment vehicles is another step toward our goal of creating a robust ecosystem through which American patriots can protect themselves from the ever-present threat of cancellation, censorship, debanking, and privacy violations committed by Big Tech and woke corporations," Nunes said.
The politically tinged salvo comes, too, less than a week after Trump, in a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, blasted Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, alleging his company de-banks conservatives without explanation.
“You’ve done a fantastic job, but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America,” Trump said. “I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of [former President Joe] Biden or what, but you and [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie [Dimon] and everybody, I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong.”
Moynihan at the time was onstage asking Trump a question about policy.
“We never close accounts for political reasons and don’t have a political litmus test,” a Bank of America spokesperson said last week.
Likewise, a JPMorgan spokesperson said, “we have never and would never close an account for political reasons, full stop.”
Dimon, on a podcast last week, took the message a step further.
“Now, when we de-bank someone, they often blame that reason, but that’s not a reason,” he said.
Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, said Trump’s dual role as both president and namesake of a fintech platform would allow the executive branch to “turbo-charge” the claims of de-banking by traditional finance.
“Now he has a vehicle to profit from people believing those things to be true,” Hauser told Bloomberg.
The choice of Schwab as a partner may have a political overtone, too. Founder Charles Schwab historically has been a heavy Republican donor – though the company discontinued its political action committee a week after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Samantha Schwab, a granddaughter of the founder, is deputy chief of staff at the Treasury Department. She previously worked at Kalshi, the prediction-betting platform where Donald Trump Jr. serves as an adviser.
Many of Trump Media’s developments will be subject to approval by financial regulators.
