Archive
Everything published by Fintech Takes.
September 2025
- SEP 18Flight to Quality: How To Find the Right Bank PartnerFive years ago, fintech founders treated the search for bank partners the same way that they treated the search for every other piece of…
- SEP 17Welcome Tech, Bumper, Scalar Field, & Structify
- SEP 15Machine Banking
- SEP 12Observations From a Busy Week
- SEP 10Preemption, Kawhi’s Payday, & Tokenized Confusion
- SEP 8Not Quite My Tempo
- SEP 5Aspiring to Cheat
- SEP 3Lawsuits Forever, $1 Penalties, & The Tokenized Wild West
- SEP 1Firing On All Pistons
August 2025
- AUG 29The War That Banks Don’t Know They’re Fighting
- AUG 28Building Financial ResiliencyLast month, I spoke at an event hosted by the Federal Reserve. The theme of the event was “Unleashing a Financially Inclusive Future”.
- AUG 27We’re Back!!!!!
- AUG 26The Leap from Payment Acceptance to Payment IssuanceThe interesting thing about embedded finance is that not all aspects of embedded finance are created equal.
- AUG 22A Field Guide to the Next Round of Open Banking Fights
- AUG 20Open Banking in the Upside-Down
- AUG 18Everyone (but the lawyers) Just Lost
- AUG 15BaaS, Vertical SaaS, and Stablecoins
- AUG 13The Entire History of the CFPB in 50 Minutes
- AUG 11Well, this was predictable.
- AUG 8Should Banks & Fintechs Work Things Out?
- AUG 6Alix, Narrative, Ogment AI, & SOLO
- AUG 4Don’t Forget About The Other Banks
- AUG 1Random Thoughts
July 2025
- JUL 31Debt Management’s Abundance MomentLending is a relationship business. However, I believe one of the enduring frustrations in lending is that consumers and lenders are rarely…
- JUL 30Who Owns the Data? Who Wins Stablecoins?
- JUL 28Trust vs. Data
- JUL 25The Fintech Takes: Builders Summit
- JUL 23Hello (costly) APIs; Goodbye CFPB, DEI, & CDFIs
- JUL 21Girls! Girls! You’re Both Pretty!
- JUL 18Bad For You ≠ Bad For Your Customers
- JUL 17Reaching Beyond the Low-Hanging Fruit in Cash Flow LendingWe should start by saying the use of cash flow data in lending is not new.
- JUL 16What $795, Rent, & Bitcoin Have in Common
- JUL 14JPMorgan Chase Drops the Hammer
- JUL 11Pulte Should Push For Cash Flow Underwriting
- JUL 9Polar, Multiply Mortgage, OpenTrade, & Spinwheel
- JUL 7Bilt isn’t a Unicorn3 Fintech News Stories #1: Bilt isn’t a Unicorn What happened? Bilt is in talks to raise a new round of funding at a $10 billion valuation.
- JUL 4Independence DayI love disaster movies. I love them so much.
- JUL 2BNPL, FICO, and the Data That Isn’t There3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST Jason Mikula and I kicked off the 12th season of the Fintech Takes podcast with a deceptively simple question…
June 2025
- JUN 30Fiserv’s Stablecoin Won’t Help Community Banks3 Fintech News Stories #1: The Revenue-Based Financing Space Grows Up What happened?
- JUN 27Why Is This Happening?An Exhaustive Review of the History and Nascent Culture of the CFPB Here’s the question: Would the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…
- JUN 26The Primacy DirectiveChime, the newly public neobank, is aiming to capture primary financial relationships with the 227 million Americans who earn $200,000 or…
- JUN 25The Credit Score Time Bomb Is Ticking3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST This week’s guest is Martin Kleinbard; Founder of Granular Fintech, ex-CFPB staffer, and author of one of the…
- JUN 23The Lonely Mountain3 Fintech News Stories #1: FICO Jumps Into the Shallow End of the BNPL Pool What happened?
- JUN 20A Fintech TraveloguePlanning a Trip to Yellowstone The first question you need to answer when planning a trip to Yellowstone National Park is which entrances…
- JUN 18Small Businesses Don’t Need More Cash. They Need Better Cash Flow Management.It’s universally acknowledged that running a small business is difficult.
- JUN 18Regulated Payment Stablecoins Are Almost Here!3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST This week’s episode features none other than James Wester, co-head of Payments Research at Javelin Strategy &…
- JUN 16Apple Just Rewired Digital KYC3 Fintech News Stories #1: Plaid’s Fraud Prevention Endgame What happened?
- JUN 13Honest TaglinesEveryone who writes about the financial services ecosystem does it in their own way.
- JUN 11Agents, Access, & Actual Help3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST In this week’s episode of Not Fintech Investment Advice, Simon Taylor and I did what we always do: picked a few…
- JUN 9Plaid/Experian3 Fintech News Stories #1: Plaid/Experian What happened?
- JUN 6The GENIUS Act Sets Stablecoin Bankruptcies Up To FailToday’s essay was written by my bank nerd friend, Todd Phillips.
- JUN 4IPOs, Interchange, & an Identity Crises3 BIG IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST In this week’s episode of Fintech Recap, Jason Mikula and I break down a surprisingly busy stretch of fintech…
- JUN 2A Durable Non-Interest Income StrategyHere’s a question I am obsessed with — How can we ensure that banks and credit unions survive?
- JUN 2Caught in No Man’s Land3 Fintech News Stories #1: Can IFTTT For Banking Work? What happened?
May 2025
- MAY 30Stablecoin State of MindI was delighted to get the opportunity this week to attend and speak at Stablecon, a stablecoin-focused conference put on by Nik Milanović…
- MAY 28It’s Time for a Layered Approach to Credit Risk Underwriting“Lending money isn’t like playing tennis against a wall. There’s always someone on the other side of the net. Often there are multiple someones.”
- MAY 28Cash Flow Underwriting: The Key to Small Banks’ Small Business Lending AmbitionsAccording to Cornerstone Advisors’ annual What’s Going On in Banking? Report , a growing percentage of community banks are making loans to small businesses (microloans under $75,000 and loans to sole proprietorships) a growth priority.
- MAY 26This is Why Big Banks Have Consortiums3 Fintech News Stories #1: This is Why Big Banks Have Consortiums What happened?
- MAY 23The Chime TestThere’s something poetic about Chime’s newest commercial, featuring former NBA star, coach, and TV announcer Mark Jackson.
- MAY 19We Don’t Need Customers. We Just Need Their Credit Cards.3 Fintech News Stories #1: We Don’t Need Customers. We Just Need Their Credit Cards. What happened?
- MAY 16Fintech Player Comps (The W Edition)We’re doing another edition of fintech player comps, but this time we are focused on the WNBA, which kicked off its 2025 season today.
- MAY 15The Cambrian Explosion in Financial Services FraudPaleontologists use the term Cambrian Explosion to describe the moment 540 million years ago when almost every major animal body type appeared in the fossil record. It was an “explosion” of biological diversity without parallel in Earth’s history.
- MAY 12I Told You So!3 Fintech News Stories #1: I Told You So! What happened?
- MAY 9Community Banks Should Fear StablecoinsAn hour before a scheduled procedural vote in the U.S.
- MAY 5Open Banking Is In Danger3 Fintech News Stories #1: Open Banking Is In Danger What happened?
- MAY 2The California DFPI Makes a Visit to BaaS Island#1: The California DFPI Makes a Visit to BaaS Island What happened?
April 2025
- APR 28A New BaaS Warp Core is About to Come Online3 Fintech News Stories #1: Why Would Stablecoin Issuers Want to Become Regular Banks? What happened?
- APR 25Everyone Wants To Be The FICO of Cash Flow DataFICO is one of the most successful fintech companies ever.
- APR 21Plaid-ify Any Website3 Fintech News Stories #1: Updates From The Spend Management Space What happened?
- APR 18Deregulatory UncertaintyBack in November, after Donald Trump was elected President, the market surged.
- APR 15Can LLMs Manufacture Better Credit Decisions?One of the challenges in writing about fintech is that it’s not always intuitive how a new technology will reshape the financial services…
- APR 15Introducing the Fintech Takes Network
- APR 14Pax Americana3 Fintech News Stories #1: Turning a Drizzle Into a Downpour What happened?
- APR 11A (Mostly) Fintech Mailbag!OK, a mailbag! Let’s dive in! If we experience an economic downturn due to tariffs and other policy changes from the Trump Administration…
- APR 7How To Build a Credit CardI ended the second article in this series with a prediction:
- APR 7Stripe Takes a Tiny Step Towards Banking3 Fintech News Stories #1: Stripe Takes a Tiny Step Towards Banking What happened?
- APR 4Big Fintech EnergyA lot of interesting stuff has happened over the past couple of weeks (and this morning!) with late-stage private fintech companies and…
March 2025
- MAR 31Charmed, I’m Sure3 Fintech News Stories #1: Experian Wants To Be The FICO of Cash Flow Underwriting What happened?
- MAR 28Cash Flow Data is Censorship-ResistantAccording to the New York Fed’s Liberty Street Economics blog, more than 9 million student loan borrowers will soon start to see substantial…
- MAR 25The Pay by Bank BreakthroughAn easy way to spot emerging trends is to look for examples of market incumbents overreacting. It’s not a common occurrence.
- MAR 24Boring Fintech Companies Are About To Become Banks3 Fintech News Stories #1: Boring Fintech Companies Are About To Become Banks What happened?
- MAR 21Klarna FootnotesLawyers and accountants might disagree with this statement, but I’ve always thought that the process of becoming a public company is…
- MAR 17$KLAR3 Fintech News Stories #1: $KLAR What happened? Exciting times for Klarna!
- MAR 14The Download on Fintech MeetupI’m going to recap Fintech Meetup 2025 by answering a series of questions that I just made up.
- MAR 10Know When to Hold ‘Em3 Fintech News Stories #1: The Reinvention of ACH What happened?
- MAR 7The Biggest Threat to Consumers’ Financial HealthThe biggest threat to consumers’ financial health isn’t overdraft fees or credit card late fees or banks paying below-market rates on…
- MAR 6The Path To A More Competitive Credit Card MarketIn the first article in this series, I made two assertions:
- MAR 3Chase Unfriends Social Media Platforms3 Fintech News Stories #1: Chase Unfriends Social Media Platforms What happened?
February 2025
- FEB 28Five Things I Got Done This WeekYou may have heard about the email that federal government workers received last weekend asking them to list out five things they…
- FEB 24Blocking and Tackling3 Fintech News Stories #1: Blocking and Tackling What happened?
- FEB 21Pagaya Doesn’t Make Sense (To Me)The best way to do market research, in my experience, is to look for things that don’t make sense. Allow me to explain.
- FEB 18The Future of Small Business Lending is EmbeddedEmbedded lending (delivering a loan in the context of the transaction that the borrower is trying to complete) usually wins over direct…
- FEB 17Stop Building SaaS for SaaS!3 Fintech News Stories #1: Zero-Standing Privilege What happened?
- FEB 14I ❤️ Fintech#1: He Loves Me … He Loves Me Not What happened? More fun and excitement at the CFPB.
- FEB 132025: The Year of the Credit CardIf you’ve worked in financial services long enough, you’ve likely seen a news headline like this:
- FEB 10Who You Gonna Call?3 Fintech News Stories #1: Who You Gonna Call? What happened? It has been a dramatic week for the CFPB.
- FEB 7Financial Inclusion NotesI have spent the last few days at an event in Washington, D.C., with some of my favorite fintech and financial services policy friends…
- FEB 3Bad Fiduciary!3 FINTECH NEWS STORIES #1: Bad Fiduciary! What happened?
January 2025
- JAN 31Is BNPL Better for Consumers Than Credit Cards?I am obsessed with this question. The reason I am obsessed is because, despite what the proponents and detractors would have you believe…
- JAN 29Why Doesn’t Every Small Business Have a Credit Card?Seemingly simple questions will often have surprisingly complex and interesting answers.
