Archive
Everything published by Fintech Takes.
July 2022
- JUL 8You Are Your Business ModelIn the S-1 form that NerdWallet filed with the SEC, prior to going public, the company stated that “NerdWallet exists for one reason: to empower consumers and SMBs with financial guidance they can trust.” NerdWallet attempts to do this by providing, among other things, reviews of financial products and lists of the best financial products […]
- JUL 4Can Fintech Bridge the Sustainability Gap?3 Fintech News Stories #1: Can Fintech Bridge the Sustainability Gap? What happened? Tenet, a digital lending provider focused on sustainability, raised an $18 million seed round: Climate-focused start-up Tenet has launched an electric vehicle (EV) financing platform that it hopes will accelerate the adoption of EVs and help consumers enter the $185 billion EV […]
June 2022
- JUN 30The Next Table Stakes Feature in Digital BankingImagine that you’re in a serious, long-term romantic relationship with someone. You love this person and are committed to spending the rest of your life with them. Then you discover an odd quirk about them — every two weeks they get up early in the morning, take a crisp $100 bill out of their wallet […]
- JUN 27Finding Money and Managing Paperwork3 Fintech News Stories #1: Finding Money and Managing Paperwork What happened? A new fintech company called Aidaly came out of stealth: Caring for a family member is not only hard work, but expensive, too. Many family caregivers miss work (or stop working) and pay for medical expenses out of pocket. Aidaly was created to […]
- JUN 23How to Survive Open BankingA rip current is a strong, localized, and narrow current of water that moves directly away from the shore. It occurs in places where there is a break in the sandbar or reef separating the beach from the ocean; waves come crashing in, and all the water gets sucked back out through that gap. According […]
- JUN 20The Y Combinator Problem3 Fintech News Stories #1: The Y Combinator Problem What happened? Brex decided to abandon its small business customers: Brex had sent emails to tens of thousands of small businesses, telling them that the financial services company would no longer be able to serve their needs. After expanding its business from tech startups to traditional […]
- JUN 16State of the Union: The Credit BureausThere is a widespread sentiment in fintech that the primary U.S. credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion — are terrible at what they do and need to be replaced. There is also a simple economic reason why fintech companies are likely to believe this — the bureaus are massive. Here’s a quick example — […]
- JUN 13Closing the Homeownership Gap3 Fintech News Stories #1: Closing the Homeownership Gap What happened? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are making some important and long overdue changes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are implementing big reforms aimed at helping disadvantaged communities become homeowners and making sure homebuyers of color stay owners. The initiative from the two federally backed home mortgage […]
- JUN 6Open Banking Bipartisanship3 Fintech News Stories #1: Open Banking Bipartisanship What happened? Truework added Plaid to its income verification flow: Truework Credentials empowers applicants to securely, instantly, and easily share their income and employment information directly within online loan applications. The addition of Plaid Income provides lenders with broader coverage through additional user-permissioned data. So what? “Wait” […]
- JUN 2Infrastructure InceptionThis essay is about Keith Baldwin, a 44-year-old surgeon who lives outside New Bedford, Mass. This essay is about how Dr. Baldwin lost more than 90% of the $177,000 that he had saved over the past decade. This essay is about the house that Dr. Baldwin was planning to buy with that money. And this […]
May 2022
- MAY 30Reputational Risk3 Fintech News Stories #1: Reputational Risk What happened? Adventure Now, Pay Later (or, more accurately, BNPL for guns) is apparently a thing: If you visit the website for gun manufacturer Daniel Defense, the first thing you’ll see is a pop-up message offering condolences to the victims of a gunman who killed 21 people at a […]
- MAY 25A Super App for HomeownersLiquidity on the Back End, Fragmentation on the Front End In my first essay on this subject, I wrote that the mortgage servicing process is “the biggest missed opportunity in financial services”. Why? Because I had recently gone through the home buying experience and I couldn’t believe how absurd it was. Here’s my description of […]
- MAY 23Fintech Companies Got Stimulus Checks Too3 Fintech News Stories #1: How Much BaaS Is Too Much BaaS? What happened? Unit, the banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, raised more money: Unit, a banking-as-a-service startup, has closed on a $100 million Series C round of funding led by Insight Partners. Existing backers Accel, Better Tomorrow Ventures and Flourish Ventures also participated in the financing, which […]
- MAY 16You’re Not Bad at Fintech If …3 Fintech News Stories #1: We Need a New Name for (Most) Stablecoins What happened? Luna, the sister token of controversial stablecoin TerraUSD, is now basically worthless: Luna plunged to $0 Friday, according to data from CoinGecko, marking a stunning collapse for a cryptocurrency that at one point was worth more than $100. The demise of […]
- MAY 13Fintech That Makes an ImpactWhen I announced that my newsletter had been acquired by Workweek, I wrote: Since I wrote that, we’ve seen an acceleration of the slide in public fintech stock prices that is, even for a natural skeptic like myself, a bit surprising: We’ve also seen a corresponding cooling in VC funding for private fintech companies, as reported by CB […]
- MAY 9One-click Checkout is Fintech’s Iron Throne3 Fintech News Stories #1: Everyone is Moving Up the Open Banking Stack What happened? Stripe announced a new product: [Stripe is] taking the wraps off Financial Connections, which will let Stripe’s customers connect directly to their customer’s bank accounts, to access financial data to speed up or run certain kinds of transactions. These include […]
- MAY 6The Underbanked TriangleWhy banks say no and why fintech companies lobby them to say yes.
