Archive
Everything published by Fintech Takes.
October 2026
- OCT 19I Wish You Good Fortune in the Wars to Come3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- OCT 19A Digital Wallet For AgentsAI agents have arrived to unlock the digital wallet
- OCT 16Engineered to Never End PayPal, Stripe, Ramp, and the state of venture-backed fintech companies in 2026.
- OCT 15Money’s Public Cloud Moment And the work we have to do to meet it.
- OCT 14An Agent Walks Into a Bank...Highlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- OCT 14Anatomy of an Agentic TransactionListen to the Fintech Takes podcast.
- OCT 12How Do You Verify if an AI Agent is Acting as a Fiduciary? 3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- OCT 12Fintech's Rebundling CycleUnbundling wins customers. Bundling keeps them. The industry tends to cycle through both, in that order.
- OCT 9Plaid vs. FICO and the Credit BureausThere’s an opportunity (finally) to really go after this market.
- OCT 7A 15 Min Bank & Other Bad Ideas Highlights from Fintech Recap
- OCT 5Can it take action? And how much does it cost? 3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- OCT 2Five Questions About Agentic FinanceReporting back from Salt Lake City.
- OCT 1The Investor Diaries Listen to the Fintech Takes podcast.
- OCT 1Replay: The Science (and Fiction) of FrictionLearn how to tell the friction that protects your portfolio from the friction that's costing you applicants.
September 2026
- SEP 30Dear Investor DiaryHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- SEP 28Whop Whop Whop3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- SEP 25Life (and Screen Scraping) Finds a Way And why banks will sing a different tune on access regulation this time.
- SEP 25The 2,000 Years of Rain Problem in SMB LendingTwo dentists. A dozen restaurants. Four large manufacturers. Maybe a couple of oyster farms.
- SEP 24An Accountable Credit ScoreOr why a first-party credit score is such a novel idea.
- SEP 23Under the HoodHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- SEP 21Amazon’s War Against Agentic AI Continues3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- SEP 18Fintech NorthObservations from a week spent north of the border.
- SEP 18Stop Competing For Your Own CustomerOne of the stranger things about consumer lending is that a lender can do everything right and still end up competing for its own customer.
- SEP 16A Crisis of Confidence (audio edition) Highlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- SEP 14Nubank is Playing Checkers and Chess3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- SEP 11A Busy Fintech WeekHere’s what I saw and heard in New York.
- SEP 9The Standards ConversationHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- SEP 7Share Nicely … Or Be Forced To3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- SEP 4A (Mostly) Fake Fintech Q&A Five questions that you and (mostly) me want answered.
- SEP 2Nothing Here is What it SeemsHighlights from Fintech Recap
August 2026
- AUG 31Winning and Losing With Tokenized Deposits3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- AUG 28Slop vs. SamenessAnd introducing the Finity Newsletter Platform!
- AUG 26💰 I had to have this talk with youHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- AUG 24Agentic Commerce is Still in its Prehistory Phase3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- AUG 21Five Reasons Stripe Might Have Bought OpenRouter What justifies a $7.5 billion price tag?
- AUG 20The Value of Certainty And why personal loans for debt consolidation still don’t work.
- AUG 19The Silicon UnderwriterHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- AUG 18It’s Time to Start Thinking About Cash Flow InfrastructureThere comes a moment, in the development of any new technology, where it makes sense to stop thinking in terms of use cases and start thinking in terms of infrastructure.
- AUG 17The OCC Failed Its Own Test3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- AUG 14💰 Voluntary, Non-Binding, and Full of (Contradictory) PromisesFive questions about the FDIC’s Standard-Setting Initiative
- AUG 12💰Natural, Sky Fusion, Quarters, & El DoradoHighlights from Not Fintech Investment Advice
- AUG 10Gates vs. Primitives3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- AUG 7Fintech Syllabus How to prepare for the next couple of semesters in fintech.
- AUG 5Loopholes and Warp Cores
- AUG 3Humility and Sympathy3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
July 2026
- JUL 31The Challenge of Building a Bundle Around OutcomesAnd if AI can solve it.
- JUL 30Open Wallet > Top of WalletIf your entire product lives behind a pane of glass that everyone carries in their pocket, how do you stand out?
- JUL 29What is Open Standard? Highlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- JUL 29The Primary Banking AgentHere’s a question I’ve become fixated on lately: What, exactly, is a primary bank account?
- JUL 27Liability for thee, not for me.3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- JUL 2412 Things You May Not Know About the Federal ReserveOr, why the U.S. financial system is so eternally weird.
- JUL 22Nobody Runs Toward LiabilityHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- JUL 20This is Why You Build a Payments-focused L1 3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- JUL 17Fintech 101 Sharing my observations, frameworks, and theories.
- JUL 15The Black Box, the Ship, and the Truth FileHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- JUL 13Can we make CDs cool?3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- JUL 10The Simpsons RuleA guest essay
- JUL 8Primitive, Exponent, Prime Intellect, CoverdHighlights from Not Fintech Investment Advice
- JUL 6Stablecoins’ Big Bank Consortium Moment
- JUL 3The Tolkien Fintech Naming GuideIf we’re going to do this, let’s at least do it right.
- JUL 1Fintech Failures, Debanking Debates, & a Prediction Market PotpourriHighlights from Fintech Recap
June 2026
- JUN 30The Lowest-Logical-Fare ProblemWhat business travel can teach us about where and how agentic AI can add value.
- JUN 30Neither Human nor Software: A New Kind of RiskThere are two ways organizations have learned to govern risk.
- JUN 30How do you ration a consumer right?3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- JUN 26Here I Go AgainRevisiting the world of fintech credit builder products.
- JUN 24The Deregulation ParadoxHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- JUN 22Keeping Pace 3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- JUN 19Fintech Threads: Stablecoins and Model DistillationFollowing up on a couple of stories.
- JUN 17B2B Marketing Doesn’t Have To SuckHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- JUN 15Pagaya Sues Klarna3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- JUN 12Regulation by Vibes“Look, we’ll let you keep doing what you’re doing. Just don’t embarrass us.”
- JUN 10💰 Plenty of Yellow FlagsHighlights from Facing Credit
- JUN 8A Bigger Walled Garden3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- JUN 5On the Frontier Figuring out a path forward for community banks.
- JUN 3💰 The Charter Trap & the Fed’s Power ProblemHighlights from Fintech Recap
- JUN 1The Feeling of Debanking
May 2026
- MAY 29Fake Fintech TradesWho says no?
- MAY 29Your Customers’ AI Agents Are Coming for Your Data. Are You Ready?According to a survey fielded by MX last year , 58% of U.S. consumers say they would be likely or very likely to trust AI to deliver…
- MAY 28Fixing Consumer Credit’s Human-in-the-Loop ProblemHow will AI impact the consumer credit stack?
- MAY 27Who Pays for the Pipes? Highlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- MAY 25How Much Are Fintech Banks Worth?3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- MAY 22A Crisis of Confidence This has happened before.
- MAY 20When gambling is called “investing,” we all lose. Highlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- MAY 18ChatPFM3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- MAY 15Three New Fair Lending Stories PayPal, Chopra, and Transformers. Oh, my!
- MAY 13Making Money When Your Customers LoseHighlights from the Fintech Takes Podcast
- MAY 11Anthropic is Building a New Type of Financial Services Vendor 3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- MAY 810 Questions About the Future of Fair Lending Goodbye disparate impact. Hello uncertainty.
- MAY 6PFM Problems, Super Apps, & Narrow BankingHighlights from Fintech Recap
- MAY 4OpenAI is Ushered Inside the Banking Perimeter 3 news stories, 2 reading recommendations, & 1 question.
- MAY 1Your Favorite Fintech Creators’ Favorite Fintech Creators
April 2026
- APR 30The Message and the MoneyMy view on stablecoins has always been this: they’re crypto, stripped of speculation.
- APR 29Stablecoins Are 150+ Years Old
- APR 27Keeping PACE
- APR 27What Business Model Do Bank Customers Prefer?As I am fond of saying around here, you are your business model .
- APR 24Quick Takes
- APR 22The Tax, Line, & Endgame
- APR 20The Eventual Agentic Commerce Liability Shift
- APR 17PMF 3.0
- APR 15Monk, MKIII, Wealth Architect, & CloutScore
