York Water-Gate and the Adelphi

3 Fintech News Stories

#1: Why Doesn’t Ramp Reach Higher?

What happened?

Ramp launched a new product — Ramp Treasury:

In a nutshell, Ramp aims to give its customers a way to earn money and not just save cash, explains CEO and co-founder Eric Glyman, in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch.

“We looked at checking accounts and deposits that clients had linked to Ramp and realized that the vast majority were earning 0.00% interest,” he said. Ramp Treasury, Glyman added, is designed to work alongside a customer’s existing bank accounts, not replace them.

With Ramp’s new Treasury product, businesses can store cash in a business account and earn 2.5% or in a money market fund for potentially higher yields. They can have quicker access to their cash to pay bills, he said, considering cash stored in the business account is liquid.

So what?

This isn’t a particularly novel product, as Brex, Mercury, Rho, Arc, and many other B2B fintech companies offer similar high-yield deposit and treasury products. 

Like many of those competitive products, Ramp Treasury promises to help finance teams easily manage and automate the movement of funds between the business account and the investment account so that they don’t miss any bills (Ramp has integrated AP functionality) or have idle dollars not earning maximum yield.

Ramp Treasury doesn’t have minimum deposit requirements and it doesn’t charge fees. It doesn’t impose limits on transfers between the operating account and the investment account, although the business account cannot be used to deposit checks, receive external payments, receive transfers from bank accounts that are not linked to Ramp, or make payments outside of the Ramp platform. 

As Glyman told TechCrunch, Ramp Treasury is intended to complement customers’ existing checking accounts rather than to replace them. 

I gotta say — I find that surprisingly unambitious.

Why isn’t Ramp trying to replace its customers’ bank accounts? And for that matter, why does it issue charge cards but doesn’t issue credit cards or offer other lending products?

From everything I have heard, Ramp’s platform is incredible. Why aren’t they doing more stuff with it?

(Editor’s Note — a Brex employee expressed similar sentiments on Twitter, but he did it in a way that irked me. In particular, he tried to spread some unfounded FUD about Ramp’s bank partner, which YOU DO NOT DO. I’m glad to see he deleted the tweet.)   

#2: EO

What happened?

President Trump signed an executive order to strengthen American leadership in digital financial technology:

The digital asset industry plays a crucial role in innovation and economic development in the United States, as well as our Nation’s international leadership. It is therefore the policy of my Administration to support the responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies across all sectors of the economy. 

So what?

A few things from the EO that caught my eye:

  • It forbids the debanking of law-abiding citizens and companies.
  • It explicitly promotes the development and growth of “lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins worldwide” and forbids the development of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
  • It establishes a “Working Group on Digital Asset Markets” chaired by David Sacks and including several cabinet members and numerous officials from the administration. This group will, among other things, work to develop new regulations to promote the safe growth of the digital asset industry.

The debanking portion should make Marc Andreessen feel better, though we still haven’t seen any hard evidence that “Operation Chokepoint 2.0” was a real thing that happened under the previous administration, so I’m not sure if this is much more than symbolism.

And I’ll be honest — I find the EO’s divergent views on stablecoins and CBDCs a little weird. 

I’m from Montana, so I fully understand the knee-jerk adverse reaction to CBDCs from a privacy perspective, but … like … shouldn’t we be just as freaked out by the idea of a couple of large companies issuing most dollar-backed stablecoins, especially when some of those companies are based outside the U.S.?

Setting privacy aside, what’s the argument for private stablecoins vs. a CBDC? Why shouldn’t we allow the Fed to experiment with a CBDC while also allowing private stablecoins to flourish? One (admittedly cynical) answer that occurs to me is that a CBDC would be unwelcome competition for the companies currently dominating the private stablecoin market, especially Tether (which President Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary has some significant ties to.)

Finally, the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets does not include anyone from the Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, or CFPB. This is a mistake. I know the crypto ecosystem is not fond of those organizations (to put it mildly), but a resurgent crypto ecosystem will impact the banking industry and consumers. They should have a seat at the table.

#3: A Bad Look For a Premium Brand

What happened?

American Express agreed to pay $138.4 million, including about $108 million in fines, and enter a non-prosecution agreement to end criminal and civil probes by the US Department of Justice:

The United States alleged that, from 2014 through 2017, American Express deceptively marketed credit cards through the conduct of an affiliated entity that initiated sales calls to small businesses. The alleged deceptive practices included misrepresenting the card rewards or fees and whether credit checks would be done without a customer’s consent and submitting falsified financial information for prospective customers, such as overstating a business’s income.  

The United States also alleged that American Express engaged in practices to deceive its federally insured financial institution into allowing certain small business customers to acquire American Express credit cards without the required employer identification numbers (EINs).

Finally, the United States further contended that American Express employees deceptively marketed wire transfer products known as Payroll Rewards and Premium Wire to its small business customers from 2018 through 2021, making false assertions regarding these products’ tax benefits.

So what?

This is a bad look for a company that has built a large chunk of its brand by championing the nobility of entrepreneurship and the importance of small businesses. However, as Wells Fargo and plenty of other large banks have demonstrated previously, it seems like this is ALWAYS what happens when you heap too much pressure onto front-line sales staff.  

The sooner technology completely eliminates human-driven sales to consumers and small businesses, the better. There’s just too much room for bad incentives, and consumers and small business owners aren’t generally savvy enough counterparties to discourage this type of bad behavior. 

The internet has, for the most part, destroyed retail banking sales as a career path, and that is a good thing.  

More broadly, small businesses are just very difficult to serve profitably, and banks (particularly large banks) are rarely in the best position to make the attempt. 

I have more thoughts on this point coming in an essay later this week.

2 Fintech Content Recommendations

#1: What’s Going On in Banking 2025 (by Ron Shevlin, Cornerstone Advisors) 📚

One of my favorite traditions is digging into Ron’s annual report and finding out what community banks and credit unions are thinking about as the calendar flips.

#2: OpenAI’s ‘Operator’ Agent Can Buy Groceries, File Expense Reports (by Belle Lin, Wall Street Journal) 📚

Autonomous, generative AI-powered agents are here. This isn’t a future thing. It’s a present thing. We need to start working to mitigate the risks immediately.

1 Question to Ponder

What’s one thing you’d like to see the post-Chopra CFPB (which I assume we will see soon) do?

Alex Johnson
Alex Johnson
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