Happy Tuesday, Fintech Takers!

If you have been a subscriber for a while now, you will know just how unusual it is for me to be in your inbox on a Tuesday.

I have a good reason.

Today is the public launch of the Fintech Takes Network, a professional networking platform for financial services professionals!

If you need no further convincing on the merits of such a platform, you can just stop here and apply to become a member (and please share the good news on Twitter and LinkedIn!).

If you want to learn a little bit more, keep reading!

- Alex

P.S. – We are hosting our first Fintech Office Hours of 2025 tomorrow. Office Hours are opportunities for us to get together as a group every month, recap what’s been happening in fintech lately, and ask and answer questions. Tomorrow’s Office Hours (sign up here!) will be open to all, but most of them in the future will be for Plus Members of the Fintech Takes Network! 

---

A Closed-Loop Network for CuriosityCopy anchor linkCopied

I recently wrote about Pay by Bank in the newsletter. And in my essay, I postulated that the reason merchants hate paying interchange fees to banks and the card networks isn’t because of the monetary cost (although that does piss them off), it’s the opportunity cost.

Merchants want to invest in building stronger, more personalized relationships with their best customers, and paying 2-3% of every transaction to banks and the card networks (which helps fund loyalty programs that don’t benefit the merchant) is money taken away from that goal.

I’ve started to feel similarly about Twitter and LinkedIn.

I’ve gotten a lot of value out of those platforms over the years, but recently I’ve started to wonder — At what cost?

We don’t pay money for Twitter or LinkedIn (unless you pay for X Premium, which, trust me, isn’t worth it). However, we do pay for it. The interchange fee we pay to use professional social networks is our attention and engagement.

We go to Twitter and LinkedIn to learn. To meet and connect with fellow practitioners. And, ultimately, to find opportunities. That’s why we pour so much of our time into them.

And what we get out, increasingly, is nonsense.

My LinkedIn feed is filled with hustle porn and business school pablum and my DMs are 98% cold outbound sales pitches. I have to spend a ridiculous amount of time sifting through it to find the stuff (posts, comments, DMs) that is actually meaningful.

Twitter is, of course, worse. I’m not sure what Elon has done to the algorithm, but it has been serving me up some of the most random, bizarre, and (often) troubling content I’ve seen on the internet. Increasingly, I struggle to find the brilliant fintech insights (and people) that got me so hooked on Twitter in the first place!

Bottom line — we’ve been dutifully paying our 2-3% to Twitter and LinkedIn, and we’ve been getting less and less for it.

This is why I am launching the Fintech Takes Network.

In payments parlance, it is a closed-loop network.

We want to capture the incredible attention, engagement, and, quite frankly, kindness that fintech and banking professionals have been investing in Twitter and LinkedIn (in exchange for an increasingly poor return) and reinvest that back into the financial services ecosystem.

The Fintech Takes Network is a professional networking platform exclusively for experienced fintech and banking professionals. It blends the very best parts of Twitter and LinkedIn (along with Slack and WhatsApp) together with a souped-up version of the entire Fintech Takes content catalog into an experience that (we hope) will feel like home for you.

The algorithm that governs the Network is optimized for curiosity. We are not trying to blindly harvest attention and sell it, for the highest possible price, to any advertiser that will buy it. We want to help financial services professionals indulge their curiosity, discover new information and insights, and build connections that will lead to new opportunities.

Our mission is intentionally small. We’re not trying to build everything for everyone. We’re trying to build the best possible professional experience for fintech nerds.

If you’re interested in being a part of that, you can apply to join the Fintech Takes Network!

- Alex

---

OVERHEARD IN THE NETWORK FROM FOUNDING MEMBERS...

We’ve had a small group of Founding Members testing out the Fintech Takes Network for the last couple of weeks. So far, the feedback has been really positive. Here are a few quotes we overheard.

“Looking forward to getting to know folks, and hope this turns out to be a home for all the takes that are too spicy for broad distro 🌶️”

“This is probably as close as I'll ever be to being in the 'cool kids club', so I'm excited to be here. :)”

"May record some hot takes later…”

“I've been in the payments fintech space for decades. Every day I learn something is a good day.”

“If you ever want to talk open banking I'm your guy. Just... make sure you have a few hours blocked off.”

“Thanks for pulling this together! It looks like you already have a great group assembled. I see many friends have already joined.”