Is Fintech a Moneymaker for MrBeast?
Happy Monday, Fintech Takers!
And Happy President’s Day!
Because I am a dad and was briefly a high school social studies teacher, allow me to share some fun bits of trivia about Presidents’ Day that you did not ask for and do not want:
- The official name of this holiday (according to Federal Law) is Washington’s Birthday, not Presidents Day.
- Washington’s Birthday is not celebrated on George Washington’s actual birthday. He was born on February 22, 1732, but, since 1970, President’s Day has been celebrated on the third Monday in February, meaning it can only fall between February 15–21.
- When George Washington was born, Britain (and the colonies) used the Julian calendar, so his original birthday was recorded as February 11, 1731. It later shifted to Feb 22, 1732, after we switched away from the Julian calendar.
- [This is typically the point in my spiel where I pause and look at my wife and kids with the expectation that they will say something like, “wow, that’s interesting!” and instead all I receive are blank stares.]
- The holiday was originally proposed in 1879, but it wasn’t extended nationwide until 1885.
- Different states celebrate today differently. In some, Lincoln (born on February 12th) is included. In Alabama, Jefferson (born April 13th!) is included. In Arkansas, Presidents’ Day is combined with Daisy Gatson Bates Day, a state holiday honoring the civil rights activist, journalist, and mentor who led the 1957 integration of Little Rock Central High School.
Wasn’t that interesting?!?
[More blank stares]
OK then! Let’s get into the newsletter!
- Alex
3 FINTECH NEWS STORIES
#1: Is Fintech a Moneymaker for MrBeast? Copy anchor linkCopied
What happened?Copy anchor linkCopied
Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has acquired Step, a consumer-focused fintech company:
Beast Industries, the entertainment conglomerate founded by Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, has agreed to buy Step Mobile, a teen-focused banking app, the companies plan to announce Monday. The acquisition will expand the YouTube star’s reach beyond media, restaurants and packaged food into financial services.
Founded in 2018, Step Mobile runs an app that offers a federally insured bank account without fees and a secured Visa card that helps individuals establish credit before they turn 18. Investors led by General Catalyst valued it at $920 million in 2021, but its valuation—like those of many fintechs that raised money at that time—is likely to have dropped since then. The companies declined to disclose the terms of the transaction.
So what?Copy anchor linkCopied
There’s nothing about Step that’s all that attractive as an acquisition target. The company claims to have more than 7 million users, but the number of monthly active users is likely a fraction of that. The product set — debit card, high-yield savings, fractional stock investing, credit building — is an undifferentiated amalgamation of typical neobank features. The company has invested more than the average neobank in financial literacy, which is logical given its focus on teens and young adults, but it’s nothing to write home about.
All of which leads me to assume that the primary attribute that made Step attractive to MrBeast was the bargain basement price that he likely paid to get it.
And what will he do with it, now that he has gotten it?
It appears that doubling and tripling down on financial education will be an early priority. Here is what MrBeast tweeted, after news of the acquisition broke:
And The Information reports:
Donaldson also plans to create a finance-focused YouTube channel that will make videos “educating people on investing and showing them what is a Roth IRA,” Donaldson said in an interview with YouTuber Jon Youshaei last month.
This makes sense. And if anyone can make young people care about financial literacy, it’s probably the guy who has 467 million subscribers on YouTube, with an average age of 25.
However, in financial services, there is frequently a tension between helping people learn how to manage their money responsibly and generating revenue. How focused will MrBeast be on generating revenue with Step? And how might that influence the direction he takes his new financial services offering?
According to Bloomberg, MrBeast’s content business (including his YouTube channel and his reality show for Amazon’s Prime Video) made about $250 million in revenue in 2024, but was unprofitable to the tune of almost $80 million. By contrast, his chocolate brand Feastables also made roughly $250 in revenue in 2024, but turned a profit of more than $20 million.
If that’s the playbook — lose money to maintain and grow distribution through content while monetizing through add-on businesses like Feastables and his upcoming mobile phone service — then I am slightly worried about MrBeast Financial.
Take crypto as an example. Step briefly offered crypto investing in 2022/2023, but then it shut that service down and pivoted to offering stocks/ETFs investing, which is a move I give the company credit for. As the recent crash in Bitcoin’s price reminds us, crypto is still very volatile and mysterious. While it may be an asset class that you eventually want to diversify into, it should not be the foundation of young consumers’ wealth-building strategies.
Does MrBeast agree with that? Would he be willing to delay introducing crypto investing and other DeFi products, especially if those products opened up more immediate revenue-generation opportunities?
It’s difficult to say. Right now, the company is talking about helping consumers “participate in the upside of the American economy through long-term investing via buying stocks and bonds.” However, back in October of last year, when the company filed to trademark “MrBeast Financial,” it listed capabilities such as crypto payment processing, decentralized exchange (DEX) operations, and other blockchain-based financial services. Additionally, Beast Industries most recently raised $200 million from BitMine, the largest holder of Ether.
Hopefully, experience has taught MrBeast to be cautious when extending into new industries and business models, and to not let the pursuit of revenue damage the most valuable asset that he has — the trust of his audience.
When he launched MrBeast Burger in 2020, it was initially a massive success. However, the model that he chose — a virtual, delivery-only model powered by a decentralized network of “ghost kitchens” across the U.S. — led to widespread quality-control issues, causing MrBeast to sue the operating partner, alleging the subpar execution damaged his brand and reputation.
As he wades into fintech, Mr. Donaldson is going to find similarly complex, decentralized supply chains, populated with incompetent and morally flexible service providers, such as his new company’s BaaS bank partner, Evolve Bank & Trust.
He would do well to move slowly and carefully.
#2: Block’s Credit Bureau-shaped AmbitionCopy anchor linkCopied
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Block has confirmed that it is going to be selling its Cash App Score to other lenders:
Digital payments company Block is working to expand the reach of its internal Cash App credit scores, betting that lenders will pay for more data about non-traditional payments and installment loans.
The Oakland, California-based firm is in discussions with several parties, and will start officially working with them sometime this year, Block said Thursday in a news release. A company spokesperson said Block will charge for the scores, but declined to reveal pricing.
“Block is inviting potential lending and distribution partners to join a waitlist for consideration to access Cash App Score,” the release said. Block declined to offer any details on potential customers for its score.
So what?Copy anchor linkCopied
Fuck yes. As a dyed-in-the-wool credit scoring nerd, this news is VERY EXCITING.
I have already written about it here, here, and here, but the gist is that Block has built its own proprietary credit score using its first-party data and it’s so convinced of the efficacy of this score that it’s planning to make it visible to Cash App’s 58 million monthly active users (which is already happening as a part of a pilot) and to sell it to other lenders.
While the company is still being cagey on the exact details for how this will work, it has teased a couple of interesting details.
Block told Payments Dive that the partners it is looking for include:
Lenders offering the types of credit access our customers need and are asking for, as well as established industry partners who can help get the score to a wider audience and help our customers get access quickly.
On the lender side, Block specifically calls out the efficacy of its score for auto loans and credit cards, so we can presume that its initial lending partners will be drawn from those product areas. In particular, I would expect to see companies that are keen to serve younger consumers, as more than 50% of 18-25 year olds in the U.S. use Cash App monthly.
On the distribution side, I have no idea. Block mentions getting access to a wider audience, so perhaps it’s considering one of the big lead aggregators, like a Credit Karma or a NerdWallet? Those companies could, in theory, pull the Cash App Score as part of the prequalification process when evaluating and sending leads to lenders. Perhaps as a fall-back option for consumers who have missing, thin, or damaged traditional credit files (70% of Cash App Borrow customers have FICO scores below 580).
Here’s another interesting detail, from Block’s product page:
[Cash App Score is] built on first-party Cash App and Afterpay data you can't access anywhere else, and available through a low-friction flow without third-party logins or bank linking required.
That’s a very interesting framing. The “you can’t access anywhere else” bit is clearly meant to differentiate Block’s offering from the traditional credit bureaus (which Block refuses to furnish data to) and the open banking data aggregators (which Block does not play nicely with). Additionally, stating that the service works without “third-party logins or bank linking” indicates that Block is planning to compete with rather than work through the data aggregators, which is smart given that some of them have already introduced their own proprietary credit scores. What that will look like, most likely, is a direct experience in which the borrower verifies their Cash App identity (using the phone number or email linked to their Cash App account and authenticating via OTP) and consents, after which the lender receives Block’s internal risk score via API.
That sounds like a smooth experience, and given Cash App’s scale and the growth of alternative lending products like BNPL, I can see lenders being interested in accessing Block’s data and score (especially in a fall-back or second-look capacity).
The hard part for Block is going to be compliance.
As I explained here, there is a narrow legal path for Block to avoid becoming a consumer reporting agency because the data underpinning the score is entirely Block’s own first-party data.
However, I just … I don’t think that type of legal maneuvering is going to hold up over the long term.
The CFPB is the primary federal regulator responsible for implementing the FCRA and supervising the credit bureaus. Even though it’s currently in a coma, it seems likely that a version of the CFPB similar to the Biden-era agency will eventually come back. And when that happens, it will look at Block’s data coverage (58 million consumers) and anti-competitive posture (no furnishing to the credit bureaus and no/limited sharing through the data aggregators) and conclude that if it walks like a credit bureau and talks like a credit bureau, it should be regulated like a credit bureau.
#3: The Machine EconomyCopy anchor linkCopied
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Coinbase announced a new capability for agentic commerce:
AI agents are everywhere – answering questions, summarizing documents, and assisting with tasks. But today's agents hit a wall when they need to actually do something that requires money. They can recommend a trade, but they can't execute it. They can identify an API they need, but they can't pay for it. They're stuck waiting for human approval at every financial decision point.
The next generation of agents won't just advise – they'll act. They'll monitor DeFi positions and rebalance automatically. They'll pay for their own compute and API access. They'll participate in creator economies and monetize their outputs. But to operate autonomously, agents need one fundamental capability they don't have today: the ability to hold and manage money independently. And they need money that moves at the speed of code – crypto rails that enable instant, programmable transactions without the friction of traditional banking infrastructure.
That's where Agentic Wallets come in. We've built the first wallet infrastructure designed specifically for AI agents – giving them the power to spend, earn, and trade autonomously while maintaining enterprise-grade security and programmable guardrails.
And so did Stripe:
Stripe has unveiled a preview of machine payments on its platform, integrating the x402 protocol to enable developers to charge AI agents directly using the USDC stablecoin on the Base network.
Jeff Weinstein, product lead at Stripe, wrote on X on Tuesday that the deployment would eventually expand to include additional protocols, currencies, and blockchains. The system utilizes the PaymentIntents API to allow businesses to programmatically charge AI agents for API usage, Model Context Protocol calls, and HTTP requests.
So what?Copy anchor linkCopied
To oversimplify, these two announcements signify the build-out of two sides of the same network.
Coinbase is building the infrastructure to give AI agents wallets, which they can use to spend, earn, and trade autonomously. Stripe is building the infrastructure to enable merchants to sell to those agents. Base (Coinbase’s Ethereum L-2 network) and the x402 protocol (an open standard developed by Coinbase for agent-native payment authentication and HTTP-based transaction flows) act as the connective tissue between the two. Base provides the on-chain execution and stablecoin (USDC) settlement layer for agent wallets, and x402 standardizes how agents authenticate, authorize, and complete payments directly with merchant infrastructure.
Two things about this are interesting to me.
First, it’s notable that Stripe has decided to play nicely with Coinbase on this, given that Stripe is currently building its own payments-focused L-1 blockchain (competing with Base) and its own open standard for agentic commerce (similar to x402, though focused on different use cases).
Second, I think these announcements tell us a lot about how Coinbase and Stripe see the future. In their announcements, both companies focus on the importance of stablecoins as the obvious payment mechanism of choice for agentic commerce. Stripe talks about the importance of attributes like 24x7 global availability and finality guarantees. Coinbase goes further, painting a picture of an entirely new type of economy:
Power agents that pay for their own resources using the x402 protocol. Agents acquire API keys, purchase compute, access premium data streams, and pay for storage – all autonomously, creating truly self-sustaining machine economies.
Stripe calls it “machine payments,” and Coinbase calls it the “machine economy,” but regardless of what you call it, both companies clearly want to own as much of this emerging machine-to-machine payments network as they can.
And I get it. AI-related investment accounted for an estimated 80% to 90% of U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025. And that investment has induced a level of hype and fear about the future of jobs, companies, and the economy that I have personally never seen before.
If you live and work in San Francisco and are steeped in this news cycle every day (Oh my God! Sam Altman just hired Peter Steinberger! What does this mean?!?), it would be easy to conclude that the machine economy is already here and will only continue to grow until it completely eclipses the human economy.
But, of course, that’s not true.
For all the excitement around machine payments and autonomous agents, most of the economy still runs on very human rhythms and constraints. The overwhelming majority of transactions don’t require instant cryptographic finality or 24x7 global settlement; they require consumer protections, dispute resolution, financing, refunds, regulatory compliance, tax reporting, and trust. They happen inside national banking systems, on card networks with mature fraud tooling (and extensive programmability!), and under legal frameworks built to handle mistakes and reversals. Agents may buy APIs and compute by the millisecond, but people still buy groceries, book travel, pay rent, finance equipment, and manage payroll. In those contexts, recoverability often matters more than finality, and ubiquity matters more than programmability.
Not everything can or will become a part of the machine economy, and Coinbase and Stripe should remember that.
2 READING RECOMMENDATIONS
#1: It Was Never About AI (We Are Not Our Tools) (by Eric Markowitz) 📚Copy anchor linkCopied
Among all of the reactions to the viral AI-is-going-to-change-everything essay that was bouncing around Twitter last week, this was my favorite.
This sentence, in particular:
These two worlds—Wall Street and Silicon Valley—have formed a feedback loop of short-termism so tight, so self-reinforcing, that they've confused efficiency with purpose, growth with meaning, and the elimination of people with progress.
#2: Private equity caused a font crisis at the CFPB (by Ben Kaufman, This Week in Debt) 📚Copy anchor linkCopied
As someone who is A.) a close follower of the CFPB, B.) not a fan of private equity, and C.) a low-key typography nerd, this article feels like it was written for me.
(HELP!) I NEED SOMEBODY (HELP!) NOT JUST ANYBODY (HELP!)
My colleague Kiah Haslett is writing a report on how modern technology is reshaping treasury management, and we have put together a quick survey to find out more about what banks, credit unions, and fintech companies are doing today in treasury management and what they are considering doing in the future.
If you work in treasury management or commercial banking (or can forward this email to someone who does), I would LOVE to get some additional input. The survey is short and anonymous.
Please respond here!
1 QUESTION FROM THE FINTECH TAKES NETWORK
There are a TON of interesting questions being asked in the Fintech Takes Network. I’ll share one question, sourced from the Network, each week. However, if you’d like to join the conversation, please apply to join the Fintech Takes Network.
How has AI changed your personal or professional workflows? Has it made you more efficient? Has it made you lazier or less skilled?
I am at the very earliest stages of figuring out my own answers to these questions and would be curious to hear how your experiences with AI are going.
If you have any thoughts on this question, reply to this email or DM me in the Fintech Takes Network!
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.
— Alex
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