FINTECH TAKES

Welcome to Fintech Takes—the place where fintech’s biggest nerds come to sit back, relax, and completely geek out.

Facing Credit: Credit Underwriting as a System

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February 4, 2026

Fintech Recap: Clarity Crumbles, Charters Multiply, and Brex Gets Bought

Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I’m Alex Johnson, joined (as always) by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. Even if we aren’t sailing to BaaS Island, the news keeps flooding in. We kick off with crypto market structure, which nearly cleared Congress before imploding. The Clarity Act would’ve locked in broad crypto rules, including limits […]

January 28, 2026

Inside Net Interest

Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I’m Alex Johnson, joined by Marc Rubinstein, author of the fantastic Net Interest newsletter. In this episode, we bounce through some of Marc’s most insightful writing from the past year (linked below) to spotlight the structural forces shaping 2026. We explore why the U.S. has thousands of community […]

January 22, 2026

Fintech Takes x C&R presents Collections Conversations Episode 1: Collections in the Age of AI

Welcome to Collections Conversations, a new four-part podcast miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at C&R Software. The series digs into how generative AI is reshaping debt collections; what it enables, what it complicates, and why it might finally force the industry to retire the word “collections” altogether. In Episode 1, I sit […]

January 21, 2026

Fintech Recap (Bonus): The Rise and Fall of Kontigo

Welcome back to Fintech Takes for a special bonus episode of Fintech Recap with Jason Mikula; Latin American sanctions evasion expert and author of a splendid ~5,500 word investigation on Kontigo that demands its own episode. If you haven’t yet read Jason’s piece, “Kontigo: Y Combinator’s Venezuelan Sanctions Evasion Startup” in Fintech Business News Weekly […]

January 20, 2026

Fintech Takes x Nova Credit Presents Cash Flow Conversations Episode 5: Underwriting Was Just the Beginning

Hello, and welcome back to Cash Flow Conversations, a miniseries sponsored by our friends at Nova Credit. If you’ve followed my work, you’ll know that I’m obsessed with cash flow data (and underwriting more specifically) because it has enormous potential to positively reshape consumer lending in the U.S. Cash Flow Conversations tracks that shift, from […]

January 14, 2026

Not Fintech Investment Advice: Kontigo, Givefront, Beycome, & Cash App

Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about fintech startups we’re absolutely not giving investment advice on. First up is stablecoin banking startup Kontigo, whose founder declared: “Kontigo is not a bank. Banking services are provided by the freaking blockchain.” We unpack the very […]

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