Square upgrades Cash App into a payment processing powerhouse, completing the loop between the consumer and merchant side of the house. Goldman Sachs acquires GreenSky, adding a lending business at the point of intent. This analysis connects these symptoms into a framework explaining the increasing integration between commerce and finance, and the increasing role that demand generation plays. That in turn explains how the attention and creator economies interconnect with financial services.
Payments fintech Stripe announced three major upgrades to their payments platform to help users increase revenue, direct connectivity to major...
Payments companies around the globe have been issuing warnings that their businesses will take a big hit in the coming...
Santander’s partnership with MasterCard will make them the first UK big five bank to issue a debit card with MasterCard;...
Mastercard is launching a partnership with UK fintech Yoyo Wallet; Yoyo is a mobile wallet that can be used at...
An ‘overwhelming’ moment: Behind BofA’s $1B racial justice commitment PNC pledges $1 billion to fight racism Eastern Bank Readying For...
WhatsApp launches payments in Brazil and is unceremoniously shut down by the central bank a week later, MasterCard buys Finicity to protect itself against Visa’s recent acquisition of Plaid, Checkout.com continues its largely silent meteoric rise in payments, Softbank-backed and DAX 30 index component Wirecard “loses" $2 billion from its balance sheet and files for insolvency, Upgrade raises $40 million at a $1 billion valuation to extend its personal credit offering.
The principle behind Mastercard’s CipherTrace acquisition, L1 growth, and IRS getting your bank data
Paying attention is the path to seeing and doing. Mastercard has bought CipherTrace to see blockchain-based finance, to launch new businesses, and to plug in more networks into its nexus. The crypto networks proliferate at every layer, creating more computation on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Fantom, and Solana. The US executive seeks to see more too, asking the banks for their records of financial transactions to enforce taxation compliance.
We had already known about the partnership between SoFi and Samsung, but today the companies have officially unveiled Samsung Money...
Let's make a collective decision to see the glass as half-full. While physical banking (7,000 US branches gone during 2012-2017) and employment in the sector (425,000 jobs lost since 2013) has been contracting, digital commerce, banking, and investment management have been growing. Even DFA is finally giving in and lowering fees on their $600 billion institutional mutual fund family. Of course, Fintech has been a slow and gradual transformation, not a rapid disruption. We can make a choice to bemoan the loss of the past, or a choice to express an excitement for the future and participate in its making. Which side are you on?