Until now, if you wanted to use the myriad of Stripe’s product offerings, you had to process payments through Stripe. But that is no longer the case. At the company’s annual conference in San Francisco yesterday, Stripe’s President, Product and Business, Will Gaybrick announced that the company is “extending our modularity to the very core of Stripe: payments processing.” So now, companies that have long-term contracts with Adyen, PayPal or any other processor, will be able to use any of Stripe’s products. This is targeted at large enterprises who may not be willing to break these co ..read more

AI is going to impact jobs across financial services and beyond. It is the adaptable who will be most successful ..read more

Online banks in Latin America have emerged as competition to traditional banks in the past few years. They were fueled by significant venture capital investments and substantial client acquisitions, and millions have signed up across the region. While Brazil leads the charge in digital banking innovation—several neobanks boast millions of customers already—the spotlight is shifting to Mexico as the next frontier. Here, a wave of digital lenders targets an underserved population, signalling a new era of digital banking innovation in the region. Nubank, the Brazilian largest neobank with almost ..read more

Today, Klarna announced an interesting new global partnership with Uber. Klarna is now a payment option for Uber users in the U.S., Germany and Sweden. Interestingly, Klarna is not offering its typical Pay-in-4 payment method. Instead, this is for the Pay Now option that allows users to pay in full with their Klarna account in one click. In Germany and Sweden, there will also be the option to bundle purchases into a single, interest-free payment taken out of a monthly salary. This is a big win for Klarna as Uber has huge volume that could move the needle for company. In 2023, nearly 9.5 billio ..read more

As the payments landscape becomes increasingly competitive, it’s crucial that businesses improve the customer experience with optimized margins and streamlined operations. This can be achieved by having as much data as possible, which can support processes, provide more insights, boost authorization rates, and even reduce the chances of fraud. However, we must also be cautious that we don’t lose data between entities in the payments chain (i.e. data flowing from the cardholder to the merchant to the card issuer). Otherwise, we won’t get enough value from analyzing the transactions. Boosting tr ..read more

One has kept a low profile since Walmart announced the creation of its new fintech startup in January 2021. We have seen an occasional announcement, but the fintech startup has largely remained under the radar. Today, CNBC is reporting that One is now offering BNPL loans in-store, putting it in direct competition with Affirm, which has had a long relationship with Walmart for installment loans. Both Affirm and One are now available at checkout for Walmart consumers, who number over 200 million a week.  There are also rumors that Walmart will be ending its credit card p ..read more

A new report from Viola Fintech shows why companies must go beyond embedded finance to contextual finance if they want their share of a pie estimated to reach $588 billion by 2032. It Depends on the Context: From Embedded to Contextual Finance is available here. Partner Noam Inbar said the rise of Generative AI and model commoditization make personalization more achievable. The trick is distribution. Crack that nut, and your costs are near zero. How contextual finance goes beyond embedding Most embedded finance firms limit themselves because they see distribution as simply embedding one produc ..read more

Late Friday, we learned that Synapse has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and that its assets will be acquired by payments infrastructure company TabaPay. This will not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the slow-moving Synapse saga for the last 12+ months. The company had done multiple rounds of layoffs and had an ongoing dispute with Mercury. The press release provides few details, but according to Forbes, the deal includes Synapse’s lending, brokerage, and credit and debit card issuing platforms. Synapse has lending licenses in 44 states. TabaPay has been focu ..read more

Revolut, the British-born unicorn, with a whopping 40 million clients globally across 50 countries and a prized banking license for the European Economic Area, has just clinched approval from Mexico’s banking regulator to officially become a bank in the country. Joining the ranks of digital neobanks, Revolut’s endeavor comes amid a wave of expansion among online lenders in the country and increasing competition. Now, it will have to comply with certain requirements in order to officially launch operations soon. Nikolái Storonski, CEO and co-founder of Revolut. Founded in 2015 in Great Britain ..read more

It has been a lean legislative session in Congress for fintech. But this week some progress was made on earned wage access. But on Wednesday we learned that the Earned Wage Access Consumer Protection Act advanced in the House Financial Services Committee. This bill aims to provide a federal regulatory framework for companies offering this product. The states have taken the lead when it comes to earned wage access regulation with Nevada, Missouri and Wisconsin all adopting new regulations. But there has been little movement at the federal level until now. The new bill is str ..read more