It has been a mixed earnings season so far for public fintech companies. With many companies reporting this week, we have had some good news, some bad news and some really bad news. It is a brave investor who holds a pool of fintech stocks today. But our top story is another proposed rule from the CFPB (they have been very active this year, haven’t they), this one targeting Big Tech. The largest of these behemoths process more payments than some countries and the CFPB thinks there should be some financial oversight here.
Here are my top five news stories in fintech this week:
- Consumer Bureau Seeks to Supervise Digital Payment Apps from The New York Times – The CFPB has Big Tech in its sights now as it proposed a new rule that would subject non-banks with payment apps or digital wallets that process more than five million transactions a year to the same supervisory examinations as banks and credit unions. The rule could impact 17 companies including the likes of Apple, Google, PayPal, and Block.
- JPMorgan Switches On Programmable Payments Using Blockchain Tech from Bloomberg – JPMorgan continues to be a leader in blockchain technology as it develops new features for JPM Coin. Clients will now be able to program their JPM Coin by plugging in a set of conditions that will enable them to automatically move funds for such things as overdue payments and margin calls. JPM Coin is currently transacting $1 billion worth of transactions a day on chain.
- Plaid Launches Consumer Reporting Agency to Leverage Cash Flow Data for Credit Risk Insights from Finovate – While Alex Johnson broke this story it didn’t get much play in the press which surprised me because I think this is a big deal (I am working on my own deep dive on Plaid). Anyway, Plaid is getting into lending with a focus on cash flow data and it is becoming a consumer reporting agency. This will allow Plaid’s customers to use this data in underwriting decisions.
- Andreessen Horowitz Co-Leads $60 Million AI Fintech Investment from Bloomberg – There have not been many large funding rounds to report lately so I am happy to feature this one. Black Ore has an AI angle which helps explain the investor enthusiasm and it is co-founded by fintech pioneer Eyal Shinar, who also founded Fundbox. The new company is focused on “transformative AI for financial services” and their first product is an AI tax preparation tool for accountants.
- This was peak earnings week for fintech – Earnings season is in full swing as we had the following companies reporting this week: Marqeta, MoneyLion, Affirm, Upstart, Oportun (ouch), and Toast. There were some pretty wild swings in stock prices in what was one of the most volatile weeks for fintech stocks in a long time. The WSJ also provided some insight on Block, PayPal and SoFi, which all reported last week.
Podcasts This Week
Fintech One-on-One – Eric Shoykhet, CEO & Co-Founder of Link Money.
Fintech Coffee Break – Nicky Senyard and Alana Levine of FintelConnect.
Fintech Blueprint – Guy Young, CEO and Founder of Ethena Labs.
