Fintech Nexus Newsletter

Greenlight has been a leader in helping young children and teenagers develop financial skills. Its app is used today by more than six million parents and children. While the company was traditionally focused on a direct-to-consumer model, it is increasingly developing partnerships with large banks to accelerate its growth.

We are almost one year removed from the banking crisis precipitated by the struggles at Silicon Valley Bank. Now, another bank is having its own struggles. New York Community Bank (NYCB) has announced a new CEO and discovered "material weaknesses" in some of its internal procedures.

The fintech space, and the tech space more broadly, is enamored with company valuations. The term unicorn arose out of that fascination.

A lack of financial literacy can be devastating to maintaining financial health. The big problem is that most people find financial literacy programs boring and don't stick to it. Many fintechs and banks have tried to counteract this by creating gamified learning.

Stripe has, for some time, been one of the leading fintech companies globally when it comes to scale. But the numbers it revealed today in its annual letter are truly staggering. It processed $1 trillion, around 1% of global GDP, through its platform in 2023. It crossed that milestone just 15 years after it was founded.

This week marks one year since many fintechs thought their world was ending. Almost every venture-backed fintech company banked with Silicon Valley Bank and for three harrowing days last March, many wondered if all their non-FDIC-insured money sitting at Silicon Valley Bank would be safe.

TransUnion, one of the big three credit bureaus, has launched a new data analytics platform called OneTru. The new platform will offer banks and fintechs AI and ML tools for addressing a variety of credit, anti-fraud and marketing needs.

When I first chatted with Mike Cagney back in 2011, when he was CEO of SoFi, it was clear he had big goals. His second act in fintech, Figure, quickly became a leader in home equity lending with all loans originated and processed through blockchain technology.

BNPL is showing no signs of slowing down. Consumers love this fintech innovation and now everyone seems to want in on the action.

The world's largest asset manager continues to embrace crypto. Yesterday, it was revealed (here is the SEC filing) that BlackRock has created a fund called the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund that will be launched in partnership with Securitize.