Fintech Nexus Newsletter

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 Chief Product Officer Will Gaybrick announced that the company is "extending our modularity to the very core of Stripe: payments processing."

The UK has published a number of proposals for stablecoin regulation and how to bring the digital asset into the economy.

The Biden Administration may have avoided AI-induced chaos by issuing a sweeping executive order to manage the risks of AI. 

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) announced yesterday that he will not be seeking reelection to the North Carolina seat he has held for almost 20 years. Over the years whether serving as the Committee Chairman or as the Ranking Member, he has been a tireless champion for financial innovation on the House Financial Services Committee.

For the past two decades, the investment banking ecosystem in fintech has been dominated by one player: Steve McLaughlin's FT Partners. Now, that is not to say that other investments have not done deals. The really big deals are often done by the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, or JPMorgan Chase.

The fintech soap opera that is the Synapse saga took another turn yesterday. We learned less than three weeks ago that TabaPay was acquiring Synapse out of bankruptcy. Now, that deal appears to have fallen apart as disagreements between Synapse, Evolve Bank and Trust and Mercury remain unresolved.

When it comes to the adoption of generative AI in finance, we are still at the top of the first inning. That is why it was really interesting to read Penny Crosman's article yesterday about what is top is mind for bankers when it comes to Gen AI.

It was three ago last week when LendingClub closed its acquisition of Radius Bank. At that time LendingClub entered into an operating agreement with the OCC that imposed capital restraints and growth limits on the fintech pioneer.

As the price of bitcoin goes, so goes Coinbase. Bitcoin hit an all-time high in the first quarter, and Coinbase reported its best-ever results. The company made $1.18 billion in net income on total revenue of $1.64 billion. Those are impressive numbers, any way you look at them.

Banking as a Service (BaaS) continues to be in the crosshairs of the federal government. The latest banks to be hit with consent orders from the FDIC are Sutton Bank and Piermont Bank.