Fintech Nexus Newsletter

In Congress, anything that helps small businesses typically comes with bipartisan support. But section 1071 of Dodd-Frank is a little complicated.

Visa is hosting its annual Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco this week, and yesterday, there were some major announcements. Some are calling this the biggest thing in card payments since the card chip.

ChatGPT launched a year ago and the tech world will never be the same. The New York Times has an in-depth look at the impact of this revolutionary new product, focusing on big tech. It is interesting to me that one of the greatest tech launches of the past decade came not from a big tech company but from an AI startup that was not even seven years old and was set up as a non-profit research lab.

Robinhood is still bullish on crypto despite the SEC warning the company it plans to sue over this part of its business. We learned yesterday that Robinhood will acquire crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million, making this its largest acquisition to date.

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.

In a blog post yesterday describing their 2024 plans, we learned that X will be launching peer-to-peer payments later this year. We know that the company has been slowly obtaining money transmitter licenses as it builds out its payments capabilities. But this is the first time we have heard about concrete plans to launch a payments service.

Speaking at an event yesterday, CPFB Director Rohit Chopra said his agency is looking at "price gouging" in credit reporting. With credit reports required for selling mortgages to Fannie and Freddie, mortgage lenders have no choice but to pay for them. Some lenders have shared that the costs for credit reports have increased by up to 400% since 2022.

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.

Last month, it was Chase, this month, it is PayPal launching a new ad business. PayPal has hired Uber's former head of advertising to run PayPal Ads, the new division that will be selling targeted ads based on its customer data.

Marqeta, having already made their mark as a debit card issuing partner, has launched a credit card issuing platform.