Fintech Nexus Newsletter

There are big changes coming to the world of interchange. Today, in a historic settlement, Visa and Mastercard have agreed to cap card interchange fees as they seek to end a legal fight that has spanned almost two decades.

Two years ago, before the crypto meltdown of 2022, stablecoin issuer Circle announced that it was going to go public via SPAC at a $9 billion valuation. But then, you know, 2022 happened (Celsius, 3AC, Luna, BlockFi, FTX, etc). So plans were quietly shelved in December of that horrible year for crypto.

The US dollar stablecoin market has long been dominated by Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC). Together these stablecoins have a market cap of around $140 billion or so. While others have tried, notably PayPal last year, there is no other stablecoin with a market cap of more than $3 billion.

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

HSBC has announced Zing, a new retail-focused service offering inexpensive foreign exchange. The large banks. particularly in Europe, have mainly looked on with envy as startups like Wise and Revolut have built large businesses on the back of offering cheap foreign exchange to tens of millions of retail customers.

Block reported earnings after the bell yesterday and it was a strong report with solid revenue growth in both Cash App and Square. Revenue for the fourth quarter was above expectations at $5.77 billion and gross profit was $2.03 billion, up 22% from a year ago.

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.

The biggest name in Silicon Valley venture capital over the last half-century is Sequoia. And the biggest name in European fintech is Klarna.

Forbes is out with its ninth annual Fintech 50 this morning, a subjective list of the hottest startups in fintech. The list is created by Forbes editors, is only open to private companies and it involves analyzing data as well as interviews with company CEOs and industry insiders.

Yesterday, the official legislation was issued to make the long-awaited adjustment to the CRA, accounting for the digital landscape.