Newsletter

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.

Late Friday, we learned that Synapse has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and that its assets will be acquired by payments infrastructure company TabaPay. This will not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the slow-moving Synapse saga for the last 12+ months. The company had done multiple rounds of layoffs and had an ongoing dispute with Mercury.

UK digital banking pioneer Monzo reported its financial results for the 2023-24 fiscal year today. The numbers are impressive. Total revenue was £880 million for the year, more than 2x the £356 million from the previous year.

Nubank is a fintech phenomenon. The numbers speak for themselves. Today, the Brazilian digital bank announced that it has surpassed 100 million customers in the three countries it operates in: Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. It is the first digital bank outside of Asia to hit that milestone.

It was almost a year ago when FIS acquired embedded finance startup Bond. CEO Roy Ng and much of the team stayed on at FIS. Today, we learned about the fruits of this integration. FIS has announced the launch of Atelio by FIS, its new embedded finance platform.

So far this year we have seen so many negative stories about banking as a service. You could be forgiven that BaaS is dying a slow and painful death.

It has finally happened. More than a decade after receiving the first spot bitcoin ETF application the SEC gave its approval yesterday. While this was widely expected, it wasn't a slam dunk as demonstrated by the tight vote: 3-2 in favor with SEC Chair Gary Gensler providing the deciding vote.

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