Episodios

  • Not Fintech Investment Advice: Cardamon, Sprive, Figg, & Glide

    Not Fintech Investment Advice: Cardamon, Sprive, Figg, & Glide
    May 21 2025
    Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, the podcast where Simon Taylor and I (Alex Johnson) talk through fintech companies we’re intrigued by, puzzled by, and occasionally want to manifest into existence (but definitely not invest in). First up is Cardamon, the cozy-sounding AI copilot tackling the cold, hard world of compliance. They’re building a regulatory assistant to speed up product launches (a direct threat to $500/hr law firms and a clever way to navigate the compliance iceberg). Their bet is that if you structure regulatory knowledge right, it can accelerate innovation. Which brings us to this question: What if compliance is actually the best place to start when designing financial products? Next is Sprive, a UK app helping homeowners pay off their mortgage faster by redirecting cashback and round-ups toward debt repayment. It’s clever. It’s elegant. But it also risks falling into what Simon calls the “PFM ditch” (the only people who use the tool are the ones already inclined to do the behavior anyway). But is mortgage payoff the product, or a feature? And if the real value is in rerouting savings wherever they matter most, maybe Sprive isn’t a mortgage app at all? Then comes Figg Wealth, the most complete “dashboard of dashboards” net-worth tracker we’ve seen in the UK. It pulls in everything (cars, property, crypto, stocks, bank accounts) and auto-values it all. The real unlock may be pairing that aggregation with AI-driven advice. If AI can widen both the top and bottom of the funnel, Figg might just make wealth management scalable. Last is Glide, which began life as a neobank but pivoted to selling onboarding and lending infrastructure to community banks and credit unions.Now they sit in the middleware layer. But here’s the big question: what can vendors build beyond table stakes that offers these smaller institutions a real shot at differentiation? No end-of-show manifestation this time, unless you count my dream of having agentic private bankers before we have agentic commerce! 00:02:30 – Cardamon 00:17:43 – Sprive 00:29:03 – Figg Wealth 00:40:43 – Glide This episode is brought to you by: Newline™ by Fifth Third is an innovative, API-first platform that enables fintechs to launch embedded payment, card and deposit solutions directly with Fifth Third Bank. Visit Newline53.com to see how Newline can elevate your business. The world needs MoR. With Paddle as your Merchant of Record (MoR), the global growth is yours. The risk, compliance and accountability are ours. Simple. Paddle offers all the benefits of an enterprise-grade billing system but with MoR flexibility, MoR control, and MoR focus on your core product. Visit paddle.com to learn more. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Companies featured: https://cardamon.ai/ https://sprive.com/ https://figgwealth.com/ https://withglide.com/
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    55 m
  • Fintech Takes: What the Hell’s Going On (Bank Regulation, Stablecoins, and Credit)

    Fintech Takes: What the Hell’s Going On (Bank Regulation, Stablecoins, and Credit)
    May 14 2025
    Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I’m your host, Alex Johnson, and joining me for his second spin on the podcast merry-go-round is Rob Blackwell (Chief Content Officer at IntraFi and host of the Banking With Interest podcast). There’s a whole lot of what the hell is going on in D.C. right now, so we’re officially codifying this recurring segment as What the Hell Is Going On, where I throw all my burning questions at Rob Blackwell and he tries to make sense of the madness. First up, the flaming hot potato throw is aimed squarely at D.C. bank regulation, the Treasury power grab under Scott Bessant. Most Treasury Secretaries stay above the regulatory fray, but Bessant? He came armed. Rob breaks down why this Treasury Secretary is ditching the playbook, diving into the weeds, and maybe signaling the end of the “independent agency” era altogether. Then we dig into the stablecoin curveball derailing bipartisan progress: why Democrats are hitting the brakes, what Trump’s meme coin has to do with it, and whether $1 trillion in deposits could vanish into the arms of Amazon, Meta, or anyone else turning payments into loyalty programs. And finally, we dig into open banking and ask whether the CFPB is about to walk back its most important rule in years…plus what that means for competition, community banks, and everyone not named JPMorgan. Plus, a lightning round that includes policy and Star Trek (spoiler: Rob’s a cat guy, and a Wrath of Khan guy)...which ends in a very serious debate about fries. This episode is brought to you by: Newline™ by Fifth Third is an innovative, API-first platform that enables fintechs to launch embedded payment, card and deposit solutions directly with Fifth Third Bank. Visit Newline53.com to see how Newline can elevate your business. The world needs MoR. With Paddle as your Merchant of Record (MoR), the global growth is yours. The risk, compliance and accountability are ours. Simple. Paddle offers all the benefits of an enterprise-grade billing system but with MoR flexibility, MoR control, and MoR focus on your core product. Visit paddle.com to learn more. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Rob: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-blackwell-63884826/ X: https://x.com/robblackwellAB Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnsonX: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
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    1 h y 1 m
  • Fintech Recap: BaaS Breakdown, Super App Déjà Vu, and the Tomo Trainwreck

    Fintech Recap: BaaS Breakdown, Super App Déjà Vu, and the Tomo Trainwreck
    May 7 2025
    Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I’m Alex Johnson, joined by Jason Mikula, and we are once again unable to resist the siren call of Bass Island. Tour we must. First up on BaaS Island, Increase is trying to buy a tiny Washington state bank to build the BaaS Warp Core of the future: tight tech + charter in one stack. We explore what this means for infrastructure players trying to outgrow their middleware roots. Next, California drops a consent order on Hatch Bank…without the FDIC. Are states taking the lead on BaaS enforcement, or is this just D.C. chaos fallout? Meanwhile, the cracks keep spreading. We tour banks that bet on building their own stacks and lost—just as Fiserv quietly deepens its reach into embedded finance via Thread Bank and its Finxact core. Is BaaS headed toward a two-lane future: tech-forward banks vs. core providers? Then it's time for a Vegas flashback: Ryan Breslow’s latest Bolt reboot is here. The payments super app now offers crypto, debit rewards, peer-to-peer payments, ecomm tracking (and a sweet Spotify playlist). We’re getting serious Echo déjà vu. Do we need this? And finally, the weirdest fintech lawsuit yet: TomoCredit doctored blog posts to claim a trademark on “cash score”, a term Prism (a Petal spinout) was actually applying for. Prism caught them. Tomo admitted it. It’s part fraud, part farce, and a reminder that fintech grift is alive and well.. Rants, recaps, and a little righteous fury…just how we like it! Newline™ by Fifth Third is an innovative, API-first platform that enables fintechs to launch embedded payment, card and deposit solutions directly with Fifth Third Bank. Visit ⁠Newline53.com⁠ to see how Newline can elevate your business. The world needs MoR. With ⁠Paddle⁠ as your Merchant of Record (MoR), the global growth is yours. The risk, compliance and accountability are ours. Simple. Paddle offers all the benefits of an enterprise-grade billing system but with MoR flexibility, MoR control, and MoR focus on your core product. Visit ⁠paddle.com⁠ to learn more. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Jason: Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/ Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
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    58 m
  • Fintech Takes: The Prodigal Return of Frank Rotman; On Financial Nihilism and Rebuilding The Game

    Fintech Takes: The Prodigal Return of Frank Rotman; On Financial Nihilism and Rebuilding The Game
    Apr 30 2025
    Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I’m your host, Alex Johnson, and today, one of our favorite guests is making a triumphant return visit—Frank Rotman, founding partner and CIO at QED Investors. Frank has a theory: in his words, the game of life is getting “harder to win.” Debt is piling up, wages are stagnant, and folks are being told they’re the only ones to blame for their financial struggles. His observation is that more people see themselves as playing PvE (Player vs. Everyone), prioritizing personal survival over collective outcomes. In a world where following the rules doesn’t pay off, so-called "irrational" moves like crypto gambles start making a lot more sense. We unpack what this shift means for finance, behavior, and the economy. Then, we take on a big question: is traditional financial theory broken? The old "work hard, save, invest in a 60/40 portfolio" model no longer delivers retirement security, and that's because rising costs, debt, and economic shifts have eroded its effectiveness. So, what might replace it? And how can avoiding financial mistakes be just as important as making smart investments? And finally, we explore how AI is rewriting the future of finance. Instead of generic, one-size-fits-all advice, AI-powered financial guidance could be real-time, scenario-based, and deeply personalized (aka imagine a 150-IQ financial strategist that can help you make smarter decisions on the fly...by actually talking to it? That future’s not so far away). Instead of shopping for financial products, what happens when AI can custom-build financial products to fit our specific needs? Would that create a system that works for everyone—or just make it even more complex? Join us for a deep, challenging, and necessary conversation about the future of money, markets, and human behavior. Newline™ by Fifth Third is an innovative, API-first platform that enables fintechs to launch embedded payment, card and deposit solutions directly with Fifth Third Bank. Visit ⁠Newline53.com⁠ to see how Newline can elevate your business. The world needs MoR. With ⁠Paddle⁠ as your Merchant of Record (MoR), the global growth is yours. The risk, compliance and accountability are ours. Simple.Paddle offers all the benefits of an enterprise-grade billing system but with MoR flexibility, MoR control, and MoR focus on your core product. Visit ⁠paddle.com⁠ to learn more. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Frank: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-rotman/ X: https://x.com/fintechjunkie Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
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    58 m
  • Bank Nerd Corner: Trust, Charters, and the Cost of Uncertainty

    Bank Nerd Corner: Trust, Charters, and the Cost of Uncertainty
    Apr 23 2025
    Welcome back to Bank Nerd Corner, featuring yours truly and—plot twist—not Kiah Haslett. Today we’re flying without our usual co-pilot, but in her place we’ve got Jason Henrichs: CEO of Alloy Labs, Breaking Banks host, and longtime Fintech Takes favorite, first time BNC co-host. Jason knows he can’t out-nerd Kiah (who among us can?), so instead we’re flying full black-box mode: no segments, just rants. First rant: VCs have no business chasing board seats if they’re not ready to govern! We still don’t know what the Synapse board discussed, if anything, as customers lost access to their funds. Then there’s Frank, the fintech that sold a fantasy to JPMorgan. The founder’s taking the heat (rightfully so), but not a word from the investors who stood to benefit most. Shouldn’t they share the blame? How do we build governance into the capital stack…before the next meltdown makes it everyone’s problem? Second rant: Financial infrastructure isn’t a policy tool, so stop treating it like one! Credit bureaus are built to assess risk, not engineer outcomes. But during the pandemic, we paused student loan delinquencies, wiped medical debt, and blocked BNPL data to improve scores, which sounds (and is!) very compassionate…but also encouraged lenders to stop trusting the data. It gets worse! The SSA quietly added living immigrants to the Death Master File used to prevent fraud, flagging them as “dead” and freezing them out of the financial system. You want to change immigration law, fine, but weaponizing infrastructure is sabotage! So, how do we restore trust in the rails before we lose it all? Third rant: Everyone cheered deregulation, but no one told the examiners! Banks are facing some of the harshest exams in years, and it’s because the regulators with institutional knowledge are gone. What's left are thinly staffed teams defaulting to “no” because they don’t understand “yes.” And fintechs that pursued charters expecting clarity? They’re running into delays, confusion, and examiners who just don’t understand the model. But for most, the charter hasn’t reduced risk…it’s just introduced new kinds. Fourth and final rant: This isn’t deregulation; it’s deregulation theater! The CFPB says it won’t enforce parts of the payday lending rule…but doesn’t repeal it. FHFA reverses housing initiatives by tweet. Executive orders bypass public comment with a shrug: “because I said so.” The result is total ambiguity (good actors stay quiet; bad actors run wild). Uncertainty is the new policy…and it’s expensive! Not just for banks and fintechs, but for the trust that holds the whole system together. Newline™ by Fifth Third is an innovative, API-first platform that enables fintechs to launch embedded payment, card and deposit solutions directly with Fifth Third Bank. Visit ⁠Newline53.com⁠ to see how Newline can elevate your business. The world needs MoR. With ⁠Paddle⁠ as your Merchant of Record (MoR), the global growth is yours. The risk, compliance and accountability are ours. Simple.Paddle offers all the benefits of an enterprise-grade billing system but with MoR flexibility, MoR control, and MoR focus on your core product. Visit ⁠paddle.com⁠ to learn more. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Jason: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhenrichs/ Twitter: https://x.com/jasonhenrichs Breaking Banks podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-banks/id641357669 Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
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    1 h y 2 m
  • Not Fintech Investment Advice: Ubyx, Codex, Agent AV, & Experian

    Not Fintech Investment Advice: Ubyx, Codex, Agent AV, & Experian
    Apr 16 2025
    Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I talk about fintech companies that we're definitely not giving investment advice on! The theme of this episode is infrastructure galore. We kick things off with Ubyx, who are essentially building the Visa for stablecoins–a network of merchants, issuers, and acquirers with a standardized incentive and legal structure that could help stablecoins finally qualify as cash equivalents. We’re not yet at the Visa moment of mass merchant adoption and real interoperability pain (all pain points are still mostly theoretical), but Ubyx is betting that moment’s coming fast. They’re one to watch, especially if you love good nerdy whitepaper... Next up, Codex. They recently raised a seed round (with participation from Coinbase and Circle, among others) to build a layer 2 blockchain network specifically for stablecoins. Codex wants to be the sleek payments rail for stablecoins, and while “just another blockchain” fatigue is real, there’s logic in going vertical. They’re also pitching themselves as a liquidity hub, which, if it works, could be a major edge in reducing fragmentation. Then, there’s Agent AV, which is basically Shopify for AI agents. They’re tackling the wild west of agentic commerce, where bots now shop on our behalf. E-commerce was built to keep bots out—but now, humans are deploying bots on their behalf. The challenge, then, is separating the good bots (authorized agents) from the bad. That’s why a two-sided mode, building for both agents and merchants, makes a lot of sense. It’s early days, but they might be laying rails for a whole new kind of shopping experience. And finally, the dark horse of the episode: Experian. Yes, that Experian. They just launched a new cashflow-based credit score and, in a twist, are skipping the bottom of the data stack to go full-FICO. In an open banking world, they don’t want to be the bureau—they want to be the scorer. No end-of-show manifestations on this go-around; Simon already manifested the biggest fintech nerd gathering ever, Fintech NerdCon, so Alex is manifesting an excellent inaugural NerdCon in Miami come November. 00:02:36 - UBYX 00:16:25 - Codex 00:30:05 - Agent AV 00:41:14 - Experian Newline™ by Fifth Third is an innovative, API-first platform that enables fintechs to launch embedded payment, card and deposit solutions directly with Fifth Third Bank. Visit ⁠Newline53.com⁠ to see how Newline can elevate your business. The world needs MoR. With Paddle as your Merchant of Record (MoR), the global growth is yours. The risk, compliance and accountability are ours. Simple. Paddle offers all the benefits of an enterprise-grade billing system but with MoR flexibility, MoR control, and MoR focus on your core product. Visit paddle.com to learn more. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Companies featured: https://www.ubyx.xyz/ https://www.codex.xyz/ https://www.experian.com/
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    55 m
  • Fintech Recap: Klarna Goes Public, Mercury Splits, and Lending…Can Hurt

    Fintech Recap: Klarna Goes Public, Mercury Splits, and Lending…Can Hurt
    Apr 9 2025
    Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I’m Alex Johnson, and as always, I’m joined by my partner-in-crime, Jason Mikula. Today, we’re unpacking Klarna’s public debut, the growing rift between Mercury and Evolv, and why getting wrecked might just be the best education in lending First up, the BNPL giant Klarna has finally gone public, filing an F1 as a foreign entity. Now as a public company, we’ll get to see their actual numbers. With 93M active consumers, Klarna isn’t small, but its path to profitability is still a question mark. The key stat? Transaction margins. Klarna’s European banking license gives it an advantage in low-interest rate markets, but as it pushes deeper into the U.S., credit losses are an issue. The big question: can Klarna mature fast enough to bring those losses down? Next, we’re diving into the fallout between Mercury and Evolv. Mercury has stopped onboarding customers through Evolv and is actively shifting accounts elsewhere—publicly, at that. Meanwhile, Evolv seems caught off guard for Mercury’s departure, with mixed signals on whether this was a surprise or a slow-moving train wreck. So, what really happened? And what does it say about the state of fintech-banking relationships? And finally, is taking a beating the only way to master lending? We think so. The right order? Start with lending, get punched in the face by risk, and then consider a bank charter. Doing it the other way around? Painful. Avoidable. And yet...it keeps happening. Please stop! Newline™ by Fifth Third is an innovative, API-first platform that enables fintechs to launch embedded payment, card and deposit solutions directly with Fifth Third Bank. Visit Newline53.com to see how Newline can elevate your business. The world needs MoR. With Paddle as your Merchant of Record (MoR), the global growth is yours. The risk, compliance and accountability are ours. Simple.Paddle offers all the benefits of an enterprise-grade billing system but with MoR flexibility, MoR control, and MoR focus on your core product. Visit paddle.com to learn more. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Jason: Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/ Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
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    1 h y 4 m
  • Fintech Takes: Will Stablecoins Disrupt Retail…or Just Disappear?

    Fintech Takes: Will Stablecoins Disrupt Retail…or Just Disappear?
    Mar 26 2025
    Welcome back to Fintech Takes! I’m Alex Johnson, and today we’re unpacking stablecoins with James Wester, co-head of payments research at Javelin Strategy & Research. James isn’t new to the space—he’s led strategic communications for blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies at PayPal (highly relevant to our conversation!) and has been a market research analyst at IDC. First up, we dive into whether stablecoins can disrupt traditional payment systems like cards and ACH. Merchants loathe interchange fees, but replacing cards with "cheaper" stablecoin solutions overlooks the added value of cards (fraud protection, rewards, and consumer trust). As for ACH, it’s already a low-cost option, so what makes stablecoins stand out? Then, we dive into how Stripe’s $1.1B investment in Bridge made even the skeptics rethink stablecoins. While they may not replace traditional payment rails, stablecoins have huge potential in closed ecosystems like Starbucks or Disney (imagine paying for your coffee with “Starbucks Coins” or skipping the line with “Mickey Bucks”—seriously, picture it!). Next, we tackle the UX hurdles of stablecoins. Right now with crypto, if you send funds to the wrong address, poof! They’re gone. For stablecoins to really take off, they need to be as smooth as the Starbucks app, making payments simple and rewarding users without them even noticing the tech behind it. Stablecoins need that same familiarity, aka dollar-backed balances and real-world incentives, to drive adoption. In the end, stablecoins could outpace prepaid and pay-by-bank systems with their flexibility, liquidity, and potential for ecosystem-wide adoption (which comes with major advantages), although regulatory hurdles loom. They won’t topple cards overnight, but in the long run? They could really reshape retail ecosystems. It’s a slow burn, but the potential is huge. Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow James: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswester/ X: https://x.com/jameswester Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
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    58 m
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