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Fintech Takes

Alex Johnson

Fintech moves fast. But here at Fintech Takes, Alex Johnson and his rotating panel of guests move faster so that you can stay on top of the latest and greatest news in the industry without breaking a sweat.

Welcome to Fintech Takes—the place where fintech’s biggest nerds come to sit back, relax, and completely geek out.

Join Alex and a lineup of fintech’s brightest minds as they dissect what’s happening in fintech and banking.

Each week, Alex and his guests recap the most interesting developments in fintech and explore the industry’s most pressing questions, diving headfirst into the intricate workings of some of the industry’s most ground-breaking business models and unpacking the emerging players that promise to shape fintech’s future.

From riveting conversations with fintech’s most relevant operators to comprehensive recaps of the month's most compelling news stories and in-depth analyses of the latest regulatory developments, Fintech Takes is your one-stop-shop for navigating the fintech universe.

Subscribe now to join fintech’s nerdiest podcast around!

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July 21 · 51 min
Fintech Takes x TruStage presents Lending, Unbundled Ep 3: Revenue at Stake
Welcome to Lending, Unbundled, a new series from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at TruStage. The series traces how consumer lending went from a single institution that handled everything to a modular value chain of specialized providers, each owning one piece of the loan, and asks what lending, unbundled, has cost the industry along the way. In Episode 3, my cohost Bjoern Nordmann (VP of New Market Development at TruStage) and I sit down with Aditya Khandekar, CRO of Corridor Platforms, to explore what happens when lending goes modular, but accountability still needs to be end-to-end (not just owned at one point in the loan lifecycle). When a borrower hits hardship, the originator, servicer, and funding source may all have different incentives. But the borrower doesn’t care who technically owns the loan; they blame the brand they can see. That’s why governance can’t sit at the end of the process, waiting to validate what already happened. Aditya’s argument is that governed decisioning can become the connective tissue: a shared evidence layer across acquisition, servicing, delinquency management, compliance, and customer management. Credit risk can move downstream. Reputation risk cannot. --- This episode is brought to you by TruStage. TruStage is a financially strong insurance and financial services provider, built on the philosophy of people helping people, meeting the needs of middle-market consumers and the businesses that serve them since day one. We believe a brighter financial future should be accessible to everyone, and our products and solutions help people confidently make financial decisions that work for them at every stage of life. Visit https://trustage.com for more information. --- 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 Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson --- Follow Bjoern: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/ Follow Aditya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityakhandekar/
July 15 · 1 hr 10 min
Retuning the Math of Life
Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm your host, Alex Johnson, and today one of our favorite guests is back: Frank Rotman, founding partner of 37Maru and co-founder and partner emeritus at QED Investors. First, we chat about what happens to an entire industry once its customers have concluded the game is rigged, which is why financial nihilism now shows up everywhere from ETFs built on sports bets to DeFi products costumed as savings accounts. Frank has a theory he calls p(win)=0; once someone concludes their probability of winning is zero, walking away from the game is rational. From there, we separate the AI use cases ready for prime time from the ones that aren’t. Back office work like AML documentation and exception processing is ripe for automation. A bank chatbot delivering flawless, compliant financial advice is a different proposition. In financial services, 98% accuracy can still equal zero. Finally, we close on student lending, an area where Frank has firsthand experience (having built a student lending company before QED), and firsthand ideas (having spent the better part of a year making the case for reform to the Department of Education and the IRS). His proposal for how the government could build a “truth file" on which degrees pay off is one of the more concrete policy ideas we discuss. Expect a wide-ranging conversation. Frank has a gift for making financial nihilism, AI, and student loan policy sound like one continuous argument, and by the end, I’m convinced that it is. --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus. Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit ⁠https://www.ocrolus.com/⁠ for 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/@FintechTakes⁠ LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson⁠ X:⁠ https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson⁠
July 14 · 56 min
Fintech Takes x TruStage presents Lending, Unbundled Ep 2: The Confidence Gap
Welcome to Lending, Unbundled, a new series from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at TruStage. The series traces how consumer lending went from a single institution that handled everything to a modular value chain of specialized providers, each owning one piece of the loan, and asks what lending, unbundled, has cost the industry along the way. In Episode 2, my cohost Bjoern Nordmann (VP of New Market Development at TruStage) and I sit down with Taylor Nelms, VP of Research & Insights at the Financial Health Network to untangle why consumer confidence is sitting about as low as it's ever been on record, Financial health challenges show up across the income spectrum, driven by volatility on both sides of the household ledger: 7 in 10 households report a significant unexpected expense each year, and recent labor market research shows unpredictable income is now the norm for most workers (not just those with unpredictable hours). As Taylor puts it, the job of a lender isn't just extending credit. It's selling certainty against volatility. — This episode is brought to you by TruStage. TruStage is a financially strong insurance and financial services provider, built on the philosophy of people helping people, meeting the needs of middle-market consumers and the businesses that serve them since day one. We believe a brighter financial future should be accessible to everyone, and our products and solutions help people confidently make financial decisions that work for them at every stage of life. Visit ⁠https://trustage.com⁠ for more information. --- 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 Bjoern on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/ Follow Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-nelms/ Follow Alex: YouTube:⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos⁠ LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson⁠ Twitter:⁠ https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
July 8 · 57 min
Not Fintech Investment Advice: Primitive, Exponent, Prime Intellect, Coverd
Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about companies we're absolutely not giving investment advice on. First up is Primitive, an agent control plane for large financial institutions trying to figure out what to do with AI agents. We get into why regulated institutions need infrastructure that sits above any one model provider, token budgets, and why AI labs deploying engineers into financial institutions should be treated less like a gift and more like a Trojan horse. Next is Exponent, a finance platform for franchisees. Franchises are one of the most reliable (and overlooked) paths to wealth building. We talk about why franchisees are hard to underwrite, how SBA lending fits in, and why a platform that helps both the borrower and lender could become the financial operating system for multi-location franchise entrepreneurs. Then there's Prime Intellect, which helps companies train, deploy, evaluate, and improve their own models. This leads us into one of our favorite nerd corridors: what happens when you train transformer models on financial events instead of language? Financial data may have its own syntax, and the models that understand it may be far more useful than the ones that chat well. We close with Covered, a gamified credit card that uses variable rewards and sweepstakes to make cash back feel like a chance to win big. Customer acquisition is brutal, top-of-wallet even harder, and in a casino economy, nudging people toward something marginally better is at least honest about the stakes. Plus, the most important question in the episode: is Anna or Elsa the real protagonist of Frozen? --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus. Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for 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 Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com --- Companies featured: https://primitive.com/ https://exponentfi.com/ https://www.primeintellect.ai/ https://www.coverd.us/
July 7 · 49 min
Fintech Takes x TruStage presents Lending, Unbundled Ep 1: Financial Accessibility and Inclusion
Welcome to Lending, Unbundled, a new series from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at TruStage. The series traces how consumer lending went from a single institution that handled everything to a modular value chain of specialized providers, each owning one piece of the loan, and asks what lending, unbundled, has cost the industry along the way. In Episode 1, I sit down with my co-host for the series, Bjoern Nordmann (VP of New Market Development at TruStage), and special guest Rodney Hood, former NCUA Chairman and Acting Comptroller of the Currency, to talk about why a regulatory framework built for vertically integrated lenders no longer matches an industry where origination, underwriting, funding, and servicing rarely sit under one roof. For most borrowers, that fragmentation shows up as a simple question: who do you call when something goes wrong? Rodney traces the shift to two forces: policy, including the compliance burden that followed Dodd-Frank, and specialization (as fintech entrants and consumer expectations for speed reshaped what lenders had to offer). Rodney also makes the case that AI can help correct for bias baked into older credit models and catch hardship before it becomes delinquency. As Rodney puts it: risk doesn't disappear because it moves, it simply changes addresses. — This episode is brought to you by TruStage. TruStage is a financially strong insurance and financial services provider, built on the philosophy of people helping people, meeting the needs of middle-market consumers and the businesses that serve them since day one. We believe a brighter financial future should be accessible to everyone, and our products and solutions help people confidently make financial decisions that work for them at every stage of life. Visit https://trustage.com for more information. --- 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 Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson --- Follow Bjoern: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/ Follow Rodney: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodneyhood1/
July 1 · 1 hr 16 min
Fintech Recap: Failures, Prediction Markets, & Debanking
Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. We start with Parker Card, an SMB charge card startup that abruptly shut down in early May. The failure itself wasn't the story. The SVB lawsuit against issuing partner Patriot Bank is, and what it reveals about $21 million in receivables that fell into contested no-man's-land when Parker's acquisition talks collapsed. If Synapse taught us anything, we apparently didn't learn it. Then prediction markets, a topic Jason forced me to cover. Fake Polymarket videos, Zuckerberg's play-money prediction app called Arena, and the CFTC’s proposed rule, which would give the industry nearly everything it wants (while drawing the line at contracts on assassination). We examine a specific loophole in that last point very carefully … From there, we get into debanking. A cluster of recent developments (from the DOJ investigating big banks and reputation risk being formally eliminated as a supervision tool to Lead Bank CEO Jackie Reses calling the whole narrative an absolute crock of shit) gave us enough to work with. Jason and I have both written extensively on this topic, and we land somewhere that might surprise some listeners. Finally, in our Can't Let It Gos: incomplete charter applications and a credit card pulled directly from my fintech nightmares. --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus. Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for 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
June 24 · 49 min
The End of the Checklist Era
Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Andrew DiMattina, Product Architect at Persona (and expert in all things fraud and compliance, especially AML compliance), to explore the changing state of compliance in the U.S. and around the globe. The expectation going into this administration was deregulation. What banks and fintech companies have discovered over the last 18 months is that deregulation isn't less risk; it's a transfer of risk. The checklist era was expensive but legible. This era is cheaper on paper and harder in practice, especially when it comes to fraud and compliance. When rules stop telling you exactly what to do, "compliance" collapses back into its actual substance: Can you really tell who your customer is and stop the bad ones? We get into: Why most organizations are staying the course on compliance programs even as the federal floor recedes What the OCC's consent order against Community Federal Savings Bank reveals about when a fintech program grows faster than its controls Why getting a charter doesn't mean your risk profile matches your size What "know your agent" actually means when a bot might be transacting on behalf of a legitimate customer (and why it adds a new question to KYC) --- This episode is brought to you by Persona. The best fintechs expand what's possible for users. Persona does that for fraud prevention. Their recently upgraded link analysis tool surfaces connections in real time, letting you spot deepfakes, identity farms, and fraud rings during onboarding and investigations. They just published their Fraud Leader's Guide to Link Analysis, a practical look at today’s top risk signals, automating decisions, and scaling link analysis for fraud prevention. Download it now: http://withpersona.com/ftt-fraud --- 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 Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Andrew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-dimattina-4a3b0414/
June 17 · 1 hr 51 min
B2B Marketing Sucks & Can Be Better
Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, and today's episode is a little different. Before I wrote a newsletter for a living, I spent the beginning of my career working in B2B marketing in fintech and financial services. So this episode is built around the provocation that B2B marketing sucks, but it doesn't have to. First up, Cokie Hasiotis (Head of Vertical Marketing at Socure and author of the For the Plot newsletter) and Julie VerHage Greenberg (founder of Quinnovation and formerly a co-founder and writer of Fintech Today and reporter at Bloomberg) join me to diagnose B2B marketing's boring problem. It’s an industry where 80% of decisions are made emotionally, and yet it runs on copy that makes you feel nothing. We get into why the head of content is a job designed to fail, and why founders are so bad at telling their own stories. Then, Jessica Kendall (Head of Content and Communications at Spinwheel) joins me to talk about messaging. We also get into the two AI problems every marketing team now has to own (tune in to find out!). And last but not least, Adam Ryan (co-founder and CEO of Workweek) joins me to talk about why B2B marketers can rarely prove the value of decisions they know were right. Blame the hidden sales cycle, and the tenure problem (the average executive B2B marketer lasts 18 months, often not even a full sales cycle). We dig into: What would B2B marketing look like if it remembered that buyers are humans? Can you measure a changed mind? If AI can produce infinite “good enough” content, what's left that buyers will trust? And so much more! Tune in for a curious tour through the discipline that decides what our entire industry reads, watches, and believes. As discussed, learn more about the Workweek Partner Platform: https://advertising.workweek.com/insights/future-of-b2b-runs-on-trust/ Apply for Workweek Upfronts in Austin (August 26 & 27) here: https://workweekupfronts.com/ This episode is brought to you by Persona. The best fintechs expand what's possible for users. Persona does that for fraud prevention. Their recently upgraded link analysis tool surfaces connections in real time, letting you spot deepfakes, identity farms, and fraud rings during onboarding and investigations. They just published their Fraud Leader's Guide to Link Analysis, a practical look at today’s top risk signals, automating decisions, and scaling link analysis for fraud prevention. Download it now: http://withpersona.com/ftt-fraud 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 Cokie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cokie-hasiotis-9b666363/ Newsletter: For The Plot at https://cokiehasiotis.substack.com/ Follow Julie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-verhage-greenberg-1748801b/ Follow Jessica: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesslkendall/ Follow Adam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamtryan/ Follow Alex Johnson: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
June 10 · 1 hr 24 min
Facing Credit: Pessimism and Performance
Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Dave Wasik, Partner at 2nd Order Solutions, for another episode of Facing Credit, our series on everything credit and lending. Dave comes armed with 2nd Order Solutions' new credit trends report, and the headline is: things are surprisingly OK, albeit there are yellow flags. Bankruptcies are up 14% year over year. New credit card vintages from Q1 and Q2 2025 are already delinquent at higher rates than prior cohorts. The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment is at an all-time low in its recorded history. The squeeze is getting tighter. Dave and I dig into: Why consumer sentiment and economic performance have diverged, and what the 1970s can and can't tell us about this moment The K-shaped economy and whose vibes are actually driving consumer spending Why the models aren't broken, the borrowers are just under more strain than they've been in years What happens when you eliminate disparate impact enforcement at the federal level and hand the states a vacuum to fill We close with a format we're calling the non-AI draft. Dave and I each pick two trends in credit and lending that would be dominating every conversation if AI weren't the only thing anyone can talk about. Tune in for our picks! This episode is brought to you by Persona. The best fintechs expand what's possible for users. Persona does that for fraud prevention. Their recently upgraded link analysis tool surfaces connections in real time, letting you spot deepfakes, identity farms, and fraud rings during onboarding and investigations. They just published their Fraud Leader's Guide to Link Analysis, a practical look at today’s top risk signals, automating decisions, and scaling link analysis for fraud prevention. Download it now: http://withpersona.com/ftt-fraud 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 Dave: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davewasik/ Follow Alex Johnson: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
June 3 · 1 hr 13 min
Fintech Recap: Charters, BaaS & the Fed
Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. We kick things off with the accelerating trend of fintech companies becoming banks. Chime's CEO confirmed it's a matter of when, not if — reversing their "we're a software company" stance. Mercury got conditional OCC approval for a national bank charter the same week it raised $200M at a $5.2B valuation. We explore what the fintech-to-bank stampede does to your valuation (our case studies are Chime, SoFi, and LendingClub), and why some companies chartering today might wish they hadn't. Then, BaaS Island calls us back (I'm a sucker for the sirens' song). The OCC issued a consent order against Community Federal Savings Bank, a single-branch institution in Queens that grew from $140M to $900M in assets by running fintech partner programs for Airwallex, Wise, Payoneer, among others. We discuss why the OCC acted, and why the order is unusually narrow. From there, we walk through two executive orders from the White House on fintech and bank regulation and the Federal Reserve's convoluted master account situationship. Finally, in our Can't Let It Gos: Jason can’t let go of SpaceX dumping on retail investors as exit liquidity for their VCs, and I can’t let go of PayPal's settlement with the DOJ over a fair lending investigation into a program that never made a single loan. Truly, this will haunt me forever! This episode is brought to you by Persona. The best fintechs expand what's possible for users. Persona does that for fraud prevention. Their recently upgraded link analysis tool surfaces connections in real time, letting you spot deepfakes, identity farms, and fraud rings during onboarding and investigations. They just published their Fraud Leader's Guide to Link Analysis, a practical look at today’s top risk signals, automating decisions, and scaling link analysis for fraud prevention. Download it now: http://withpersona.com/ftt-fraud 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
May 28 · 45 min
Fintech Takes x Chime presents Banking on Primacy Episode 4: The AI Episode
Welcome to Banking on Primacy, a four-part podcast miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by Chime. The series orbits one question that has become the most contested in consumer finance: what does it take to earn (and hold) the most important relationship in someone's financial life? In Episode 4, I sit down with Ryan King, technical Co-Founder at Chime, to explore what AI means for the primary account relationship. Ryan has been in and around Silicon Valley as a builder through every major technology wave. He argues that AI isn't another step change; it’s a slope change. The closest historical analogy is the Industrial Revolution: factories didn't give workers better tools, they reorganized physical production. Now AI is doing the same thing to knowledge work. At Chime, that belief is already operational: 84% of code is now developed with AI. But the more interesting conversation is about consumers, not code. Most of the financial services industry is racing toward building AI that makes it easier to spend, but is that the problem everyday Americans face? When AI starts making financial decisions on behalf of consumers, whose side is it on? And how does the business model answer that question? Financial institutions have spent decades building trust with millions of account holders. How does that trust translate in a world when OpenAI and Perplexity want the same job? This episode is brought to you by Chime. For most Americans, their primary bank account is their most important financial relationship. Traditional banks held that position and took it for granted. Chime was built differently: fee-free, built to succeed when members do, and now America’s #1 banking choice with roughly 10M active members. Chime Prime takes that further: 5% cash back, savings rates up to 9x the national average, premium travel perks, no fees. See how at https://www.chimeprime.com/ 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 Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanaking/ Learn more about Chime here: https://www.chimeprime.com/
May 27 · 59 min
Who Pays for Open Finance?
Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Rafe Mazer, researcher and author of the excellent report "Who Pays for What? Pricing and Monetization Options in Open Finance." This episode is a deliberate step back from the U.S. open banking soap opera I've been living inside for the past year or so. The question of who pays for open finance isn't one the U.S. gets to answer in isolation. Other markets have been wrestling with it for years, and at some point I needed someone to make me look up. That person is Rafe. Rafe works across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and beyond, and his new report surveys the global landscape of how open finance systems get built and funded. It’s the closest thing to a first principles analysis that exists, and you should read it (link below). We cover the four distinct cost stages of open finance (most countries only plan for one), plus the five pricing archetypes that exist globally, from Brazil's threshold pricing that was never actually collected to South Korea's voluntary, self-governing open banking exchange that works without a single regulatory mandate requiring it. The U.S., despite having one of the most competitive financial markets in the world, may be poorly positioned to get this right. We also get into reciprocity, the word that never appears in the U.S. open banking debate but probably should, and what a federal data protection law would actually change. Check out Rafe's report here: https://www.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/brief/who-pays-for-what-pricing-and-monetization-options-in-open-finance/ This episode is brought to you by Persona. The best fintechs expand what's possible for users. Persona does that for fraud prevention. Their recently upgraded link analysis tool surfaces connections in real time, letting you spot deepfakes, identity farms, and fraud rings during onboarding and investigations. They just published their Fraud Leader's Guide to Link Analysis, a practical look at today’s top risk signals, automating decisions, and scaling link analysis for fraud prevention. Download it now: http://withpersona.com/ftt-fraud 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 Rafe: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-rafe-mazer-13531b/ Follow Alex Johnson: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
May 26 · 59 min
Fintech Takes x Nova Credit Presents Cash Flow Conversations Episode 6: Living Out on the Edge
Hello, and welcome back to Cash Flow Conversations, a podcast series sponsored by our friends at Nova Credit. We've spent a lot of time in this series focused on the mainstream adoption of cash flow data within consumer lending: where to get started, the challenges you can expect to face. Episode 6 leaves that territory behind for the open frontier, where the conversations aren't about operational realities but about what's coming next. And there’s no one better to have that conversation with than Nikki Cross, Head of Data Science Consulting at Nova Credit. We get into why the development of custom scores in cash flow lending is harder than most lenders expect on Day 1, fair lending and how to navigate compliance concerns within an entirely new universe of data, and what agentic AI means for explainable credit decisions. Cash flow data reveals far more about how consumers tend to their financial lives than bureau data ever did; which is both the opportunity and the complication. This episode is brought to you by Nova Credit. Nova Credit is a credit infrastructure and analytics company that enables businesses to grow responsibly by harnessing consumer credit data. Learn more at novacredit.com. 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 Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Nikki: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkicrosspatrick/ Learn more about Nova Credit here.
May 21 · 48 min
Fintech Takes x Chime presents Banking on Primacy Episode 3: Banking at Work
Welcome to Banking on Primacy, a four-part podcast miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by Chime. The series orbits one question that has become the most contested in consumer finance: what does it take to earn (and hold) the most important relationship in someone's financial life? In Episode 3, I sit down with Jason Lee, Chief of Chime Enterprise. We unpack fintech as an employee benefit, which is compelling in theory but harder in practice than most founders expect. Employers don't wake up wanting fintech products. They want workers who stay. Jason founded DailyPay in his basement in 2015, built it into a multi-billion dollar company, and now looks after Chime's employer-facing business after Chime acquired his second company, Salt Labs. His read on what it actually takes to make this model work is fascinating. Why do most earned wage access products only reach 30% of a workforce and what serves the other 70%? Why does brand recognition drive employee adoption more than the product itself? Now that earned wage access is morphing into the financial health industry, where does that leave point solutions? This episode is brought to you by Chime. For most Americans, their primary bank account is their most important financial relationship. Traditional banks held that position and took it for granted. Chime was built differently: fee-free, built to succeed when members do, and now America’s #1 banking choice with roughly 10M active members. Chime Prime takes that further: 5% cash back, savings rates up to 9x the national average, premium travel perks, no fees. See how at https://www.chimeprime.com/ 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 Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonleem2/

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