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Happy Friday, Fintech Takers!

Well, we did it. 2025 is racing to a close.

It’s been one hell of a year. Lots of personal and professional highlights. Lots of disappointing moments and enshittification, too.

It certainly hasn’t been boring, and I can’t wait to keep doing this (and some new stuff) in the new year.

– Alex

P.S. — The most important sporting event in the history of the state of Montana is happening tomorrow. I need y’all to send good thoughts. FTG and Go Cats!!!

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The Fintech Takes podcast is one of the things I’m most proud of. It doesn’t get as much attention as the newsletter, but I put a ton of work into it every week, and I think some of the smartest ideas that have come out of Fintech Takes started as conversations on the podcast.

For today’s newsletter, I thought it would be fun to focus entirely on podcasts. In the spirit of Spotify Wrapped (which revealed that the Fintech Takes podcast was the #1 podcast for 169 people!), I’ll share a list of our most popular podcast episodes from 2025.

Traveling for the holidays? What could be better than a Fintech Takes soundtrack? 

Ready?

Here we go …

James Wester (Lead Research Director at Javelin; Payments Tech & Digital Assets) and I walked the “stablecoins will replace cards and ACH” argument around the block and found it … lacking. 

Does that mean that there are no theoretically strong domestic payments use cases for stablecoins?

Not necessarily! Tune in to hear James’ idea!

Stablecoins take the top two spots! That’s 2025 in a nutshell! 

James Wester, our unofficial Fintech Takes stablecoin correspondent made another appearance. We dug into why programmability could reshape the banking and payments stack. Community banks are stuck watching Stripe sprint past them. And if stablecoin issuers (which are successfully getting national trust bank charters) also get access to Fed master accounts? Watch out.

James nailed it: stablecoins aren’t the next hot, sexy fintech product. They’re utilities. And nobody brags about their electricity provider …

File this as one of those episodes where the threads tie themselves together. The CFPB chaos, de novo dysfunction, crypto/BaaS debanking — all orbit the same question: who gets to build? 

Kiah’s take on crypto and BaaS scaling the same way (quickly, thanks to middleware, and then publicly exploding) stuck with me. 

Also: shoutout to FinCEN for remaining a complete black box. Incredible consistency.

Martin (Policy & Risk Integration at SOLO; ex-CFPB) brought our years of nerdy credit risk and underwriting chats into the daylight.

His new Fintech Takes research report, “How Cash Flow Data Can Diffuse the Credit Score Time Bomb,” lit the fuse. 

We dug into FICO’s weird origin story (and how it accidentally became a trust proxy for the whole system) that’s continued to rattle around in my brain (and content!) since.

Another favorite episode with another credit and cash flow underwriting nerd! 

Tim Bates (Head of Consumer Credit at Panacea Financial) joined for a practical deep dive on where cash flow underwriting stands. He brought the rarest thing in lending: a real implementation guide — “Credit Risk Underwriting: A Practical Credit Risk Implementation Guide for Lenders,” which I was over the moon to publish in the Fintech Takes Network. 

Cash flow data isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s getting harder to ignore. The lenders who figure it out first will have a real edge.

“What the Hell’s Going On In D.C.?” was a recurring segment this year, and Rob (Chief Content Officer at IntraFi and host of the Banking With Interest podcast) became my official “What the Hell’s Going on in D.C.” correspondent. In this episode, he and Igot into everything, from a Treasury overreach to open banking whiplash. The stablecoin derailment bit was brutal (in a good way). 

Also, a serious Star Trek and fries debate broke out at the end. Important work all around.

Matthew – founder of Totavi and serial fintech builder (Wallaby, Vertical), ex-Bankrate – is one of only two people I know rocking 30+ credit cards.

We had a great convo on why premium cards are turning into subscription bundles, the genius of Bilt’s wedge strategy (spoiler: it’s not just the rent rewards), and crypto’s broader push into full-service financial platforms.

If you’re a points junkie, operator, or just curious why your airport lounge is so crowded … this one’s for you.

Alex (founder and CEO of MoneyStack) is working to reframe gambling addiction as a financial systems failure. 

We connected sports betting to fintech habits (power users, engagement loops, predatory incentives), and it’s eerie how much overlap there is.

Not an easy episode, but an important one.

Been wanting to do this one for a while. Dan — founder of Sunset Park Advisors and former CFPB official who helped craft the agency’s open banking rule (finalized last October) — takes the stage.

For listeners less steeped in the regulatory process, we break down how the rule took shape, assess where things stand today, and what should happen next.

JPMC’s timing with those API fees? Let’s just say it wasn’t subtle.

Simon and I had fun with this one. 

We get into billing infrastructure for AI (think of Polar as Stripe Billing but for LLMs) and how mortgages could become an employee benefit (which may be a genius move by Multiply Mortgage; macro landscape notwithstanding). 

Plus, there’s OpenTrade, which offers yield‑as‑a‑service for stablecoins (WATCH THIS SPACE IN 2026!), and Spinwheel (combining open banking and credit bureaus).

Zero investment advice given. Lots of big ideas floated.

Things were getting weird, so of course, we hit record.

FICO started factoring in BNPL data (kind of; the caveats are plentiful), the CFPB shocked everyone by floating a Civil Penalty Fund bailout for Synapse users, and the FHFA turned governance into a Twitter thread.

Jason roasts ABN AMRO’s new sub-brand BUUT (yes, BUUT), while I spiral over Circle’s $56B IPO valuation (this is meme coin math applied to a narrow bank!). Honestly, I think this is the episode where we officially lost it.

Bringing us full circle! This was our inaugural Fintech Recap of 2025 (though it feels like it dropped 12 years ago, not 12 months ago). 

We kicked off the year with lawsuits (featuring the CBW Bank saga), IPO buzz (featuring Chime), and more! 

Plus, we rant about Vivek Ramaswamy’s tweet blaming 90s pop culture (like Boy Meets World and Friends) for America’s … software engineer shortage?

We said things were about to get interesting, and wow, did they. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end, yeah…

MORE QUESTIONS TO PONDER TOGETHER

Big news for the endlessly curious (yes, you): I’m collecting your fintech questions on a rolling basis. 

What’s keeping you up at night? What great mysteries in financial services beg to be unraveled? Think of it this way, if a stranger is a friend you just haven't met yet, your question is a Fintech Takes conversation waiting to happen. 

One that could headline a Friday newsletter or be answered in an upcoming Fintech Office Hours event.

Drop your question here, whenever inspiration strikes!

Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.

— Alex  

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