WORKWEEK

The big fintech news this week is that Early Warning Services (EWS) – a consortium of seven big U.S. banks – is developing a digital wallet: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and four other banks are working on a new product that will allow shoppers to pay at merchants’ online checkout with a…

3 FINTECH NEWS STORIES #1: A Fintech Time Machine  What happened? Mayfair, a fintech company focused on business banking and treasury management, is emerging from stealth: Mayfair is a new fintech startup that offers businesses up to 4.02% APY, a number it claims is among the highest out there. How a startup that is barely…

The purpose of today’s essay is to check in on how banks are feeling about the coming year. I use the term ‘feeling’ intentionally, as the overriding theme of this essay is an incongruity between the apparent reality of the financial industry and the economy at large (in pretty good shape!) and how banks and…

3 Fintech News Stories #1: Wait, is your name even Frank? What happened? Well, we may already have our winner for the most insane fintech story of 2023, and it’s only January 16th: JPMorgan Chase on Thursday shut down the website for a college financial aid platform it bought for $175 million after alleging the…

I’ve written about the Goldilocks Theory of financial industry analysis before – the most interesting stuff to study, the stuff that actually tells you something about the future of the industry as a whole, is the stuff in the middle – not too big, not too small. It’s why I find large regional banks so…

3 Fintech News Stories #1: Tell Me How Much It Costs! What happened? Rocket Money (formerly Truebill) offers a free version and a premium version of its personal financial management app. Did you know that nowhere on Rocket Money’s main website does it say how much Rocket Money Premium costs? A little digging in Rocket…