In recent quarters, the financial services industry has been buzzing with discussions about regulation parity in the Buy Now, Pay Late sector, and its implications for both consumers and merchants. While the spotlight often falls on the financial aspects of BNPL, such as high interest rates, late fees and greater…

Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a joint statement to clarify how lenders can consider immigration status when deciding whether to approve someone for a loan. This is a hotly contested issue, especially in the wake of recent lawsuits alleging that…

We’ve all been there. Late-night calls from frantic colleagues, rumors flying like wildfire, disrespectful emails. and emotional outbursts in meetings. Drama at work is more than just annoying; it’s a productivity killer. Humans are wired for drama. In prehistoric times, drama meant danger, and recognizing danger was crucial for survival.…

Ethereum ETH founder Vitalik Buterin is someone I always listen to, so I read with interest his recent comment about how innovation is “so often about combining two existing ideas together in a new way”. He gave the example of the combination of digital wallets and artificial intelligence as a…

Last year PayPal slashed its prices in its payment services business in an attempt to fend off Dutch giant Ayden and other encroaching competitors. The strategy is working, but at what cost? By Emily Mason, Forbes Staff Consumers rarely even think about who processes their payments at checkout. Whether it’s…

Pop quiz: Which players in the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) ecosystem — sponsor banks, fintechs, lead generators and middleware providers — are fair game for today’s regulatory crackdown on bias in lending? If you answered “all of the above,” you’d be right. Today, plenty of fintechs, lead generators, middleware providers and other…

Ask any fintech or payments analyst and they will tell you: all eyes are on Stripe and Adyen. But with a continually delayed, yet always ‘just around the corner’, IPO for Stripe and a recent 40% decline in stock price for Adyen we must ask ourselves – is the future…

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK If you’ve been to any industry conferences this year, you know that ChatGPT and Generative AI—and artificial intelligence, in general—dominate the agendas. Too much of the content, however, is preachy and vacuous—e.g., ”AI is going to be disruptive” or “AI is a game changer.”…

Banking-as-a-service platform Synapse laid off 40% of its workforce, or 86 employees, on Monday, October 2. Synapse’s platform helps other startups offer deposit, payment and credit products by acting as a middleman between its clients and their banking partners. The layoffs followed a note from CEO Sankaet Pathak on Friday,…

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case threatening to unwind the work of the 13-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by arguing that its funding source is unconstitutional. The CFPB receives funding from the Federal Reserve Board. The director of the CFPB requests the amount of money…