OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK Does the US need a new online bank? If that bank serves new military recruits—who are often underserved, under-educated, and under-protected by the banking industry—then, yes it does. With the presence of strong military-focused financial institutions like USAA, Navy Federal Credit Union, PENFED Credit…

As I am sure you have noticed, there was an interesting development in the world of stablecoins this week with the news the PayPal PYPL is going to issue its own digital dollar. The market liked the news. While many observers are asking what its purpose is. Jose Fernandez da…

The Painpoint The US economy has officially 5.8 million unemployed. The actual number is closer to 10 million if people who have quit looking for a job are included. At the same time, many employers are finding it difficult to fill open positions. How could this state of affairs be…

The launch of the Fed’s instant payment FedNow system has raised the value of access to master accounts–which Kraken Bank, Custodia Bank and others haven’t been granted. By Emily Mason, Forbes Staff In July, the Federal Reserve launched FedNow, its first new payments system in 50 years. This promising new…

With wefox we were the fastest European fintech ever to achieve a billion dollar valuation. We raised $1.4bn in only 7 years and most recently had a $4.5bn valuation. We built a company with more than 1000 employees and more than $800m in annual revenue in hyper speed. Is this…

In an era where financial services evolve constantly, one trend has become a lightning rod for debate: Buy-Now-Pay-Later. Love it or hate it, BNPL has taken the financial world by storm, promising convenience and flexibility to consumers and increased conversions for online businesses. But it also faces criticism about its…

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) has surged in Indonesia over the past few years, plugging a large lending gap and in many cases acting like a credit card in all but name. BNPL has grown so briskly in Indonesia that some analysts believe it will replace credit cards altogether. Perhaps…

Amazon AMZN has announced that its palm recognition biometric authentication service, Amazon One, will be used for payment, identification, loyalty and entry and more than 500 Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh locations across America by the end of this year. They are not alone. J.P. Morgan also intends to pilot…

Cathie Wood, the iconic investor behind ARK Invest, is in uncharted territory, facing a question no one had asked her before. It’s a Monday afternoon in July, and the 67-year-old is buzzing with energy, despite having flown in on a red-eye from Los Angeles to St. Petersburg, Fla., the previous…

In the mid-2010s, the fintech business of Tencent grew exponentially, with WeChat Pay and its offshoots allowing the company to become a viable competitor to Alipay in China. Yet even as Tencent captured close to half of China’s payments market, and established a digital bank, WeBank, that could rival Ant…