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Fintech Takes

Fintech Takes

Auteur(s): Alex Johnson
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 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!Copyright 2025 Alex Johnson Finances personnelles Politique Économie
Épisodes
  • Not Fintech Investment Advice: Kontigo, Givefront, Beycome, & Cash App

    Not Fintech Investment Advice: Kontigo, Givefront, Beycome, & Cash App
    Jan 14 2026
    Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about fintech startups we’re absolutely not giving investment advice on. First up is stablecoin banking startup Kontigo, whose founder declared: “Kontigo is not a bank. Banking services are provided by the freaking blockchain.” We unpack the very fast arc that followed: getting deplatformed through its partner stack, the Venezuela and sanctions questions that can come with being “global by default,” and then the hack (Kontigo promised to reimburse affected users). Next up is Givefront, corporate card and spend management software built for nonprofits. We get specific about what “built for nonprofits” means in practice: IRS 990 reporting, grant restrictions, donor policies, and the go-to-market riddle of reaching over 1.5 million organizations that rarely rip and replace systems. Then there’s Beycome, which promises an AI-assisted home buying journey. They charge sellers a flat fee to list their home and close (including a $399 package, marketed as saving sellers an average of $13,185 in fees). We talk about why real estate fees are such a durable profit pool, and why distribution’s the hardest part of this business. Finally, we close with Cash App. Okay, not quite a startup at the same level, but there’s been a real vibe shift – as evidenced by a slew of new feature releases and capabilities inside Cash App (which we run through!). Plus,closing manifestations (manifesting some good outcomes for Cash App, and more episodes of Not Fintech Investment Advice for 2026). This episode is brought to you by Plaid. Plaid helps lenders approve more creditworthy borrowers without taking on more risk, combining real-time cash flow data with behavioral insights. It’s a fast, familiar experience people trust, and that actually converts. Learn more at www.plaid.com/ftt 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 Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com Follow Alex: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Companies featured: https://www.kontigo.com/en https://www.givefront.com/ https://www.beycome.com/ https://cash.app/
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    57 min
  • Fintech Recap: The 2025 Themes That Will Define 2026

    Fintech Recap: The 2025 Themes That Will Define 2026
    Jan 7 2026
    Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I’m Alex Johnson, joined (as always) by my partner in Fintech Recapping, Jason Mikula. In our first episode of the new year, we recap all of 2025 — through the big themes that shaped the industry and set the stage for 2026 (you’ll want to catch our predictions at the end). First up, Regulation in the Upside Down. We dig into Trump’s second-term reshuffle which replaced independence with centralization. Tailoring became code for deregulation, and regulators started talking less about consumer protection and more about “making community banks great again” (their shorthand for rolling back rules under the guise of helping small banks). Next up, stablecoins. With the GENIUS Act signed into law, 2025 was their breakout year. PayPal, Klarna, SoFi, and even Wyoming launched coins. We dig into whether yield-bearing stablecoins will reshape deposit markets or just become the modern equivalent of the free toaster you used to get for opening an account. Then, it’s the latest in the open banking saga. And then, it’s looking at gambling as our national culture. (Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket became sports betting apps in all but name, monetizing financial nihilism with bets on divorces, political violence, even war.) Finally, the IPO window reopened. Klarna, Chime, Circle, eToro, Figure, and Wealthfront all went public. (And we both agree that staying private isn’t always a sign of strength, but some structure is better than none.) We wrap with 2026 predictions (tune in to find out!), and in Can’t Let It Go, we offer up a crypto neobank that launched with a WWE-style promo, plus eerily targeted sports betting ads on YouTube… This episode is brought to you by Plaid. Plaid helps lenders approve more creditworthy borrowers without taking on more risk, combining real-time cash flow data with behavioral insights. It’s a fast, familiar experience people trust, and that actually converts. Learn more at www.plaid.com/ftt 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
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    1 h et 42 min
  • Diving Deep with Max Levchin

    Diving Deep with Max Levchin
    Dec 31 2025
    Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. Today’s episode kicks off a new long-form interview format I’m calling Diving Deep. And in this episode, that’s exactly what we do with Max Levchin, co-founder and former CTO of PayPal and co-founder and the current CEO of Affirm. This is what makes Max one of the most influential people in the history of fintech. We start with Max’s early PayPal years, when building encrypted mobile wallets and secure handheld payments for Palm Pilots taught Max a lesson about timing, distribution, and the danger of solving puzzles before the market needs them (being right about the future means very little if you’re early in the wrong way). From there, the conversation follows the spine of Affirm’s business, underwriting. Max explores how his experience at PayPal pushed him toward lending at the point of sale, which unlocked a different kind of math (and how Affirm built an internal engine that could evolve as machine learning grew smarter, without losing reliability, repeatability, or regulatory discipline). That logic runs straight into product design. No late fees, treated as a constraint, not a revenue stream. Full Truth in Lending disclosures shown at checkout every time, even when advisers warned the extra screen would kill conversion. Credit bureau reporting when most other BNPL players avoided it. The throughline is incentives: design the system so the lender only wins when the customer does, and culture has a fighting chance to scale. We end in the future, with agentic commerce. As machines get better at optimizing decisions, the financial products that survive will be the ones that were honest to begin with (but also what happens when software starts flagging bad financial deals before people do?). 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 Max Levchin: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxlevchin/ 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
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    1 h et 50 min
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