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Fintech Takes

Written by: Alex Johnson
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  • Summary

  • 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 2023 Alex Johnson
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Episodes
  • S7 E9: Fintech Recap: Synapse vs. the World, Visa Flex Credential, Buy Now Pay Later Reclassified as a Credit Card

    S7 E9: Fintech Recap: Synapse vs. the World, Visa Flex Credential, Buy Now Pay Later Reclassified as a Credit Card
    Jun 5 2024
    We won’t lie— we’re exhausted. Are you exhausted from keeping up with one of the most tiring stories in financial services? Jason Mikula certainly is, and he’s summoning the strength to join Alex to chat about the current drama between Synapse, Evolve, and Tabapay yet again. Things have devolved on BaaS Island from Lord of the Flies to a straight-up Battle Royale. Can anyone manage to make sense of Synapse’s ledger? The guys do their best to tally up all of the financial damage the bankrupt company has caused. But the better question is, will any of its end users see their money back anytime soon? Then, Jason and Alex get into Visa’s latest offering, Visa Flex Credential. Will the new card that flexes between funding sources (credit or debit) lead to new innovations? And what’s up with the CFPB’s reclassification of Buy Now Pay Later as a credit card? Does this actually change anything, or is it all a bunch of semantics? Plus, in this week’s “Can’t Let It Go,” Jason’s hung up on Solo Funds, the community finance platform being sued for dark patterns that had some mysteriously deleted tweets, and Alex can’t let Revolut’s bizarre hostage-like scam prevention photos go. Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack on that last one. Let’s get into it. TruStage Payment Guard Insurance is a first-of-its-kind insurance solution built for digital lenders, designed to help you attract more borrowers, strengthen your loan portfolio and reduce time spent on collections — all with minimal tech lift needed to go live. To learn more about Payment Guard Insurance, visit https://www.trustage.com/payment-guard. 01:23 Synapse vs. the World 27:10 Visa Flex Credential 40:05 Buy Now Pay Later Reclassified as a “Credit Card” 49:25 Can’t Let It Go 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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    52 mins
  • S7 Ep8: Not Fintech Investment Advice: Kudos, Azimuth, Layer, and Carputty

    S7 Ep8: Not Fintech Investment Advice: Kudos, Azimuth, Layer, and Carputty
    May 29 2024
    Another day, another credit card reward app to unpack. But this time, is it actually possible we’ve found the one reward app to rule them all? Alex and Simon Taylor discuss the promising rewards optimization app, Kudos, which helps users determine which credit card is optimal for maximizing points on purchases. Will Kudos change the rewards space forever? And if consumers expect points to be optimized at every turn, then what does this mean for the future of the rewards system? Alex and Simon make some predictions on what comes next for the promising company—will they launch their own card with an intelligent interface or sell their tech to neobanks and let them duke it out? Then they break down Azimuth, the compliance effectiveness testing suite for lenders. While automated compliance testing has been the standard in fintech for a while, will moving to a more automated approach be the solve for sampling problems for banks? And can anyone ever disrupt QuickBooks? Unlikely. So how can SaaS companies get a foot in edgewise against the Intuit behemoth? Alex and Simon break down Layer and explain how its embedded software approach might be an adjacent way to compete against QuickBooks. Plus, the guys also discuss the consumer-centric auto financing app that seeks to treat car purchases more like assets, Carputty, before manifesting a few ideas for fintech, including a better cross-selling solution for banks and credit unions and an AI that filters out scam conversations. TruStage Payment Guard Insurance is a first-of-its-kind insurance solution built for digital lenders, designed to help you attract more borrowers, strengthen your loan portfolio and reduce time spent on collections — all with minimal tech lift needed to go live. To learn more about Payment Guard Insurance, visit https://www.trustage.com/payment-guard. 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
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    57 mins
  • S7 Ep7: What Large Language Models Mean for the Future of Fintech, with Rohan Ramanath of Hyperplane

    S7 Ep7: What Large Language Models Mean for the Future of Fintech, with Rohan Ramanath of Hyperplane
    May 22 2024
    You can’t read anything these days without seeing something about how Chat GPT and large language models are the future of technology. So if LLMs are the future, what exactly does this mean for fintech? And how is it any different from the AI that’s already been used to make financial decisions for years now? Alex chats with Rohan Ramanath, the co-founder of Hyperplane, to uncover the application of AI in financial services and its future. Are LLMs the magic bullet to help fintech make better, more informed financial decisions for consumers, or are there still the same inherent biases and problems there have always been? Rohan and Alex delve into the niche of predictive problem-solving and the constraints and considerations of using LLMs in commercial-facing solutions. Rohan shares his insights on the future of AI in banking, the importance of trust, and the potential for consumers to have their own personal AI financial assistant in their pocket at every moment. Later, the pair explores the differences between the US and Brazil in terms of open banking and the use of unstructured data in cross-selling, before seeking the ultimate answer to the question of what kinds of unique opportunities AI presents for innovation and customer engagement. TruStage Payment Guard Insurance is a first-of-its-kind insurance solution built for digital lenders, designed to help you attract more borrowers, strengthen your loan portfolio and reduce time spent on collections — all with minimal tech lift needed to go live. To learn more about Payment Guard Insurance, visit https://www.trustage.com/payment-guard. 00:00:03 - AI Applications in Financial Services 00:03:14 - Unlocking the Power of Text Data 00:06:51 - Key Constraints in Commercial LLMs 00:09:14 - Financial Services and Generative Models 00:11:25 - Using AI to Predict Customer Behavior 00:18:29 - Common Data Sets for Predictive Modeling 00:21:14 - Utilizing Unstructured Data in Banking 00:31:28 - Effective Cross-Selling Strategies for Brazilian Banks 00:36:17 - Open Banking: Transforming the Financial Market 00:44:46 - Accelerating Experimentation with Predictive Models 00:48:34 - Reshaping Financial Services with AI 00:52:51 - AI Trust Issues Impact Customer Engagement 00:54:11 - AI Agents Making Data-Driven Recommendations 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. Learn More About Hyperplane: Website: https://hyperplane.ai Follow Rohan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohanramanath/ 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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    55 mins
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