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Hey all, Jason here.

Alex Johnson, creator of the Fintech Takes newsletter, and I are happy to bring you the latest episode of our monthly podcast, Fintech Recap, where we unpack some of the biggest stories in fintech, banking, and crypto.

In this episode, Alex and I had the chance to discuss:

* The HBO drama “Industry” tackles banking and fintech and it gets dark (SPOILER WARNING)

* Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rug pulls crypto market structure legislation

* Are proposals for a 10% credit card cap and the re-emergence of the Credit Card Competition Act mere bargaining chips?

* Affirm applies for an ILC charter

* Capital One to acquire expense management and corp card startup Brex

* And, as always, what Alex and I just can’t let go of

In this episode, I had the chance to chat with Castellum.AI’s cofounder and CEO, Peter Piatetsky about what has undeniably been one of the hottest topics in fintech, banking and compliance: agentic AI. Peter and I had the chance to discuss:

* How compliance leaders should approach evaluating agent-based solutions.

* What regulators are signaling when it comes to adoption of AI agents and how to turn those signals into governance, documentation, and examiner-ready controls.

* How firms should think about model governance as it relates to agents.

* How Castellum.AI’s agents are powering AML/KYC workflows.

* How agents will reshape compliance programs over the coming years.

* And more!

Alex Johnson of Fintech Takes and I had the chance to discuss the WILD story of Y Combinator- and Coinbase-backed Kontigo:

* Some context setting and clarifications on the difference between AML vs. sanctions and the impact of sanctions on the everyday people of the countries they’re enforced against

* Explaining Kontigo’s retail user service and its value proposition

* Talking through what also was happening behind the scenes to make Kontigo’s service possible

* The responsibility of “infrastructure” providers, like Rain, Checkbook, Bridge, and Stripe, as well as underlying bank partners, which include JPMorgan Chase and Lead Bank

* The parallels between “stablecoin infrastructure” and banking-as-a-service, including third-party risk management (TPRM)

* What lessons industry should learn from the Kontigo situation

* And, as always, what Alex and I just can’t let go of (about this story)

This episode is brought to you by Spade. Leading banks and fintechs use Spade’s transaction enrichment API to improve authorization, personalize rewards, and build smarter AI models on clean transaction data. Learn more at spade.com.

In this year-end episode, Alex and I took a look back at major themes and stories from 2025 and look ahead to 2026. We had the chance to discuss:

* The major shifts in the US banking regulatory landscape

* The explosive growth of interest in stablecoins

* Open banking’s setbacks

* Why everything seems to be gambling now

* Fintech IPOs

* Our predictions for 2026, such as they are

* And, as always, what we just can’t let go of

In this episode, Alex and I had the chance to discuss:

* The latest developments in the “do over” of the CFPB’s open banking rule

* Apple’s fledgling Digital ID

* Green Dot going private

* And, as always, what Alex and I just can’t let go of

Alex Johnson, creator of the Fintech Takes newsletter, and I are happy to bring you the latest episode of our monthly podcast, Fintech Recap, where we unpack some of the biggest stories in fintech, banking, and crypto.

This episode is brought to you by Cross River Bank, the bank behind the bold.

In this abbreviated episode, Alex and I had the chance to discuss:

* The 14,000 or so comments on the CFPB’s open banking do over

* Erebor’s conditional charter approval

* And, as always, what we just can’t let go of

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Hey all, Jason here.

In this episode recorded live in Las Vegas this Tuesday during Money20/20, I had the chance to talk with Oscilar cofounder and CEO Neha Narkhede. We had the chance to discuss:

* Neha’s background as co-creator of Apache Kafka and cofounder of Confluent, which eventually scaled to a $10 billion IPO

* How Oscilar is helping both fintechs and banks — including household names like Sofi — to power real-time risk stacks

* Thinking about risk as a data and AI problem

* Why organizations need to move beyond point solutions and data silos to manage risk effectively

* The importance of real-time decisioning across the customer lifecycle, from onboarding/KYC to fraud, credit risk, and transaction monitoring

* And more!

Hey all, Jason here.

In this episode, I had the chance to talk with Brian Reshefsky, founder and CEO of cashflow analytics platform EDGE, Timothy Li, cofounder and CEO of orchestration platform LendAPI, and Vincent Zhang, chief growth and strategy officer at Braviant Holdings. We had the chance to discuss:

* How different stakeholders across the lending value chain are driving change

* What goes into transforming raw transaction data into something that is usable in the underwriting process

* How cashflow data can be used to help underwrite borrowers across the credit spectrum

* How leveraging cashflow data can improve lenders’ bottom line

* And more!

In this episode, I had the chance to talk with Unit21’s head of product Kunal Datta. Kunal and I had the chance to discuss:

-The recent guest post Kunal published in Fintech Business Weekly

-The new fintech playbook: eliminating work instead of just streamlining it.

-How fintechs use AI to differentiate by solving for frequency instead of friction.

-How fintechs, banks, and credit unions are using AI to automate financial crime operations.

-How to think about AI automating manual work in financial services.

-And more!

In this episode, I was joined by Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Financial Institutions in the Faculty of Business and Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs at Columbia Business School, Stephen Haber, A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Professor of History and, by courtesy, of Economics at Stanford University, and Kiah Haslett, bank reporting veteran and creator of the Fintech Takes Banking newsletter.

Charles and Stephen are the authors of 2014’s excellent comparative analysis of banking and political systems, Fragile by Design, which informed our discussion and I highly recommend anyone involved in financial services read if they haven’t already.

Charles, Stephen, Kiah, and I had the chance to discuss:

* The nature of the “Game of Bank Bargains”

* Why Canadians love their banks

* Some of the underlying reasons behind the growth of the shadow banking system in the US

* Charles’ argument that Biden-era regulators were staunchly opposed to innovation in the banking system and why he thinks that former acting Comptroller Michael Hsu was “a complete hack”

* Why young people should pay more attention to the fiscal decisions coming out of Washington

* The risks of “progressive ideology” and why more government may not be the answer

* And much, much more

You can find more of Charles’ work here and and Stephens’ here. More information on the Hoover Institution, including the ability to sign up for its newsletter, here.