It is easy to forget that the Washington we read about or see on television is quite different from the Washington where our industry is conversing with regulators. This is where trade associations engage with regulators on substantive issues and get their voices heard. Six years ago fintech had no real trade association at all. Today, we have a vibrant trade association that is lobbying on our behalf to help drive the industry forward.

Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Garry Reeder, the CEO of the American Fintech Council (AFC). Garry became CEO of the newly formed organization in March, formed from the merger of the Marketplace Lending Association and the Online Policy Institute.

One the weekly news show today we discuss important news from Nubank, Chime, Stripe, Klarna, Visa, Mastercard, Bakkt, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Robinhood, LendingClub, and more.

We are going to back to Latin America today as we do a deep dive into the payments space there. With dozens of countries in the region all with their own currency, their own payments infrastructure, it has not been easy to expand into new geographies, but it certainly is possible.

Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Wagner Ruiz, the Chief Risk Officer and Co-Founder of EBANX. EBANX is a payments leader in Latin America where they operate in 15 countries, making it easier to do cross border transactions.

(As we were about to publish there were two big announcements from EBANX. The have filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO and they acquired Brazilian B2B fintech Juno.)

Until recently virtually no fintech companies were interested in a bank charter. It was just back in 2016 that SoFi ran a Superbowl ad with the "Don't Bank. SoFi" tagline. Now, they are looking to become a bank. Square and LendingClub have joined SoFi as approved banks (via different routes) and there are many applications that are still pending. So, I thought it was time to talk bank charters on the podcast.

Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Michele Alt, a co-founder and partner at Klaros Group. We spend a lot of time discussing the various options for fintech companies and we delve into some of the unique ways fintech companies are pursuing bank charters today.

Another engaging news show today where we discussed a very busy week of news in fintech. There was big news from Plaid, the SEC, Facebook, PayPal, New York State Attorney General, PIMCO, FTX, N26 and more.

One of the true pioneers of the fintech space joins us for the show today. This is someone who has become a giant of the fintech space, taking two companies from an idea to unicorn status in just a few short years.

Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Renaud Laplanche, the CEO and Co-Founder of Upgrade. He is back on the show for the third time (here are the first and second times) and the first time since he started Upgrade. We cover a range of different topics today and we delve deeply into some of Upgrade's unique product offerings.

This week we cover the following news stories:

• Coinbase is launching its own NFT platform to take on OpenSea
• NerdWallet IPO Filing Shows 21M Unique Visitors Per Month
• Crypto Lender Celsius Network Raises $400M in Bid to Reassure Regulators
• Tala grabs $145M to offer more financial services in emerging markets
• Crypto could cause 2008-level meltdown, Bank of England official warns
• Oportun pulls bank charter application, says it plans to refile
• Bank Dora: The First Neo-Credit Union in the U.S.
• New custom fintech stock market ticker launches from LendIt Fintech
• Jamie Dimon says bitcoin is ‘worthless’

I have said many times that Latin America is the hottest region for fintech on the planet. The digital banks and lenders get most of the attention it seems but the payments space is where companies are actually profitable as they scale. One of the payments leaders in Latin America is Stone Co.

Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Augusto Lins, the President of Stone Co. Stone is a publicly traded company (listed on Nasdaq) based in Brazil that started in payments processing but now offers a fully integrated suite of banking, finance and software products for their merchants.

We are talking about open banking again this week and we have one of the fintech pioneers on the show sharing his experience over the long evolution of open banking.

Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Steve Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Finicity. Finicity has been a real pioneer in the open banking space, or as Steve likes to call it an open financial data network, which is probably more accurate. Most importantly, we talk about what open banking can actually do, what it is doing today, and that is opening up access to credit for people who have previously been denied credit.

This week we cover the following fintech news stories:

• Google kills the Goolge Plex
• The postal banking pilot
• How card issuers helped fuel the BNPL boom
• When Facebook went down so did Novi
• US Bank launches a bitcoin custody service
• SEC Chairman Gary Gensler testifies before Congress
• Fintech's explosive growth has regulators scrambling