Fintech Takes

By Alex JohnsonBusiness News Investing Tech News

Fintech Takes episodes

October 28Stablecoins IRL (Tempo Edition)
Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I’m Alex Johnson, joined by Dan Romero, who leads GTM at Tempo, the payments-focused blockchain co-created by Stripe and Paradigm, for a deep dive into crypto’s future as payments infrastructure.

With the GENIUS Act establishing a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins, banks and payment companies have a clearer path to adopting them as a payment rail.

I start with a challenge to Dan: explain Tempo as if I were a community bank CFO who knows absolutely nothing about crypto.

From there, we explore the bets Tempo and Stripe are making about the trade-offs that come with moving money on-chain (from the economics of stablecoins and AI-driven transactions to the trade-offs between instant settlement, consumer protections, privacy, and public liquidity).

Highlights include:
Why Stripe built a new blockchain with a dedicated payments lane, rather than have payments compete with crypto trades for space (Dan’s analogy: imagine Visa and the NYSE competing for bandwidth on the same server).
How OpenUSD proposes sharing most of its net interest margin with distributors, and whether Stripe's expanding payments stack can remain neutral toward competitors.
Could AI agents be stablecoins' breakthrough? Dan explores the rail-agnostic Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), and why agents may be more willing to switch payment methods.
Can stablecoins compete with cards on consumer protections, especially if AI agents can handle disputes on our behalf?
Can enterprises keep blockchain balances private and still access public liquidity?

Tune in for a breezy tour of the bets being placed on stablecoin rails, from someone fluent in both crypto and payments.
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This episode is brought to you by Increase.

Increase offers API-first banking for ambitious technology companies. Companies like Coast, Gusto, and Ramp rely on Increase technology to process more than $500B annualized in payments, card transactions, and loans. Learn more at https://increase.com/

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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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
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Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
---
Follow Dan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielwromero/
1 hr 1 min
October 26Fintech Takes x C&R presents: The Business of Lending, Seen From Canada
Welcome to Season 2 of Collections Conversations, a new miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at C&R Software.

The series digs into how generative AI is reshaping debt collections, and this season, we’re surveying everything that happens after origination by bouncing around different markets and talking to folks with different experiences.

In Episode 3, I sit down with Tal Schwartz, General Partner at North Exit Ventures, whose Canadian Fintech newsletter I’m a big fan of and whose background in Canadian financial services, particularly fintech and lending, shapes much of what we discuss.

We start with the Canadian lending market, where a handful of enormous banks control the vast majority of financial assets and nonbank lenders have found opportunities in the credit categories that banks can't (or won’t) serve.

Tal estimates that Canada tends to lag the U.S. by 5-8 years in fintech product innovation. But that delay has its advantages. Canadian companies get to see what works elsewhere, and regulators get to see what doesn't.

Many early-stage fintech lenders treat servicing and collections as a future problem because, well, they haven't issued any loans yet. Tal thinks the irony is that, in the age of AI, this overlooked part of the lending lifecycle is particularly ripe for disruption.

We get into:
Why Canada's new interest rate cap could push some borrowers out of regulated credit markets, even as the country finally appears to be making progress on open banking
How cash flow underwriting became an advantage for Canadian nonbank lenders long before traditional banks started warming to the idea
Why Canada's wave of mortgage renewals could show up in credit card and auto-loan delinquencies before it shows up in mortgage performance
How AI could take on some surprisingly complicated servicing problems (including contact strategies that comply with different provincial laws)
Canada has a habit of watching which U.S. fintech products take off and Canadianizing the best of them. Maybe the U.S. could return the favor when it comes to open banking?
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This episode is brought to you by C&R Software.
More than just debt collection, C&R sets the global standard for AI-native, humanized credit management. They simplify the complex with end-to-end credit-risk lifecycle support, powered by automated workflows, AI-native intelligence, and real-time, data-driven decisioning. Learn more at https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0.
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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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
---
Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
---
Follow Tal:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/talbschwartz/
52 min
October 21 Not Fintech Investment Advice: Symphony, Spoolis, Piston, MoneyStack
Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I offer up fintech startups that caught our eye and offer absolutely no investment advice.

First up is Symphony, which rewards people with travel points for setting money aside rather than spending it, with returns available in cash, points, or both. The wrinkle? Its yield comes from investments rather than FDIC-insured deposits, which sends us down a rabbit hole about where saving ends and investing begins.

Next is Spoolis, an early-stage company exploring guarantees for the outcomes of work delegated to AI agents. We explore how the software-plus-insurance model from cybersecurity might translate to agentic AI, and whether insurance is even the right mechanism for every workflow.

Then there’s Piston, which handles fuel payments for fleets without fuel cards. Simon sees the potential to build a payments network around geographically concentrated fleets, while I see the Ramp ethos applied to a gas pump. A surprisingly compelling real-world application of open finance.

Finally, we close with MoneyStack, which brings financial counseling into behavioral health recovery, starting with gambling addiction treatment programs. We talk about the vicious cycle between debt and mental health, and how prediction markets sidestep the state taxes that fund this kind of treatment.

Plus, our closing manifestation: more companies like MoneyStack in every corner of financial services, please.

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This episode is brought to you by Increase.
Increase offers API-first banking for ambitious technology companies. Companies like Coast, Gusto, and Ramp rely on Increase technology to process more than $500B annualized in payments, card transactions, and loans. Learn more at https://increase.com/
---
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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://fintechtakes.com/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.

Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Follow Simon:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/
Newsletter: https://brainfood.xyz

As mentioned in this episode:
Fintech NerdCon: https://fintechnerdcon.com
Tokenized podcast: https://www.tokenizedpod.com/
Predicted newsletter: https://predicted.co/
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Companies featured:
https://www.symphony.io/
https://spoolis.com/
https://www.piston.com/
https://www.moneystack.com/
1 hr 6 min
October 19Fintech Takes x C&R presents: What Africa Can Teach the Industry About Credit & Collections
Welcome to Season 2 of Collections Conversations, a new miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at C&R Software.

The series digs into how generative AI is reshaping debt collections, and this season, we’re surveying everything that happens after origination by bouncing around different markets and talking to folks with different experiences.

In Episode 2, I sit down with Neré Jansen Van Vuuren, Head of Sales for Africa at C&R Software, who has spent most of her career working for banks and lenders across the continent.

We explore how credit works when a household’s income arrives on market days and after harvests rather than as a monthly salary, and what that asks of lenders once a payment is missed.

Neré says you can approve a loan in minutes, but the real test comes when a salary is late, or a transport is delayed. A missed payment, she says, is a signal; not an explanation.

I love that point because too often, I see lenders jump at the signal without waiting for the explanation. And in the U.S., we tend to check affordability at origination and rarely afterward, even though I think we should keep assessing it for the life of the loan.

We get into:
Why many South African households manage a portfolio of diverse income streams, and why what looks irregular on a spreadsheet may be a deliberate, resilient strategy
Why a sale isn’t a sale if the money’s not in the bank, and why many fintechs underestimate how different servicing is from acquisition
How AI, ironically, can make collections conversations more personal than they are today
Neré’s closing thought? Access only becomes inclusion when the product works with how people earn, travel, trade, borrow, repay, and recover from financial pressure.
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This episode is brought to you by C&R Software.
More than just debt collection, C&R sets the global standard for AI-native, humanized credit management. They simplify the complex with end-to-end credit-risk lifecycle support, powered by automated workflows, AI-native intelligence, and real-time, data-driven decisioning. Learn more at https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0.
---
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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/
And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
---
Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
---
Follow Neré:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ner%C3%A9-jansen-van-vuuren-4512a4a3/
48 min
October 14Anatomy of an Agentic Transaction
Welcome back to Fintech Takes! I’m Alex Johnson, joined once again by Dan Murphy (partner at Allon Advisors and former CFPB official who worked on the Section 1033 open banking rule) to ask some annoying questions about agentic finance.

We start in Toronto, at the FDATA Global Summit, where AI agents effectively hijacked an open banking conference and screen-scraping veterans began to recognize a familiar fight.

From there, we follow the flow of a transaction as it might go through an AI agent, checkpoint by checkpoint.

Highlights include:
If we already struggle with KYB, how will we verify agents that can be spun up by the thousands and killed once they stop being useful — especially without a national digital identity system?
Who decides what an agent can actually do? Dan walks through frameworks in the UK, Australia, and Brazil, and confesses he once wrote off variable recurring payments as just subscriptions. (They are not.)
Dan’s hot take on the L word: whoever asks where liability lies is usually the one holding it and trying to get out of it. And why consumer trust has to come before the liability fights, not after.
When an agent knows more than the person it represents, whose interests does it serve? What can fiduciary law teach us about a technology built around swarms of agents?
The agentic economy will land in financial services first. How these questions get answered in the industry will determine what agents do in healthcare, education, and beyond.
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This episode is brought to you by Increase.
Increase offers API-first banking for ambitious technology companies. Companies like Coast, Gusto, and Ramp rely on Increase technology to process more than $500B annualized in payments, card transactions, and loans. Learn more at https://increase.com/

---
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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
---
Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
---
Follow Dan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/
1 hr 16 min
October 07 Fintech Recap: Whop, Revolut, and Chime Buys Stride
Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula.

We kick things off with Whop, a creator marketplace that announced last week that anyone can launch a neobank on its platform in 15 minutes. Jason tried it. I unpack why a self-custody wallet built to function like a bank account opens a new kind of regulatory arbitrage.

Next, we get into a data breach at Revolut. As Jason reported, a hacker group threatened to sell identity information and account balances and transaction histories of about 680 Revolut users. The group then sent Revolut legal requests for their data (and Revolut complied, for about six months). That's poor timing for a company with conditional approval for a U.S. bank charter.

From there, Chime has agreed to buy Stride, one of its partner banks, for $590 million in cash. That keeps the combined bank (roughly $7B in assets) below the $10B threshold that has long shaped Chime's interchange-heavy business model. Jason weighs in on talking points that change when the roadmap does, and on how leverage can shift toward a fintech partner that outgrows its bank.

Plus, in our Can't Let It Gos: an AI-generated ad for Kalshi in which a man suspects his girlfriend is cheating, only to learn she's been betting on egg prices, and a termination letter (newly released through a FOIA request) for the official the OCC named in 2023 to run its Office of Financial Technology.
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This episode is brought to you by Increase.
Increase offers API-first banking for ambitious technology companies. Companies like Coast, Gusto, and Ramp rely on Increase technology to process more than $500B annualized in payments, card transactions, and loans. Learn more at https://increase.com/

---
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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
---
Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
---
Follow Jason:
Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/
1 hr 16 min
October 05Fintech Takes x C&R Software Presents: Fintech’s Next Test Across the U.S. and U.K.
Welcome to Season 2 of Collections Conversations, a new miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at C&R Software.
The series digs into how generative AI is reshaping debt collections; what it enables, what it complicates, and why it might finally force the industry to retire the word “collections” altogether.
In Episode 1, I sit down with Luke Broadhurst, CEO of Credit Strategy, who has covered the U.K. banking and fintech scene (particularly from a credit perspective), for more than two decades.
We explore how U.K. fintech companies treat customers once things go wrong, and what the U.S. can learn from it.
Fintech has spent years making onboarding easy. Luke says a missed payment is when a lender's customer centricity either comes through or doesn't. Asked whether AI belongs in decisions like these, Luke says undoubtedly, but a human has to own the consequences, even if a human doesn't press the button.
Owning the consequences, he says, is what Consumer Duty teaches. I don't think U.S. fintech has internalized that lesson just yet.
We get into:
Whether the next era of fintech is a story of scale or of customer centricity (which Luke calls an operating model decision, not a user experience decision)
How Consumer Duty went from a regulation U.K. lenders resisted to one the conversation at Credit Week now treats as a force for good
Why fintech companies that build the world's best brakes can drive at 500 miles/hour
Why smaller firms with less reputational risk are deploying AI while large institutions stay cautious for fear of getting it wrong
Luke's advice? Stop thinking technology is the advantage, and put finance before tech.
---
This episode is brought to you by C&R Software.
More than just debt collection, C&R sets the global standard for AI-native, humanized credit management. They simplify the complex with end-to-end credit-risk lifecycle support, powered by automated workflows, AI-native intelligence, and real-time, data-driven decisioning. Learn more at https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0.
---
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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/
And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
---
Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
---
Follow Luke:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-broadhurst-6a40592/
45 min
September 30The Investor Diaries
Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Tim Flacke (Co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth) to unpack The Investor Diaries, their 15-month research project on how low-to-moderate income Americans invest.

This is a different kind of episode, one where you’ll hear select voice diaries from the consumers themselves, representing households earning between $25,000 and $80,000 a year.

One of the stats from Commonwealth’s research surprised me: 54% of adults living on low to moderate incomes now invest, and retail investing in this cohort has grown 2.7x since 2020.

We dig into what pushes new investors to pause or pull money out, and what providers could build to keep them in the market.

Highlights include:
What changes when you're the first person in your family to cross what Tim calls the "Risk Rubicon"?
Why do providers present their products like a catalog, without a point of view?
If the business model for helping someone build a small cash cushion is, in Tim's words, "terrible," why should brokerages offer a savings option anyway?
What does Commonwealth's research on bank chatbots say about how AI earns trust?
Plus, Tim shares how to make the most of Trump accounts and the more than $20 billion now on the table for kids.

Tune in for a closer look at a growing group of investors the industry too often flattens into a stereotype.
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This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.

Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more.

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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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
---
Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Follow Tim:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyflacke/
The Investor Diaries: https://buildcommonwealth.org/research/investordiaries/
59 min
September 23Under the Hood of Fintech Products
Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Jas Shah, fintech product consultant and author of one of my favorite newsletters, Fintech: Under the Hood, which gets into serious detail from a builder's perspective.
Jas has built a range of fintech products and consulted for fintech companies and banks, so we spend this episode in the gloriously granular trenches of Fintech Productland.
We cover a lot of ground, like where digital onboarding still falls short after a decade of progress, why personal financial management remains one of the hardest categories in consumer fintech to pull off, and where AI might change that.

Highlights include:
Why do banks struggle to build onboarding that feels as connected as their customers expect?

Can an AI buddy that checks in over WhatsApp succeed where, in Jas's words, "glorified pivot tables" fell short?

What happens when payment agents spending on your behalf come up against financial management agents?

If ChatGPT's personal finance features reach free users, whose interests will the advice serve?
Plus, we close with the most important conversation it's possible to have in fintech: how to name your fintech company after J.R.R. Tolkien's oeuvre.
Tune in for a nerdy, practical tour under the hood of fintech product building (with a closing detour through Middle-earth).
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This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.
Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking.
Visit ⁠https://www.ocrolus.com/⁠ for more.
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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, Wednesday, and Friday:⁠ https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/⁠
And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my⁠ YouTube page⁠.
---
Follow Alex on:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes
LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson⁠
X:⁠ https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson⁠

Follow Jas:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jas-shah/
Fintech: Under the Hood Newsletter: https://jasshah.substack.com/
1 hr
September 16 A Crisis of Confidence: This Has Happened Before
Welcome back to Fintech Takes. Diehard listeners may remember my first and second audiobook experiments. By popular demand, here's a third.

I’m turning my recent deep dive, “A Crisis of Confidence: This Has Happened Before,” into a podcast episode for your listening pleasure(s).

I wrote it back in May after attending Emerge, the Financial Health Network's annual event, where wandering around and talking with people inspired me to wonder whether the U.S. has ever experienced a strong economy and a pessimistic population before?

It has.

The 1970s produced the same split between the data and consumer sentiment, and the closer you look, the more specific the parallels get (people saved and got punished for it, then borrowed when saving stopped working, then gambled once borrowing ran out too).

But there's one place the two decades don't rhyme, and it’s the regulatory response.

Stick around after the audio essay. I come back with an updated take on what's changed since May, plus a new thought about financial bubbles I haven't written up yet (but plan to soon!).
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This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.

Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more.

---
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, Wednesday, and Friday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.
---
Follow Alex:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson
X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson
52 min

About Fintech Takes

From the publisher's feed

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.