Fintech Takes

Welcome to Banking on Primacy, a four-part podcast miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by Chime.

The series orbits one question that has become the most contested in consumer finance: what does it take to earn (and hold) the most important relationship in someone's financial life?

In Episode 1, I sit down with Mark Troughton, President at Chime, to dig into primacy.

We kick things off with a structural argument most banks won't make: the checking account is the front door for traditional banks, but for Chime, it's the product. That single distinction shapes where you invest, what you build, and who you're actually building for.

From there, Mark walks through the “silent switch”, the hierarchy of consumer financial needs, and why Chime is currently opening 50% more checking accounts than Chase in the mass market.

What does it take to win a primary relationship in 2026? 

What does trust look like when you're building it without branches? 

What does a financial institution owe the customers it's trying to keep?

This episode is brought to you by Chime.

For most Americans, their primary bank account is their most important financial relationship. Traditional banks held that position and took it for granted. Chime was built differently: fee-free, built to succeed when members do, and now America’s #1 banking choice with roughly 10M active members.

Chime Prime takes that further: 5% cash back, savings rates up to 9x the national average, premium travel perks, no fees. See how at https://www.chimeprime.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 and Thursday: 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 Mark:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matroughton/

Learn more about Chime here: https://www.chimeprime.com/

We kick things off with personal financial management, a category I've been following through three distinct generations. From Mint and Credit Karma to newer subscription tools, the core problem hasn’t changed; most folks don’t want to manage their money. Now, with OpenAI acquiring Hiro and Perplexity AI partnering with Plaid, PFM is shifting from dashboards to AI agent interfaces. But is this solving an information problem, or a behavior problem?

Next, we get into the return of the fintech super app, using Bolt (the one-click checkout company that raised $355M at an $11B valuation) as the case study. Despite years of hype, we get into why super apps keep failing in America (where consumers are  happy to use multiple apps on their phone as long as each one’s great).

Finally, we turn to the PACE Act, a proposed bill aimed at giving non-banks seeking access to Fed master accounts. It’s a more formal attempt to solve a long-standing infrastructure problem, but the requirements raise an obvious question: if fintechs still need to navigate state licensing and the Fed retains discretion, who would actually benefit?

Plus, in our Can't Let It Gos: Kalshi and Polymarket are moving into crypto perpetual futures, a Mexican merchant applied dynamic currency conversion without asking (Jason won the chargeback), and Ryan Atwood's second career as a crypto skeptic.

This episode is brought to you by Persona. 

Persona is the identity verification platform trusted by fintech's fastest-growing teams, from YC-backed startups to publicly traded companies. Build your identity program with enterprise-grade tools, starting at $0 with Persona's Startup Program.

Fintech Takes listeners can get a full free year through Persona’s Startup Program at withpersona.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

Welcome back to 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 8, I sit down again with Ed Wallen, CEO of C&R Software, for a broader view of AI across the entire customer lifecycle.

Ed's diagnosis on large bank AI adoption: leadership has made the commitment, but impact is limited. Models aren’t yet embedded into the workflows that drive day-to-day decisions. It's like having Google Maps open but still taking the route you know from memory. He calls it intelligence without execution.

From there: why centralized AI teams keep falling short. (They’re not sitting with the collections agents or navigating the edge cases). Collections is exceptions at scale, and some of those exceptions will always require a human in the loop. We cover build vs. buy and how to vet AI-native vendors in a market where every company claims to be one. 

Ed's advice: build the moat, not the model.

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 and Thursday: 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 Ed:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwallen/

Learn more about C&R Software here: https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0

Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Mike Hsu, former Acting Comptroller of the Currency.

I recently crossed paths with Mike at the Bank of North Dakota's fintech and stablecoin event in Fargo, where he led a 90-minute session on stablecoins from a policymaker's perspective. It was so impressive I wanted an interactive version for the podcast.

In this episode, we trace the historical lineage of stablecoins from free banking before the Civil War, through the Eurodollar market, money market funds, Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, and Facebook's Libra announcement … all the way up to the GENIUS Act. 

All regulation is path-dependent. To understand why policymakers react the way they do to stablecoins, you have to understand what shaped them.

Mike’s reading (and listening) recommendations from the episode:

Bank Notes and Shinplasters by Joshua R. Greenberg: https://www.pennpress.org/9780812252248/bank-notes-and-shinplasters/

Ways and Means by Roger Lowenstein: https://bookshop.org/p/books/ways-and-means-lincoln-and-his-cabinet-and-the-financing-of-the-civil-war-roger-lowenstein/317ffa9e260a1186

"Are Banks Special?" by E. Gerald Corrigan (Minneapolis Fed, 1982): https://www.bu.edu/econ/files/2012/01/Corrigan-Are-Banks-Special_main-text.pdf

Odd Lots, “The Hidden History of Eurodollars, Part 1: Cold War Origins:” https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/the-hidden-history-of-eurodollars-part-1-cold-war

Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Facebook’s Libra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diem_(digital_currency) 

Circle's Arc litepaper: https://arcnetwork.xyz/litepaper

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber: https://press.stripe.com/boom

This episode is brought to you by Persona. 

Persona is the identity verification platform trusted by fintech's fastest-growing teams, from YC-backed startups to publicly traded companies. Build your identity program with enterprise-grade tools, starting at $0 with Persona's Startup Program.

Fintech Takes listeners can get a full free year through Persona’s Startup Program at withpersona.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 Mike:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hsu-992257347/

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

Welcome back to Collections Conversations, a 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 may force the industry to retire the word "collections" altogether.

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Smith, VP of Product at C&R Software to discuss what goes on in collections around the rest of the world. 

I spend almost all my time looking at the U.S. market, and Chris is exactly the right person to tell me what I'm missing.

We start with why innovation in collections tends to be powered by friction. Markets without reliable infrastructure had no choice but to go digital fast (the U.S. had no particular urgency).

From there, we get into regulation. The U.K.'s Consumer Duty asks banks to prove that every customer interaction produces the right outcome (with data). That mindset goes further than most U.S. lenders would expect. One U.K. bank ran NPS scores across every customer touchpoint, and the highest score came from collections.

On AI, Chris compares a U.S. and South African bank he spoke with in the same week, finding radically different appetites for autonomous AI in collections.

We close on Chris's slightly controversial prediction: in the most progressive global markets, collections as a category may not exist in five years.

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 and Thursday: 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 Chris:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisismith/

Learn more about C&R Software here: https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0

Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Rich Franks (a fintech advisor and consultant with 20+ years in credit risk across both the bank and fintech sides), for a new episode of Facing Credit.

This one's about credit scoring. And it’s about why the market has changed more in the last year than in the prior 30.

The FICO monopoly has cracked. Federal regulators opened the mortgage market to competing scores. Cashflow underwriting arrived with roughly 30% predictive lift over traditional bureau data. Block built a proprietary score from Cash App transaction data, and plans to sell it to third-party lenders. Plus, a new generation of cashflow scoring companies (including Prism, Plaid's LendScore, Nova Credit, Pave, and CloutScore) are all competing in the market for a top spot.

Rich and I dig into:

Why even 80% conversion on the bank account linking step still kills a lending funnel, and what it takes to solve friction

Why FICO's cashflow answer had an architectural problem, and why lenders started looking elsewhere

The fair lending risks hidden inside merchant-level transaction data

What makes Block's Cash App Score innovative, and the game theory question it raises if large depositories start thinking the same way

Tune in for Rich's take on where the cashflow scoring market consolidates, what the end of FICO's de facto monopoly means for lenders and consumers, and whether AI resolves or accelerates the fragmentation.

This episode is brought to you by Persona. 

Persona is the identity verification platform trusted by fintech's fastest-growing teams, from YC-backed startups to publicly traded companies. Build your identity program with enterprise-grade tools, starting at $0 with Persona's Startup Program.

Fintech Takes listeners can get a full free year through Persona’s Startup Program at withpersona.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 Rich:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richfranks/

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

Welcome back to 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 6, I sit down with Pedro Maya, Head of Collections and Credit Risk Execution at Tangerine, to talk about the biggest misconception he encounters inside banks: that AI will automate and fix everything. It won't. 

AI amplifies whatever you already have. Good design gets better. Bad design gets worse faster, and at scale. 

Training teams to work alongside AI across the credit lifecycle turns out to be less a technology question than an accountability one. The human guardrail AI can't offer is a question teams need to keep asking: is this the right outcome for the customer?

We get into two concrete use cases where that plays out. Quality assurance (QA), where analyzing every agent call (rather than a monthly sample) turns a compliance exercise into coaching; and agentic AI, and agentic AI, where offloading basic customer interactions frees agents for the ones that require them.

The KPI landscape is shifting, too. The new metrics are effectiveness-based: cure rates, NPS, and dollars collected as a function of the quality of the interaction (rather than its volume). 

And because this is Collections Conversations, we close on the longer view: what does the ideal human-AI collaboration look like across the credit lifecycle two or three years from now, and what, then, has to go right between here and there.

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 and Thursday: 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 Pedro:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedro-maya-7280b919/ 

Learn more about C&R Software here: https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0

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 monk, an accounts receivable AI that helps small businesses get paid faster. Accounts payable has been well-served by spend management tools. Accounts receivable for small businesses is still stupidly hard. We dig into the power dynamics of getting paid, the channel partnership question, and why community banks might be the unexpected distribution answer.

Next we turn to MKIII (pronounced Mark 3), embedded AI underwriting with model insurance for banks and credit unions. Drop the model into your lending workflow, approve more borrowers, and if the model drifts and causes losses, reinsurers on the backend cover it. Lending insurance isn't new. But as for insuring the underwriting model itself? We’ve never seen that before. 

Then there's Wealth Architect, an AI financial planner that lets you share your goals in natural language and builds out a full plan, Monte Carlo stress tests included. Great concept. We argue about who actually owns the long-term financial planning conversation, and whether any standalone tool can establish that center of gravity against Revolut, Cash App, and Plaid-plus-Perplexity all showing up at once.

We close with CloutScore, which goes directly to the platforms where digital earners make their money (like Uber, Etsy, Shopify), rather than just reading what shows up in their bank account. CloutScore's website cites 76 million Americans earning outside traditional employment, but their income is fragmented and irregular in ways traditional underwriting has no framework for.

Plus, Simon's manifesting an end to being the disappointed dad of crypto (and this time, there's reason for cautious optimism). 

This episode is brought to you by Persona. 

Persona is the identity verification platform trusted by fintech's fastest-growing teams, from YC-backed startups to publicly traded companies. Build your identity program with enterprise-grade tools, starting at $0 with Persona's Startup Program.

Fintech Takes listeners can get a full free year through Persona’s Startup Program at withpersona.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://monk.com/

https://mkiii.ai/

https://www.wealtharchitect.ai/ 

https://www.cloutscore.us/

Welcome back to Collections Conversations, a new miniseries from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at C&R Software – now with a fresh batch of episodes!

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 5, I sit down with Rochelle Gorey, Co-Founder and CEO of SpringFour (now part of C&R Software) to talk about why the industry’s instinct to ask “where’s the money?” instead of “why isn’t the money there?” is costing lenders more than they think.

For most borrowers, the missed payment isn’t the problem itself. It’s the symptom of an underlying cause. And yet the collections system is rarely designed to address that distinction, which creates a mismatch between what institutions do and what customers actually need.

Rochelle explains what SpringFour actually does, and why it works. The platform connects borrowers facing hardship with vetted local nonprofit and government resources across household spending categories (like food assistance, employment support, and student loan help). Reduce household expenses, and you can create the cash flow that helps borrowers get back on track. Surface those resources earlier, during origination or servicing, and some borrowers may never miss a payment at all.

And because this is Collection Conversations, we close on AI: how it could make hardship support more personalized and scalable, but only if it draws on trusted referral data (you don’t want an AI agent sending a financially stressed borrower to the wrong kind of help!).

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 and Thursday: 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 Rochelle:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rochelle-nawrocki-gorey-6a4178b/

Learn more about C&R Software here: https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0

Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I’m Alex Johnson, joined by Jason Henrichs, CEO of Alloy Labs and co-host of the Breaking Banks podcast.

This episode is structured in two parts.

In part one, Jason and I zoom out on bank-fintech partnerships (once we get a rant out of our system; the Treasury Department announced who’d run Trump accounts as we recorded, and we had feelings).

We’ve spent years talking about bank-fintech partnerships through the lens of BaaS. Jason reframes that with two new models: BPP (Bank Product Partnership), where banks own the customer and fintechs sell into them, and CPaaS (Charter Partnership as a Service), where fintechs rent a bank’s charter. Those models look similar on the surface, but the incentives, economics, and regulatory dynamics are completely different.

From there, we dig into the wave of charter applications, the real question of who actually knows how to lend, and why the U.S. market has trained itself into giving away its most expensive product.

Then, in part two, I’m joined by AJ Clark and Tom Johnson, startup advisors and members of the Fintech Takes Network.

We shift to what’s actually happening on the ground inside banks and startups, and why deeper, slower conversations are often the prerequisite for real partnership.

That also becomes a natural preview to the Fintech Frontier Summit, a small, curated gathering in Montana focused on solving these problems in practice, which AJ and Tom are helping organize (from May 31 through June 3 at Alpine Falls Ranch; applications open at luma.com/fintechfrontiersummit2026).

This episode is brought to you by Persona. 

Persona is the identity verification platform trusted by fintech's fastest-growing teams, from YC-backed startups to publicly traded companies. Build your identity program with enterprise-grade tools, starting at $0 with Persona's Startup Program.

Fintech Takes listeners can get a full free year through Persona’s Startup Program at withpersona.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 Henrichs:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhenrichs/

Twitter: https://x.com/jasonhenrichs

Breaking Banks podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-banks/id641357669

Follow Alex: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson