Writing and podcasting @FintechTakes. Helping to build @finityWW. Endlessly curious.
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I asked a couple dozen female founders and founders of color in fintech about their experiences raising money from VCs and how that process can be improved.
Here’s what they said: workweek.com/2022/10/15/how-…
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Wonder if this triggers the consumer advocates the way that Enova trying to buy Grasshopper did.
Fintech Avant applies for OCC charter bankingdive.com/news/fintech… via @bankingdive
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Alex Johnson retweeted
There is so much more I want to write about 2010s fintech and how we got to where we are today. Here's a first bite at the apple on one angle I've been feeling a lot lately:
Fintech is embracing expertise.
skop.finitynetwork.com/p/150…
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Uber is the wrong analogy for prediction markets because sports betting isn't like transportation.
Back when Uber was scaling up, you didn't have states that just outlawed cabs altogether because they believed that they were bad for their citizens.
Getting sued is one of the greatest and most bullish signals of a company’s trajectory especially when there isn’t regulatory clarity.
Uber followed the same path when there wasn’t clarity, it was as if they wanted to get sued by every government because it helped them grow faster.
If you’re getting sued at the early stages of a market being formed (and I’d argue even if that’s not the case) you’re doing something right.
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Square built this like 100 years ago. It was a precursor to Cash App.
@Revolut just launched payments with your face called "Pay with Smile" 🤯
No card. No phone. Just look at the screen and pay.
The new Pay with Smile feature is being piloted in London from today at selected Kiss the Hippo cafes.
Here’s how it works:
→ Tap “Pay with Smile” on a Revolut Register
→ Facial recognition verifies your identity
→ The payment is authenticated
→ Money moves account-to-account
Customers have to actively opt in through the Revolut app, and Revolut says merchants won’t store customers’ facial recognition data.
Another interesting piece for merchants: 0% processing fees on Pay with Smile transactions.
Alex Codina, GM of Merchant Payments at Revolut Business:
“By combining high-performance processing with facial recognition technology, we’re replacing outdated, fragmented tills with a hyper-efficient checkout experience.”
The pilot runs in London’s Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho locations from September 24–26, with a wider rollout of Revolut Register coming later.
We’ve spent years moving from cash → cards → phones → wearables.
Now your face could become the payment method.
Would you be comfortable paying like this??
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Alex Johnson retweeted
It’s poor strategy to wage a vendetta when Dems are poised to retake House and maybe the Senate
Others industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc know how to play the long game with both sides.
Big Crypto should grow up and do the same.
Crypto weighs revenge against Democrats — and the risks that come with it
politico.com/news/2026/09/23…
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AI agents will absolutely wreck the insurance industry, and no one but insurance industry executives will be at all sad about it!
Interesting breaking news during my panel today. When I asked the head of AI at @insurify how they felt about muse he announced that they had just blocked it! Doubt that’s a great strategy but I don’t think legacy fin svcs realizes how disruptive consumer agents will be.
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Are you registered for this week's Fintech Office Hours?
Come hang out, hear about what's been happening in fintech, and ask me any and all questions you can think of!
finitynetwork.com/events/795…
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"If approved, only certain traders will have access to marginable event contracts, the company told CNBC. It also won’t feature leverage on its sports, culture and “mention” markets."
If all contracts are equally valid and provide high-value signals to the market, why exclude sports, culture, and mention markets?
Kalshi asks CFTC to allow margin trading on its platform, letting users buy with borrowed funds cnbc.com/2026/09/22/kalshi-a…
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These two things are linked.
Getting shit done for me (and taking real accountability when you screw up) will create trust.
.@vkhosla's prediction for the two moats of personal AI:
1. A company you can trust with your data
2. A tool that actually gets the job done
“I believe the moat will be trust in a company that develops trust with consumers. And that’s where Meta has a huge disadvantage.”
“I also think completion is going to be really important. Consumers will be loyal to products that get their shit done."
“If you can get all my stuff done, I’ll be loyal to you.”
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Amazon is fighting a losing battle. When an agent uses a browser to access a consumer's account with the consumer's permission, they are simply an extension of the consumer.
We saw this screen scraping fight in open banking. The incumbents lost.
this was always obvious, & i’ve written about it before. companies with real leverage will increasingly block agents from accessing them at a greater & greater place.
amazon can do this without losing much at all because amazon is impossible to replace.
but other companies won’t have that luxury (esp if they’re software only). if they resist agents, agents will simply route around them to a competitor that cooperates.
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Bilateral data access agreements! History just repeats itself.
the likely resolution to the meta / amazon fight is some kind of revenue sharing agreement where meta pays amazon for agent access through muse. there is no doubt the bd teams are cooking here on an agreement. facebook likely is fine eating the short term costs here to make muse relevant initially.
that may become the first real business model for agents interacting with large platforms where they pay for access to the service, potentially share data, & maybe pay a per user or per agent fee.
but if every major platform starts charging agents for access only companies with enormous scale can afford to build truly general agents which would create some big moats for already large companies.
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Oh come on Montana
Despite holding all the leverage after a Ninth Circuit decision which favored the States, Montana agrees not to pursue enforcement action against Kalshi during the pendency of its petition for rehearing en banc and to thereafter give Kalshi 30 days’ notice prior to filing suit.
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It’s unclear if the experience of flying from Toronto Pearson to the U.S. is intentionally bad because of this stupid trade war or if it’s unintentionally bad due to incompetence and/or bad design.
Honestly, I hope it’s the former.
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I wrestle with my kids (we call it "play fighting") a ton, and it's my single favorite thing in the world.
Glad there's research suggesting that it's good for them too!
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Interesting quote:
“Republicans were afraid of putting real limits on a President’s ability to profit from digital assets. Dems decided that this one industry is where they would fight a corruption battle.”
On the second part, it seems reasonable to make this industry the hill to die on given how central it has been to the President’s income during his second term.
Govt feels broken. 18 months of work between our industry, dems and republicans and Clarity falls apart on the 5 yard line. All the issues got to a hard fought compromise other than one. On Ethics both sides dug in and decided their stance was more important than the long run good of a major industry and our countries chance to lead it. Republicans were afraid of putting real limits on a President’s ability to profit from digital assets. Dems decided that this one industry is where they would fight a corruption battle. They were scared to be seen doing anything that could be perceived as being soft on the President.
There had been a bi-partisan proposal that would have worked but it got hi-jacked in the politics of it all.
I am very disappointed that neither side could find a way to cross that chasm. I know there is an election in 7 weeks and that dominated the actions of both sides. What is crazy is the I honestly don’t believe crypto and this bill will be a top 10 issue in this election. It was in 2024 but this year will be about the war, inflation, affordability, Ai , immigration and what party has a better answer to those questions.
I do have faith that the SEC and CFTC will drive on with rules for the road and hopefully in time congress will find a way to memorialize them so people can have a longer term confidence in how digital assets will be treated in the US.
Maybe Mitch McConnell coming back in a wheel chair after 90 days was s comic signs to amplify how broken Congress is.
We go back to work tomorrow. And continue building.
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