Fintech Nexus Newsletter

Payment by bank account is a functionality that has existed for more than a decade in many countries. But it is still a relatively new phenomenon in the U.S.

The fintech soap opera that is the Synapse saga took another turn yesterday. We learned less than three weeks ago that TabaPay was acquiring Synapse out of bankruptcy. Now, that deal appears to have fallen apart as disagreements between Synapse, Evolve Bank and Trust and Mercury remain unresolved.

For the past two decades, the investment banking ecosystem in fintech has been dominated by one player: Steve McLaughlin's FT Partners. Now, that is not to say that other investments have not done deals. The really big deals are often done by the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, or JPMorgan Chase.

Forbes is out with its ninth annual Fintech 50 this morning, a subjective list of the hottest startups in fintech. The list is created by Forbes editors, is only open to private companies and it involves analyzing data as well as interviews with company CEOs and industry insiders.

In the kickoff to the Holiday shopping season, consumers are spending, with retail sales up 1.1% and e-commerce sales up 8.5% according to Mastercard SpendingPulse.

Yesterday, Apple shared details on Apple Card usage for the first time. The card was introduced in 2019 and since then it has acquired 12 million users, not a bad effort in less than five years. Users earn Daily Cash rewards when they use the card and Apple reported that the total for 2023 was over $1 billion.

We learned back in February that Klarna's AI chatbot was doing the work of 700 people. Today, Klarna is reporting about its employee's internal use of AI. It's internal AI assistant, named Kiki, is answering 2,000 employee questions a day and over 87% of its employees are now using it.

The biggest name in Silicon Valley venture capital over the last half-century is Sequoia. And the biggest name in European fintech is Klarna.

Bhardwaj had reportedly held senior technology positions at various large banks including Citi, Fifth Third and Huntington. The trouble is those banks had no records of Bhardwaj ever being an employee let alone a senior technology executive.

UK digital banking pioneer Monzo reported its financial results for the 2023-24 fiscal year today. The numbers are impressive. Total revenue was £880 million for the year, more than 2x the £356 million from the previous year.