Fintech Recap: No-KYC Cards and Political Bank Charters Aplenty

Not Fintech Investment Advice: Natural, Sky Fusion, Quarters, El Dorado

Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about companies we're absolutely not giving investment advice on! First up is Natural, an AI agent orchestration layer for payments that just raised a $30M Series A. We explore its wallet architecture (which uses account structure itself as a guardrail for what agents can and can't do), and why a liability framework is still missing once payments move beyond its own network. Next is Sky Fusion, which puts small AI data centers inside people's homes, financed just like rooftop solar. We talk through the appeal of distributed compute over another giant data center nobody wants nearby, and the underwriting risk that already tripped up a wave of residential solar lenders. Then there's Quarters, a home savings rewards platform that inverts the Bilt model: instead of housing spend driving everyday purchases, everyday purchases drive housing spend, with rewards redeemable only through partners for rent, deposits, down payments, or moving costs. Finally, we close with El Dorado, a stablecoin platform with over a million consumer users across 13 countries and a fast-growing SMB base (like Bolivian import/exporters locked out of affordable dollars by the correspondent banking system). We explore stablecoins as a workaround for national monetary control, and why a physical branch is as consequential as the tech. Plus, some manifestations throughout (Simon willing Quarters toward its target renter niche, and yours truly wishing El Dorado's model into full compliance). --- 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/ [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 and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson] Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/] Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com [https://sytaylor.substack.com] --- Companies featured: https://www.natural.com/ [https://www.natural.com/]  https://www.skyfusion.ai/ [https://www.skyfusion.ai/]  https://myquarters.ca/ [https://myquarters.ca/]  https://eldorado.io/en [https://eldorado.io/en]

Fintech Recap: No-KYC Cards and Political Bank Charters Aplenty

Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. We open with a tangled story that you should absolutely read Jason’s reporting* on. Trump-linked World Liberty Financial poured $1.5B into a crypto treasury company called Alt5 Sigma, whose token plummeted from ~20¢ to ~5¢. Buried inside that detritus, Jason uncovered a Canadian subsidiary issuing crypto-funded cards with no identity verification at all (confirmed after he posed as a prospective customer himself). From there, we widen out to a troubling trend. Charters increasingly seem to flow toward companies with the right political connections. Erebor, Augustus, and a pending application from World Liberty Financial are receiving the royal treatment. What does that mean for the OCC's long-term institutional credibility? Next, we chat about Darragh Buckley’s Increase, which built banking infrastructure for Ramp and Stripe, and just bought a tiny Washington bank to become one itself (a real-time test of whether BaaS middleware is dead). Finally, we go deep on Fed master accounts, and why Kraken's recent approval left Fed officials scrambling to explain a decision that wasn't really theirs to make (the regional Reserve Banks making these calls basically answer to no one). Plus, in our Can't Let It Gos: Erebor's reported talks to double its valuation without having proven it can run like a real bank, and Delta's new in-flight DraftKings prediction game (apparently even a flight isn't safe from the gambling-ification of everything). --- 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/ [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/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. --- Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson] --- Follow Jason: Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/ [https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/] *And read Jason's reporting on Alt5 Sigma and MSwipe: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/p/trump-linked-fintech-tied-to-no-kyc [https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/p/trump-linked-fintech-tied-to-no-kyc]

Inside Stripe's Open Standard

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined again by James Wester (co-head of payments research at Javelin Strategy & Research), who I’ve come to think of as our resident stablecoin correspondent to make sense of the biggest stablecoin news of the summer. In July, Stripe organized a consortium called Open Standard, backed by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Coinbase, among others, to launch a dollar-backed stablecoin called OUSD. Within days, some of the smaller companies on that list said they hadn't agreed to what was being described. There's still no white paper, nor clarity on governance. So, what’s the Open Standard consortium building? We dig into: * What's confirmed about Open Standard and OUSD, and what's still guesswork * Why this fight is about platform ambition as opposed to stablecoin tech (Circle's site hails itself as "the tech stack for the agentic economy" without mentioning stablecoin; that platform ambition may be why the rest of the payments industry is organizing against it) * Why payments consortiums almost always fail, and what Zelle (one of the rare successes) had that Open Standard currently doesn't * Why nobody's panicking about OUSD the way central bankers panicked over Facebook's Libra in 2019, and what that reveals about stablecoin regulation  Tune in for James's read on whether Open Standard becomes infrastructure or the next entry in the consortium graveyard. --- 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/ [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/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. --- Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson] Follow James: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaslett/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswester/ X: https://twitter.com/khasletthttps://x.com/jameswester

The Rules for Self-Driving Money

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by two of my favorite repeat guests: Steve Boms [https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenboms/] (Executive Director of FDATA North America) and Dan Murphy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/] (Founder of Sunset Park Advisors; formerly CFPB). We set aside Section 1033 for an hour to talk about agentic finance; what happens when AI agents don't just read your financial data, but act on it. First up, the question any skeptical consumer would ask: robo-advisors already exist, so what's new here? Dan's answer took the conversation back further than I expected, to a pre-fintech era of credit counselors, financial advisors, and deposit brokers who worked the phones shopping a client's savings around for a better CD rate. Then, Dan and Steve walk me through a framework from FDATA's forthcoming white paper splitting agentic finance into three layers: read, instruct, and transact. We get into what each layer actually requires on liability, consent, and fiduciary duty, and what the UK, Australia, and Brazil have already built in this space that the US hasn't. We also dig into the use cases that could change someone's day, like an "anti-inertia" tool that moves your savings the moment your bank stops paying a competitive rate. Tune in for a conversation about what it means to give an AI permission to spend your money, and why the rulebook we already have may be more ready for this than anyone expects. FDATA North America published a white paper [https://mcusercontent.com/d62b8c1570b4b45285fbb8f4b/files/e46f523e-ebad-451f-c7de-f5e1b429b5f3/FDATA_Access_to_Action_White_Paper.pdf?hashed_user=8940d6f6521f880a7ba148c1439fbb49] on this exact topic, which you should read here: https://bit.ly/4wiB0a4 [https://bit.ly/4wiB0a4]  --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ [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 and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. --- Follow Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenboms/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenboms/] Follow Dan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/]   Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson]

Fintech Takes x TruStage presents Lending, Unbundled Ep 3: Revenue at Stake

Welcome to Lending, Unbundled, a new series from Fintech Takes, sponsored by our friends at TruStage. The series traces how consumer lending went from a single institution that handled everything to a modular value chain of specialized providers, each owning one piece of the loan, and asks what lending, unbundled, has cost the industry along the way. In Episode 3, my cohost Bjoern Nordmann [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/] (VP of New Market Development at TruStage) and I sit down with Aditya Khandekar [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityakhandekar/], CRO of Corridor Platforms, to explore what happens when lending goes modular, but accountability still needs to be end-to-end (not just owned at one point in the loan lifecycle). When a borrower hits hardship, the originator, servicer, and funding source may all have different incentives. But the borrower doesn’t care who technically owns the loan; they blame the brand they can see. That’s why governance can’t sit at the end of the process, waiting to validate what already happened. Aditya’s argument is that governed decisioning can become the connective tissue: a shared evidence layer across acquisition, servicing, delinquency management, compliance, and customer management. Credit risk can move downstream. Reputation risk cannot. --- This episode is brought to you by TruStage. TruStage is a financially strong insurance and financial services provider, built on the philosophy of people helping people, meeting the needs of middle-market consumers and the businesses that serve them since day one.  We believe a brighter financial future should be accessible to everyone, and our products and solutions help people confidently make financial decisions that work for them at every stage of life. Visit https://trustage.com [https://trustage.com/] for more information. --- 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/ [https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/] And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos]. Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson] Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson [https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson] --- Follow Bjoern: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernnordmann/] Follow Aditya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityakhandekar/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adityakhandekar/]