In early July, El Salvador-based payments startup n1co raised $12M in a pre-seed round. The fintech spinoff of super-app Hugo, n1co launched as its own company in early 2022.
Read MoreIn an interview with The Financial Revolutionist, bolt CEO Jim Dwane details bolt’s growth strategy, highlights bolt’s value proposition, and shares his view on bolt’s future.
Read MoreBNPL startups like Billie, Mondu, Tranch, and Two are offering short-term credit to businesses facing cash-flow crunches. The short-term B2B loan industry is currently valued at $700B.
Read MoreCorporate bankers have reported greater interest among business clients to move their supply chains closer to where their consumers are located. Clients are interested in both “onshoring,” which involves returning previously offshored activities to the business’ home country, as well as “near-shoring,” which moves those activities to nearby countries.
Read MoreIn an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Affirm CEO Max Levchin said that a recession will prove Affirm’s underwriting models to be superior to those of banks. Affirm's stock has dropped 77% since its all-time high in November 2021; the S&P 500 has declined 9% in the same time frame.
Read MoreIn an interview with Bloomberg TV, MercadoLibre CFO Pedro Arnt said the company will continue to expand in the credit space. More than half of the Latin America-based e-commerce platform’s revenues now come from its fintech branch.
Read MoreDuring the company’s earnings call, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman told analysts that the company might combine its rewards program with Venmo’s, and may link Venmo and PayPal peer-to-peer (P2P) payments capabilities to boost interoperability. PayPal’s revenue rose 9% in Q2 compared to last year.
Read MoreIn an interview with CoinDesk, Antonio Garcia Pascual, Deputy Chief of the Global Market Analysis Division at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said crypto’s nosedive hasn’t caused a similar downturn in the “real economy.” The crypto sector’s market cap has slid from $3T to $873B since November 2021.
Read MoreAccording to the Wall Street Journal, Elliott Management, a $50B hedge fund, is considering an activist-investor takeover of PayPal. PayPal’s valuation has slid from $350B to $89B over the past year.
Read MoreAfter interviewing the Episode Six founding team in 2020, The Financial Revolutionist sat down with CEO John Mitchell, revisiting Episode Six’s strategies and predictions for the future. Mitchell outlines the company’s steady course, shares the vision behind their business model, and hints at the future of hybridized, digital payments ecosystems.
Read MoreConsumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra said that Big Tech’s expansion into the BNPL space raises privacy and antitrust issues. To date, Apple is the only tech giant to launch a BNPL product, which is called Apple Pay Later.
Read MoreIn a letter to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra, Democratic lawmakers asked Chopra to clarify whether consumers who are defrauded into making a financial transfer on peer-to-peer (P2P) payment apps like Zelle are “errors” or “unauthorized electronic fund transfers.” This shift could make financial institutions liable for repaying consumers who have fallen victim to fraud on P2P platforms.
Read MoreMeta, the parent company to Facebook and Instagram, announced the launch of its cross-platform payments system, Meta Pay, on Instagram. Meta said that 1 billion users message a business on one of its apps every week.
Read MoreAmazon announced that it’s acquiring 1LifeHealthcare Inc., the parent company of primary-care network One Medical, for $3.9B. The health practice has 180 offices and offers benefits to employees at more than 8,000 companies.
Read MoreFlutterwave, Eversend, and other Africa-based fintechs discontinued use of virtual dollar cards due to the processor’s susceptibility to fraud. Scammers could contact the card issuer and fraudulently claim that they never made specific purchases.
Read MoreThe Financial Revolutionist is weekly newsletter and blog focused on the torrid pace of financial innovation. Today, thanks to the exponential rate of technological change, explosion in global trade and new regulations ushered in by the Great Financial Crisis, a new financial revolution is under way. In this battle, virtually every aspect of the greater financial services sector is subject to rigorous challenge. With the Financial Revolutionist, we are aspiring to create a boots-on-the-ground and highly opinionated assessment of important financial innovation developments in the past week.
