Fintech Takes

Alex Johnson
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Fintech moves fast. But here at Fintech Takes, Alex Johnson and his rotating panel of guests move faster so that you can stay on top of the latest and greatest news in the industry without breaking a sweat.  Welcome to Fintech Takes—the place where fintech’s biggest nerds come to sit back, relax, and completely geek out. Join Alex and a lineup of fintech’s brightest minds as they dissect what’s happening in fintech and banking.  Each week, Alex and his guests recap the most interesting developments in fintech and explore the industry’s most pressing questions, diving headfirst into the intricate workings of some of the industry’s most ground-breaking business models and unpacking the emerging players that promise to shape fintech’s future. From riveting conversations with fintech’s most relevant operators to comprehensive recaps of the month's most compelling news stories and in-depth analyses of the latest regulatory developments, Fintech Takes is your one-stop-shop for navigating the fintech universe. Subscribe now to join fintech’s nerdiest podcast around!

  1. Celebrity Fintech, Before MrBeast

    1 HR AGO

    Celebrity Fintech, Before MrBeast

    Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined again by Carlos Caro (author of the Free Toaster newsletter and host of the Free Toaster podcast) to continue the conversation we started on Carlos’s podcast about MrBeast's acquisition of Step and what it means for the fintech ecosystem. This episode picks up where we left off, by looking to the past.  If you think you’ve found a new idea in financial services, you probably just haven’t done enough research yet. Celebrity fintech, especially fintech built for underserved consumers, is no exception.  In this Part 2 episode, Carlos and I explore three celebrity-backed fintech products from the 2010s era that failed in ways worth understanding for the present: The Kardashian Kard, Justin Bieber's BillMyParents prepaid card, and The Approved Card from Suze Orman. Across all three, similar questions keep popping up:  What happens when a celebrity brand collides with the realities of financial services economics?  How far can a celebrity brand take a product if the product itself doesn’t make sense for consumers?  How much does product-market fit matter if the fee structure feels exploitative?  And what can MrBeast learn from the celebrities who tried this before? Tune in for a tour through recent fintech history as we dust off a few forgotten celebrity card experiments from the sands of time, and wonder whether a celebrity brand can succeed in financial services without repeating the same mistakes. This episode is brought to you by Plaid.  Most lenders see the value of cash flow data. The hard part is getting started—and knowing what to do with it once you have it. Plaid makes it easy to access real-time cash flow and behavioral insights in seconds, through a familiar experience borrowers already trust. No heavy lift. No added friction. Learn more at www.plaid.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 Carlos Caro: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-carlos-caro/ Follow Alex Johnson:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnsonX: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

    58 min
  2. Fintech Takes x Spinwheel presents Credit Without Constraints Episode 1: The "Yes And" Approach to Credit Data

    1 DAY AGO

    Fintech Takes x Spinwheel presents Credit Without Constraints Episode 1: The "Yes And" Approach to Credit Data

    Welcome to Credit Without Constraints, a new four-part podcast miniseries from Fintech Takes, presented with our friends at Spinwheel. The series orbits around one core challenge: how do we make the best possible credit decisions for the benefit of both the consumer and the lender? Data is one of the biggest constraints. Credit outcomes sit downstream of credit data, and today that data is fragmented and inconsistent.  The solution is a deliberately unopinionated approach: put consumers in control, and make data sharing easier than most providers do today (all while delivering the highest-fidelity data possible). In Episode 1, I sit down with Tomás Campos, Co-founder and CEO of Spinwheel. We start with Spinwheel's origin, a founding team obsessed with the liability side of the household balance sheet, and dig into where the traditional credit data system falls short.  We get specific about the gaps: credit bureaus are the original aggregators, but real-time balances, payoff quotes, BNPL trade lines, and the granular detail buried inside a mortgage payment don’t fit neatly into today’s structures. Tomás says the average lender is running about 14 separate data integrations just to close those gaps. The answer is not to replace what exists. It is to say “yes and.”  What if identity could be the unlock for frictionless data access (versus credentials)? What if consumer permissioning and the spirit of the FCRA pointed toward the same destination all along? What if closing the data gaps was actually good for both lenders and consumers? This episode sets the stage for the entire series.  A "yes and" approach to credit data is a very different way of building fintech infrastructure, but it's starting to change. The rest of the series explores that change, across acquisition, underwriting, and servicing.  Subscribe now to catch what's next. Spinwheel helps financial innovators instantly verify and act on consumer credit using just a phone number and date of birth. Real-time, consented credit data and embedded payments—no passwords, no friction.  Learn more at https://spinwheel.io 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 Tomás: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theinnovativeone/ Learn more about Spinwheel here: https://spinwheel.io

    50 min
  3. Fintech Recap: Block, Crypto Cards, and Prediction Markets Split the Right

    4 MAR

    Fintech Recap: Block, Crypto Cards, and Prediction Markets Split the Right

    Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. We kick things off with Block’s move into credit scoring. Block stitched together data across Cash App and Afterpay into a proprietary score it’s now surfacing to consumers and selling to other lenders, claiming auto lenders could approve 30% more borrowers at identical loss rates using the Cash App score. We dig into adverse selection when consumers choose what to share, where this fits in lender workflows, and the FCRA wrinkle that “transactions and experiences” data can fall outside the definition of a consumer report… Then, we dive into stablecoins. Jason walks through the rebirth of “no KYC” crypto-funded spending cards, including testing several of these services himself (tune in to discover the pattern!). The core mechanic Jason flags is a corporate card loophole: KYB the company, then issue incremental “employee” cards with no legal or regulatory requirement to verify the person behind each card. From there, we zoom out to Bridge, Stripe’s stablecoin infrastructure subsidiary. Bridge got conditional OCC approval to form a national trust bank and moved jurisdictions (which include Russia, Belarus, Gaza, South Sudan, and Venezuela) from “controlled” to “prohibited,” while still defining “prohibited” with an “extraordinary situations” carveout. Plus, in our Can’t Let It Go corner: prediction markets.  CFTC Chair Mike Sig told the Senate during his nomination hearing that he’d defer to the courts on sports betting and prediction markets. But early this year, he reversed course, asserting the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction and filing amicus briefs against state prohibitions aimed at sports betting. Kalshi and Polymarket loved it, and I’m sure that’s unrelated to the fact that Sig’s boss’s son is an advisor to both. We close with Substack’s new partnership with Polymarket to embed prediction markets into journalism, set against a real-world example of the incentive problem: Israeli authorities investigated and arrested military reservists and a civilian for allegedly using classified information to place bets on Polymarket. This episode is brought to you by Plaid.  Most lenders see the value of cash flow data. The hard part is getting started—and knowing what to do with it once you have it. Plaid makes it easy to access real-time cash flow and behavioral insights in seconds, through a familiar experience borrowers already trust. No heavy lift. No added friction. Learn more at www.plaid.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

    1h 25m
  4. Canada Leapfrogs on Open Banking

    25 FEB

    Canada Leapfrogs on Open Banking

    Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I’m Alex Johnson, joined in this episode by two guests, Steve Boms (Executive Director at FDATA) and Dan Murphy (Founder of Sunset Park Advisors; formerly CFPB). We're talking about Canada, and why a country that has spent the better part of a decade moving at a pace I have occasionally made fun of in the newsletter is now arguably ahead of the U.S. on open banking regulation. Dan and Steve walk through how Canada deliberately corrected what other countries got wrong, and how timing and learning play a role, too. Canada watched the BPI lawsuit play out in the U.S. They saw the gap between banks' stated preferences and revealed preferences once implementation became real. They built voluminous, specific legislation partly because they learned what happens when you leave room for interpretation. The conversation explores the global policy learning ecosystem, the cultural conservatism baked into Canadian financial services (Steve calls it "conservatism with the lowercase c"), and how a Big Five oligopoly holding 90% of consumer deposits accidentally created conditions for comprehensive reform when external pressure finally arrived. Highlights include: Steve's argument that write access might actually solve liability problems by creating traceable ledgers of who changed what and when Dan's observation about the Amazon Perplexity lawsuit and how it echoes every open banking access fight  The distinction between domestic competition policy and international competitiveness policy, and why they usually point in opposite directions This episode is brought to you by Plaid.  Most lenders see the value of cash flow data. The hard part is getting started—and knowing what to do with it once you have it. Plaid makes it easy to access real-time cash flow and behavioral insights in seconds, through a familiar experience borrowers already trust. No heavy lift. No added friction. Learn more at www.plaid.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 Steve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenboms/ Follow Dan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljmurphy01/ 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

    1h 3m
  5. Fintech Takes x C&R presents Collections Conversations Episode 4: Collections at the Edge

    19 FEB

    Fintech Takes x C&R presents Collections Conversations Episode 4: Collections at the Edge

    Welcome to the finale of Collections Conversations, a new four-part podcast 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 4, I sit down with Dave Wasik, Partner at 2nd Order Solutions, a lending advisory firm that works across the lending lifecycle, helping lenders originate loans, manage credit on existing customers, and handle fraud, collections, and recoveries (in the U.S. and overseas).  We start with the macro context Dave sees in his quarterly credit work. Delinquencies look stable across most lenders and asset classes, which is wild to believe given rising home rents, auto prices, restarting student loan payments, and consumer confidence reaching its 10-year low. Dave flags two yellow-orange areas: subprime federal student loan delinquencies that remain stubbornly high, and credit cards originated in early 2025 already showing early signs of performing as poorly as cards from 2022 (which was a rough year for just about every lender). From there, Dave explains why collections breaks the usual testing playbook, before we get to AI. Dave breaks it into two buckets, collector-facing copilots and consumer-facing bots. Collector-facing copilots are farther along (in both tech and lender comfort) whereas consumer-facing bots sit in an awkward middle between self-service and human empathy, though Dave argues the shame of debt might actually make a bot preferable.  Plus, he shares a mind-bending glimpse of the near future: bot-to-bot conversations negotiating collections outcomes. It’s a finale you won’t want to miss! 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 Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davewasik/ Learn more about C&R Software here: https://hubs.ly/Q03Wl1DY0

    59 min
  6. Not Fintech Investment Advice: Kairos, Vault, Vennre, & Buy Now Pay Maybe

    18 FEB

    Not Fintech Investment Advice: Kairos, Vault, Vennre, & Buy Now Pay Maybe

    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 Kairos, a multi-prediction market trading platform giving traders a single terminal to buy and sell event contracts across Kalshi, Polymarket, and all the other emerging platforms. Their pitch: what the Bloomberg terminal did for Wall Street, Kairos does for prediction market traders. That tees up our bigger idea: as prediction markets expand, how they get liquidity (especially through sports betting) shapes what these markets can become. Next is Vault, which takes a different angle on crypto-collateralized lending. Instead of the usual over-collateralized “borrow to buy more crypto” model, Vault’s idea is infrastructure that lets lenders use crypto as collateral to improve pricing or unlock access for other loans. Banks may want this, but they have no ability to take custody of that crypto asset as a part of the collateral process, and monitor the value of it – all of the infrastructure is missing there. Then there's Vennre, a wealth platform for high earners (HENRYs), offering private market exposure across real estate, credit, private equity, and venture through a mobile app with 1:1 financial coaches working with AI. Simon points out they’re registered in the UK and Saudi Arabia, Sharia-compliant, and targeting a growing cross-border audience tied to migration and real estate purchases. Finally, we close with Buy Now Pay Maybe, an on-chain “buy now pay later” send-up (more product idea than actual company), where you can pay more for higher odds of getting the item for free, or lose and overpay. Simon frames it as performance art that points at something ugly, which we explore. This episode is brought to you by Plaid.  Plaid helps lenders approve more creditworthy borrowers without taking on more risk, combining real-time cash flow data with behavioral insights. It’s a fast, familiar experience people trust, and that actually converts. Learn more at www.plaid.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://kairos.trade/ https://www.collateralvault.com/ https://vennre.com/ https://merch.smallbrain.xyz/

    59 min
  7. Fintech Takes: Super Bowl Edition

    11 FEB

    Fintech Takes: Super Bowl Edition

    Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast, where I’m welcoming back Jane Barratt, Chief Advocacy Officer at MX, to  talk about Super Bowl commercials and advertising ( and how it overlaps with data privacy, data ownership, open banking, and AI). Fun fact: Jane had a previous career in advertising. What I didn’t know is that Jane used to go on live television and review ads from the Super Bowl the day after. In this episode, recorded the day after Super Bowl LIX (déjà vu vu for Jane), we hand out the inaugural Fintech Takes Super Bowl Ad Awards. Then we pivot to what the commercials (including those that were conspicuously absent) reveal about consumer sentiment, what happens when ads start showing up inside AI tools, and more. We also dig into where U.S. open banking stands after a year of regulatory turbulence around the CFPB’s Section 1033 rule. Highlights include: Why Levi's won Best Use of Money and Coinbase won Biggest Waste of Money Why almost no major banks and fintech companies, or consumer financial brands showed up (and what that missing marketing spend signals about the economy) Why ads inside AI tools are fundamentally different from ads on Instagram or Google Why the biggest banks keep investing in open banking even with the CFPB’s Section 1033 rule still unresolved, and why smaller banks that don’t invest in data-sharing risk asset flight to trillion-dollar institutions This episode is brought to you by Plaid.  Plaid helps lenders approve more creditworthy borrowers without taking on more risk, combining real-time cash flow data with behavioral insights. It’s a fast, familiar experience people trust, and that actually converts. Learn more at www.plaid.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 Jane: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janebarratt/   Follow Alex Johnson:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnsonX: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

    1h 8m
  8. Fintech Takes x C&R presents Collections Conversations Episode 2: When Customer Centricity Breaks

    5 FEB

    Fintech Takes x C&R presents Collections Conversations Episode 2: When Customer Centricity Breaks

    Welcome to Collections Conversations, a new four-part podcast 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 2, I sit down with Ed Wallen, CEO of C&R Software. We kick things off with a hard truth about fintech companies that pride themselves on being customer-centric: that promise most often breaks at the exact moment customers need the most empathy and the most options.  As Ed puts it, you get the Apple experience of onboarding, where everything is sunshine and rainbows, and then suddenly you get the Mad Max experience in debt collections.  Our conversation unpacks why that shift happens. One day early and one day late feel the same to the customer, but on the inside, they trigger an entirely different playbook. If replacing a customer can cost hundreds of dollars, why treat hardship as a liability instead of protecting lifetime value? What if the real choice was between a churn machine and a loyalty engine? This episode is a blueprint for anyone reimagining collections, servicing, and customer trust. Subscribe to catch more about how generative AI might finally make collections more human. 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

    52 min
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About

Fintech moves fast. But here at Fintech Takes, Alex Johnson and his rotating panel of guests move faster so that you can stay on top of the latest and greatest news in the industry without breaking a sweat.  Welcome to Fintech Takes—the place where fintech’s biggest nerds come to sit back, relax, and completely geek out. Join Alex and a lineup of fintech’s brightest minds as they dissect what’s happening in fintech and banking.  Each week, Alex and his guests recap the most interesting developments in fintech and explore the industry’s most pressing questions, diving headfirst into the intricate workings of some of the industry’s most ground-breaking business models and unpacking the emerging players that promise to shape fintech’s future. From riveting conversations with fintech’s most relevant operators to comprehensive recaps of the month's most compelling news stories and in-depth analyses of the latest regulatory developments, Fintech Takes is your one-stop-shop for navigating the fintech universe. Subscribe now to join fintech’s nerdiest podcast around!

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Johnson
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    206
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Alex Johnson
  • Show Website
    Fintech Takes

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