Fintech
Highnote, a San Francisco-based payments startup, has raised $90 million in Series B funding that values it at more than $750 million, a source close to the transaction told Forbes. The round was led by Chicago-based investment firm Adams Street Partners, with Oak HC/FT, Costanoa, Westcap, and Pinegrove Capital Partners…
In perhaps one of the very first instances of blockchain solving a real-world problem, and a little financial alchemy through the creation of additional value through the transformation of a standard financial asset, Permuto Capital has created the next big thing for equity investors. Permuto Capital is launching a product…
The fintech industry has had a hard couple of years. Macroeconomic trends burst its bubble after the heights of 2021, and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank unleashed a wave of regulatory scrutiny on the financial services industry that made it difficult for those still alive to operate. Now, however,…
Stripe, a payment technology company and the Bay Area’s second most valuable startup, sent layoff notices to 300 workers Monday – accidentally sending a cartoon picture along with the news. The picture, attached as a PDF, is a cartoon image of a yellow duckling, with the label, “US-Non-California Duck”, according…
During the Great Fire of London, in 1666, the famous diarist Samuel Pepys buried his cheese and wine in his garden to keep them safe from the conflagration threatening to consume everything in its path. I was thinking about this because of the terrible Los Angeles wildfires in which dozens…
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FINTECH SNARK TANK A new study from Cornerstone Advisors, looking at the financial services providers that Americans opened checking accounts with in 2024, underscores the continued dominance of digital banks and fintechs like Chime, PayPal, and Square in the checking account market. What’s going on in the…
These entrepreneurs, traders and investors are making an outsized impact in fintech, crypto and traditional financial services. By Jeff Kauflin, Nina Bambysheva, Maneet Ahuja, Steven Ehrlich, Lindsey Choo and Stephen Pastis Credit card transactions carry little information about whom customers are paying. This makes it hard for banks to know…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal agency championed by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2011 to protect consumers against predatory financial services, has ramped up enforcement actions against fintech and financial services companies under President Biden. In 2023, it ordered $3.1 billion in fines and refunds for consumer…
Capgemini’s annual World Payments Report is always interesting reading for money nerds like me, and the just-released 2025 report is no different. There is a lot of focus on account-to-account (A2A) payments in the report, just as you would expect given current trends, and it goes so far as to…
In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, much attention has focused on the implications of President Trump’s historic return to the White House. Yet another significant story has emerged: the failure of prediction markets to provide reliable forecasting during the pivotal contest between Trump and his opponent, Kamala Harris.…
