In was another super busy news week with some major financings. a blockbuster IPO and a merger divorce. Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

Affirm’s IPO Takes Off Like a Rocket Ship from Lend Academy – Affirm had what can only be called a blockbuster IPO this week. It priced at $49, closed the first day (Wednesday) at $97.24 and ended the week at $117 with a valuation north of $28 billion.

Visa Abandons Planned Acquisition of Plaid After DOJ Challenge from The Wall Street Journal – The Visa and Plaid merger, first announced a year ago this week, has been canceled. Probably a good thing for Plaid as they can now explore the oh-so-hot public markets (see above) and they have added 60% more paying customers in the past year.

Checkout.com raises $450 million and reaches $15 billion valuation from Techcrunch – The most valuable fintech in Europe is Checkout.com after their monster funding round (the eight biggest rounds of the week totaled over $2 billion).

Walmart to launch fintech startup with partner Ribbit Capital from Banking Dive – While details are almost non-existent this made big news this week because, hey, it’s Walmart getting into fintech.

What banks, fintechs can learn from Simple’s rise and sudden death from American Banker – One of the very first fintechs, Simple, closed down this week with users being folded into BBVA, that purchased the company in 2014.

OCC Chief Brian Brooks Is Stepping Down Thursday from Yahoo Finance – After a busy eight months in the job, probably the most forward thinking OCC head ever, Brian Brooks, stepped down this week.

Get ready for self-driving banks from the Financial Times – As a parting gift the aforementioned Brian Brooks penned this fascinating op-ed in the FT on the future of banking (spoiler alert: he likes DeFi).

Goldman Sachs Inches Closer to Offering Marcus Checking Accounts from Bloomberg – Details are starting to emerge about Goldman Sachs’ new consumer checking account that will debut later this year with Marqeta powering some of the tech.

Analysis: Digital banks gain U.S. customers during pandemic, thanks to early deposits from Reuters – It was a good last year for digital banks like Chime, Varo and Current that collectively added millions of customers.

Anchorage Becomes First OCC-Approved National Crypto Bank from Coindesk – Crypto custodian Anchorage received preliminary approval for a national trust charter from the OCC this week, the first crypto startup to receive this designation.

Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week. Again, IPO news leads the top stories of the week.

Affirm Postpones Its Initial Public Offering from The Wall Street Journal – Affirm announced last weekend that they would be delaying their IPO until January at the earliest amid concerns about the first day price jumps of other tech companies.

Coinbase files to go public confidentially and we’re hyped from TechCrunch – The leading crypto exchange announced that it has filed confidentially to go public and will likely hit the public markets in early 2021.

Upstart Completes Their IPO, Soars 47% on Trading Debut from Lend Academy – And now to a company that actually did take the plunge this week. Upstart had a phenomenal trading debut and has continued to climb since this article was published.

Green Dot And The Future Of Banking-As-A-Service from Forbes – While the banking as a service sector heats up Ron Shevlin talks with the CEO of Green Dot about their plans there as well as how they are taking on the challenger banks.

Robinhood Financial to Pay $65 Million to Settle SEC Probe from The Wall Street Journal – Robinhood’s regulatory challenges keeps making news and this week we learned they settled with the SEC for $65 million on claims that they didn’t sufficiently disclose their business deals with high-speed trading firms.

Banks can’t ride fee income gravy train much longer from American Banker – Banks saw significant increase in fee income in 2020 but that is expected to reduce in 2021 and 2022.

German fintech N26 eyes more fundraising before IPO in 2023 -CEO from Reuters – Valentin Stalf, the CEO and founder of N26, said that while the digital bank is aiming to break even by the end of 2021 they will likely do one more fundraise before a 2023 (at the earliest) IPO.

Nubank: A LatAm Fintech Valued at $10 Billion and Growing Fast from Crowdfund Insider – Nubank is the largest digital bank in the world (excluding China) with more than 30 million customers. JD Alois digs into the recent keynote at LendIt Fintech LatAm with the CEO of Nubank, David Vélez.

Banks Have Made Big Digital Gains, But Is It A Double-Edged Sword? from Forbes – Banks made tremendous gains in digital engagement with their customers this year but in the world of digital a new bank relationship is just a click away.

Spring Labs Slashes Consumer Loan Fraud Using Novel Data Network from Fintech Finance – I love what Spring Labs is doing and as they start to ramp up they are making a real difference in fraud prevention.

Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

Online lender SoFi explores deal to go public, report says from CNBC – SoFi might be the next fintech to go public, possibly via a SPAC, having held discussions with a number of so-called blank-check acquisition companies.

Affirm: The Morality of Money from The Generalist – This may be the most in depth analysis of Affirm ever written starting with Max Levchin’s childhood in the former Soviet Union and providing a detailed examination of Affirm’s S-1.

Robinhood is preparing for its 2021 IPO launch with Goldman Sachs from Business Insider – In keeping with our IPO theme this week we hear news of Robinhood having selected bankers for their IPO next year.

Two cryptocurrency firms seek OCC approval to charter trust banks from American Banker – Paxos and BitPay have applied to the OCC to become national trust banks, a type of bank that does not require FDIC insurance.

Why Square’s Expanding Ecosystem Threatens Banking’s Future from The Financial Brand – Many very small businesses are using Square as they would a bank because it is so easy and convenient, and this is before Square has set up its FDIC-approved industrial bank.

Synctera raises $12.4 million seed to connect community banks and fintechs from FinLedger – The former head of Uber Money, Peter Hazlehurst, has launched his new company, Synctera, which aims to make it easier for community banks and fintechs to partner with each other.

Jack Ma’s Ant Group Ramped Up Loans, Exposing Achilles’ Heel of China’s Banking System from The Wall Street Journal – The scale of Ant Group’s lending program is staggering so it is worth a deep dive into their lending practices.

Capital One bans buy now, pay later transactions on its credit cards from Business Insider – Capital One becomes the first major bank to hit back at the BNPL trend that has been sweeping the country this year.

The new challenger banks: ‘A lot of these are going to fail’ from American Banker – Penny Crosman analyzes the rapidly expanding challenger bank space with some analysts concluding that many of these new digital banks are not going to survive.

Betterment CEO Jon Stein Steps Down from The Wall Street Journal – The CEO and founder of Betterment has stepped down and he will be succeeded by Sarah Kirshbaum Levy, a former ViacomCBS executive who has been consulting with the company since October 1.

Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

Stripe to Offer Banking Services in Deal With Goldman Sachs, Citigroup from The Wall Street Journal – Goldman Sachs keep spreading their wings, this time in small business banking, inking a deal with Stripe that could be groundbreaking given Stripe’s reach.

Helping big banks out-Affirm Affirm and out-Chime Chime gives Amount a $681 million valuation from TechCrunch – Banking as a service is becoming more popular, with Goldman Sachs leading the $81 million Series C into Amount.

Visa Is Doing What Big American Companies Do to ‘Protect This Business’ from The New York Times – It is not often that the NY Times Editorial Board weighs in on fintech but they have a lot to say about about Visa’s planned acquisition of Plaid, coming out in support of the Department of Justice.

Affirm to Acquire PayBright for $340 Million CAD from BetaKit – The leading buy-now-pay-later player in the US, Affirm, is now making sure it will dominate the market north of the border with this US$264 million acquisition.

Argentine Fintech Ualá Takes Mobile Payments to Small Businesses from Bloomberg – One of the fastest growing fintechs in the world is Ualá, the Argentina-based fintech, that is now moving into SMB payments (see the Ualá CEO speak at LendIt Fintech LatAm next week).

Podcast 276: Mike Cagney of Figure from Lend Academy – I rarely, if ever, include one of my podcasts in the biggest news stories of the week but this episode blew me away. Everyone in fintech needs to understand what Mike Cagney is doing.

A fintech’s novel bank charter application draws industry’s ire from American Banker – Staying with Figure, when you are doing things in new ways, as Figure is doing, you are going to ruffle a lot of feathers. Not surprisingly, many banking groups do not like Figure’s approach to a bank charter.

Teen banking app Step reaches for the stars to raise $50 million from Reuters – I am a big fan of anything that helps kids learn about money management. Step is targeting the teen market, has already attracted 500,000 users, and has some A-list celebrity backers in this large funding round.

LendUp Launching Ahead, a New Digital Banking Brand from Lend Academy – LendUp is about to launch a digital banking offering targeting the non-prime consumer that will incorporate financial literacy in a new way.

A New Visa Credit Card Offers Bitcoin Rewards Instead of Miles or Cash from Bloomberg – For crypto enthusiasts an interesting new credit card from Visa and BlockFi. Earn 1.5% cash back, paid in bitcoin. Congrats to Zac Prince and the team for getting this deal done.

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. Even though it was a short week there were several really big fintech stories, just as many, if not more, than a regular week. Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

Justice Department Clears Intuit to Buy Credit Karma from The Wall Street Journal – After Credit Karma agrees to sell its tax-preparation business to Square, the DOJ has cleared the $7.1 billion acquisition by Intuit.

Payments Startup Stripe in Talks for Funding at $70 Billion Valuation or More from Bloomberg – This country’s most valuable private fintech will soon be even more valuable with a new round in the works that could value the payments leader at between $70 and $100 billion.

LMI lender Oportun applies for national banking charter from Banking Dive – Oportun, the publicly traded fintech that serves lower and middle income Americans, wants to brings it offering nationwide by applying for a national bank charter.

It is Almost Becoming a Flood: Fintech Companies Want to Become Banks from Lend Academy – I write about the trend of fintechs applying for bank charters and argue that this will be the future as fintech and banking converges.

Visa-Backed Marqeta Targets $10 Billion Valuation in 2021 IPO from Bloomberg – The wave of fintech IPOs shows no signs of abating with Marqeta being the latest to throw their hat in the ring. They have reportedly hired underwriters in preparation for a 2021 listing.

This de novo wants to be the go-to bank for fintechs from American Banker – Penny Crosman interviews Wendy Cai-Lee, the CEO and founder of Piermont Bank as it looks to take on established players like Cross River and Evolve Bank & Trust.

GM Plans to Seek Banking Charter to Grow Auto-Lending Business from The Wall Street Journal – It is not just fintechs applying for bank charters, General Motors is looking to get back into the banking business with plans to apply for an ILC charter.

Mobile banking app Current raises $131M Series C, tops 2 million members from TechCrunch – Another digital bank continues to grow and is now approaching Unicorn status with this latest funding round.

PayPal Is Winning The $24 Billion Buy Now, Pay Later Battle—For Now from Forbes – Ron Shevlin writes about a new survey conducted by Cornerstone Advisors on the Buy Now Pay Later space, looking at who is using it, how many and their repayment history.

Ripple Is Cashing Out a Third of Its Stake in Surging MoneyGram from CoinDesk – With MoneyGram’s stock surging this year Ripple has decided to take some profits on its large stake, selling one-third of its investment (you can learn more details about the partnership between Ripple and Moneygram in my latest podcast with Ripple’s SVP of Product, Asheesh Birla, published yesterday).

Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

New Google Pay app update offers more ways to pay, save and get insights into your money from CNBC – The tech giants keep coming. Today Google launched an updated GooglePay app that brings money management features and, more importantly, the ability to open a digital bank account with Citi or StanfordFCU with more coming soon.

Affirm just made its IPO filing public, providing the first detailed look inside the breakout ‘buy now, pay later’ fintech startup’s finances from Business Insider – This week Affirm revealed its IPO documents showing their revenue growth and how integral Peloton has been to that growth.

PNC Financial Services to Buy U.S. Arm of Spain’s BBVA for $11.6 Billion from The Wall Street Journal – PNC is using the bulk of its proceeds from its sales of BlackRock stock to build a nationwide footprint and leapfrog US Bank to become the fifth largest retail bank by assets.

DOJ gives Mastercard the green light to acquire Finicity for $825 million from FinLedger – While the Department of Justice is fighting the Visa-Plaid deal they have given the green light to Mastercard for their Finicity acquisition.

How Chime Is Dominating Digital Banking (And All Of Banking) from Forbes – Chime has become the biggest digital bank in the US in terms of number of customers. Ron Shevlin looks at why they are doing so well.

Chase Bank Enters Buy Now, Pay Later Market with Flexible Payment Plan Options for Purchases Over $100 from Crowdfund Insider – The buy now pay later segment is the hottest niche in lending this year and the 800 lb gorilla has just entered the fray.

Uber Teams With Marqeta To Issue Global Cards from PYMNTS – Marqeta is already partnering with Uber Eats but this week they announced a global partnership with Uber to provide them payments and cards infrastructure.

Trump nominates Brian Brooks for head of OCC from FinLedger – Brian Brooks has been acting head of the OCC for several months but the president has now nominated him officially. He is certainly the most fintech-friendly bank regulator ever.

PayPal Partners with Even, a Salary On-Demand Platform, so that Employees Can Get Paid Early to Meet Expenses from Crowdfund Insider – After investing in Even earlier this year PayPal is now rolling out earned wage access via Even to their employees.

The Ten Biggest Stories Covering Ten Years of Fintech from Lend Academy – This week marked ten years since I started writing about this industry. I marked the occasion with a retrospective looking back at the biggest story I covered each year.

Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

Ex-SoFi CEO’s company Figure seeks national bank charter from Banking Dive – Mike Cagney keeps pushing the ball forward. Figure is applying for a bank charter to try to consolidate its compliance efforts.

Better.com snags $200 million in series D funding for $4 billion valuation from FinLedger – Mortgage lender Better.com has grown tremendously this year, funding $2.5 billion a month in loans in October, and now they have a bigger cash war chest in their run up to a potential IPO next year.

Why PPP fraud hit fintechs harder than banks from American Banker – The full story of PPP fraud is still yet to be written. As Penny Crosman points out more fraud has been detected from fintech lenders but is this because fintechs are better at identifying fraud or did the fraudsters attack fintechs more than banks?

This fintech-focused VC firm just closed a $75 million debut fund; backers ‘came out of the woodwork’ from TechCrunch – Sheel Mohnot, formerly of 500 Startups and Jake Gibson, co-founder of NerdWallet, have started a new early stage venture firm, Better Tomorrow Ventures, with a $75 million initial fund.

Prize-linked savings accounts get a boost from flood of new deposits from American Banker – I am a big fan of anything that can get people saving more so the deposit growth numbers from credit union savings program, Save to Win, are worth highlighting.

Federal Lawsuit Points to Payments’ Future from The Wall Street Journal – Whether or not the Department of Justice is successful in stopping the Visa acquisition of Plaid, it could well change the financial services landscape forever.

Fintech Unicorns Flywire And AvidXchange Are Planning To Go Public In 2021 from Forbes – Two well established fintech companies are have been growing fast in 2020 and looking to go public next year.

BBVA and Prosper partner to offer digital home equity lines from American Banker – Prosper has been partnering with BBVA on home equity loans for quite some time but now they have installed Prosper’s software for all HELOCs resulting in 14 days faster closing times.

DV01 Report: Online Consumer Lending Continues to Head Towards Normalcy from Crowdfund Insider – dv01 continues to produce their biweekly reports on marketplace lending sharing that originations are continuing to grow while repayment rates also increase.

US Representatives Rip OCC, Brooks for ‘Excessive Focus’ on Crypto from CoinDesk – Six members of Congress penned a sharply worded letter to Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks for his focus on crypto and fintech.

In a week when the whole world was pretty much focused on one thing, there was actually a lot of big fintech news. Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

Justice Department Files Antitrust Lawsuit Challenging Visa’s Planned Acquisition of Plaid from The Wall Street Journal – The DOJ made it official this week that they will be suing to block the Visa acquisition of Plaid.

How an avalanche of rules buried Ant Group’s US$39.5 billion stock sale and looks set to reshape China’s fintech landscape from The South China Morning Post – This was absolutely shocking news this week. Ant Group was all set to conduct the world’s largest ever IPO when it was suddenly postponed indefinitely the day before listing.

Q: Why did China block Ant Group’s IPO? A: Jack messed up from The Finanser – I am including a second perspective on the Ant IPO, this one from Chris Skinner, because it is such an important story.

Upstart Files for $100M IPO – Reveals Financials from deBanked – Interesting timing from Upstart. They filed to go public on Thursday, hoping to raise $100 million in an upcoming IPO.

What a Biden administration could mean for fintech from FinLedger – While the election still has not been called as of this writing, a Biden Administration looks likely, here is a good perspective on what it could mean for fintech.

CFPB grants safe harbor to Bank of America for small-dollar loans from American Banker – The CFPB issued a No Action Letter to Bank of America on their small dollar loan program that was announced just last month.

LendingClub Shows Continued Recovery in Q3 2020 Results from Lend Academy – LendingClub reported Q3 earnings this week and while originations are still much lower year over year they are up dramatically from Q2.

How The US Could Achieve 100% Financial Inclusion Through Local Public Banking from Forbes – Interesting piece by Nik Milanovic on the concept of public banking, providing examples from Philadelphia and North Dakota.

Revolut set to hire a CCO to lead new division amid profitability push from Sifted – Revolut is hiring their first head of sales (in the UK called chief commercial officer) as they pursue a new revenue stream selling services to medium and large retail merchants.

How much longer will consumer credit hold up? from American Banker – This is the big question for all consumer lenders. So far in 2020 consumers have proven to be resilient but if there is no stimulus for several months this could change dramatically.

Here are what I consider to be the top 10 most important fintech news stories of the past week.

Visa’s Planned Purchase of Plaid Faces Antitrust Scrutiny at the Justice Department from The Wall Street Journal – The Department of Justice is deciding whether it will sue to block Visa’s purchase of Plaid.

SoFi gets OCC’s preliminary approval for bank charter, launches credit card from Banking Dive – SoFi had two big pieces of news this week: they received preliminary approval approval from the OCC for their bank charter and they launched an innovative new credit card.

OCC clarifies who is ‘true lender’ in bank-nonbank partnerships from American Banker – The OCC has finalized its true lender rule and it is pretty simple: a national bank is the true lender if, at the time of a loan’s origination, it is named as the lender in a loan agreement or if the bank funds the loan.

Who Wants A Credit Karma Checking Account? from Forbes – Ron Shevlin shares details of a new study from Cornerstone Advisors that explores the new checking account offering from Credit Karma and finds that three in 10 consumers engage with the firm on a weekly basis.

Ant IPO Sets Off $3 Trillion Scramble Among Small Investors from The Wall Street Journal – The numbers with all aspects of the Ant Group IPO are staggering. The world record IPO is also gaining record interest from individual investors with five million individuals in mainland China placing orders for shares in Shanghai ahead of next Thursday’s listing.

Ping An-backed Lufax defies geopolitical tension with $2.4bn US IPO from The Financial Times – While it is overshadowed by Ant Group, Chinese fintech leader Lufax debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday raising $2.36 billion in one of the biggest listings of the year.

Goldman Sachs made Marcus Insights available to anyone, including consumers who aren’t existing customers from Business Insider – Marcus Insights, the free suite of personal financial management tools, is now available to any iOS, Android or web user.

Shopify Capital Originated $252M in MCAs and Business Loans in Q3 from deBanked – Shopify is quietly becoming a force in small business lending, they are on a $1 billion annual run date now for originations.

BlueVine Takes Wraps Off Small Biz Banking Platform from PYMNTS – Small businesses have more choice than ever before as BlueVine launched its new integrated online banking platform this past week.

Upgrade adds rewards program to its credit card from Techcrunch – Upgrade is making its credit card offering more attractive to its customers with 1.5% cash back. The money is credited not at the time of purchase but when payments are made on the card.