In the long take this week, I try out a contrarian point of view on personal finance chatbots. Trim, a savings chatbot, just withdrew support from Facebook Messenger. While lots of other chatbots are still invested in conversational banking, what could we take away from the counterfactual of chatbots failing to get B2C traction? What is the impact on the rest of the platform wars waged by Amazon, Google, and Tesla for connected homes, cars, and the Internet of Things?
The Cash App is a consumer finance app owned by Square; the company opted to take a different approach to...
This week, we look at what positive innovations could arise from the pressure cooker of the pandemic. I touch on health care data and privacy, molecular technology, digital work- and play-spaces, and their financial implications. Channeled productively, the next decade could see advances in these fields that we can't yet imagine.
If you are in finance and only looking at banks, you are missing out on the real change agents. Here's some cross-industry action that we will unpack this week.
Amazon selected Goldman Sachs to be the lender of choice for small business loans. TikTok maker ByteDance is working with a Singaporean business family to get a financial license. And small business bank Starling is integrating Slack, energy switching service Bionic, and health insurance provider Equipsme into their marketplace. And we might as well talk about the Plaid Exchange launch, and end on the computational economy of Ethereum.
This week, we look at:
TikTok has become a platform with billions of views for investing and stock recommendations to teens. This emotional and persuasive labor can be traced from Jim Cramer to Roaring Kitty.
78% of Millennials (vs. 31% of Boomers) plan to use more digital tools in wealth management and 81% of them think that technology has made investing more efficient (vs. 61% Boomers)
This generational change has implications for investing technology, digital wallets, and the role of people in the financial advice process
Fintech startup Tally has started to see big success in advertising on TikTok which has allowed the company to more...
TikTok has fast become one of the most popular apps in the world and is said to be valued at...
Today, we talk through a few recent events that are indicative of what’s important in fintech right now.
Varo raised $241 million in preparation to start operating under its own banking license later this year. Is a banking license an asset or a liability if you’re a digital bank?
Marqeta is reportedly now valued at $4.3 billion, as banking-as-a-service continues its mature.
And LA-based fintech Stackin’ raised $13 million to scale its messaging-based offering designed to help Gen Z find the right fintech. What should we make of this?
In Q1 2020 TikTok set a record for most downloads for any app ever in a quarter, with more than...
In this conversation, we talk with Maximilian Rofagha, who serves as the CEO and Founder of Finimize, about how to do personal finance right and how to do it bottoms up for the world.
Additionally, we explore Max’s journey to becoming an entrepreneur, the nuances of the e-commerce business, the building of and drivers behind community and creating business activities around it, the influences of FinTok and crypto assets on financial community, and the drivers of value back into said communities fulfilling the feedback loop.