Welcome to our much anticipated first episode of 2021, and what a start to the year it has been. Last week was a trainwreck as Gamestop, which was initially bid up by Redditers in an attempt to punish Wall Street, crashed back to earth when the very free brokerage platforms that purport to democratize investing for the 99% shut off trading in the most active stocks, benefitting hedge funds at the expense of retail investors. As wild as the events of the week were, they are merely a symptom of so...
Feb 08, 2021•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, is a special episode, of great personal importance to me. I have been learning and studying and training in fintech for years, both as a founder and through this podcast, where I’m able to have conversations with the most visionary and impactful founders, CEOs and VCs in the world of fintech. For the past year, I’ve been channeling all of this experience and insight into a new company, called BELLA , that is leading with digital banking in an effort to create positive change in the world....
Dec 20, 2020•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrei Cherny is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aspiration, a socially conscious bank challenging the traditional banking industry ethos. Prior to founding Aspiration, Andrei worked as a speechwriter for Bill Clinton, authored books on public policy and war history, served as Assistant Arizona State Attorney General, held senior positions at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Center for American Progress, and more. In 2013, Andrei co-founded Aspiration, a socially conscious banking and investments pr...
Dec 14, 2020•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, regular contributor Lex Sokolin and I are joined by Anne Boden, Founder and CEO of Starling Bank, one of the original wave of app-only digital banks in the UK. Starling has built a diversified bank and achieved profitability for the first time in October, a rarity for digital banks. Originally a retail-only offering, Starling has built out business banking and banking-as-a-service offerings and now serves a wide varied of customers. In this conversation, Anne, Lex and I discuss Starling’s...
Dec 04, 2020•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ali Niknam is the founder and CEO of bunq, a fully licensed digital bank based in the Netherlands and available in 30 countries across Europe. Prior to starting buns, Ali founded TransIP, the largest domain name and web hosting provider of the Netherlands. Ali is the sole investor in bunq, having invested €80m in the company to date. As of July 2020, the bank had €650 million of user deposits. In this conversation, Ali and I discuss the economics of digital banking, the decisions bunq has made a...
Nov 24, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Pierpaolo Barbieri is the Founder & CEO of Ualá, an Argentinian consumer fintech taking South America by storm. Founded just three years ago, Ualá has already amassed more than two million customers in its native Argentina and recently expnanded to nearby Mexico. Unlike consumer banking offerings in many developed markets, which compete with incumbent banks, Ualá’s main competitor is cash in markets in which as many as half of adults are unbanked. Ualá has raised just under $200 million since la...
Oct 26, 2020•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ryan Gilbert is General Partner at Propel Venture Partners, a Bay Area venture capital firm backed by BBVA. He is also as of very recently CEO of Olympus Acquisition Corp, a $750 million SPAC that listed on the Nasdaq in August. In this conversation, we look at why SPACs are coming back in fashion, pros and cons of SPACs versus traditional fundraising and listing routes, Ryan’s plans for the future of Olympus and more. To subscribe to the Rebank newsletter, including insights, essays and written...
Oct 13, 2020•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Rebank co-host Aman Ghei is joined by Seb Wallace, an investor at Triple Point, an early stage UK venture capital firm that has invested in companies including LendInvest, Credit Kudos, CountingUp and many more. In this conversation, Aman and Seb discuss strategies for remote seed investing, the skew they’re observing in terms of how venture money is flowing, startup opportunities Seb sees in insurance and capital markets and more. To subscribe to the Rebank newsletter, including insights...
Oct 05, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re joined by a pair of fintech analysts, Max Friedrich of ARK Invest and Lex Sokolin of ConsenSys, to break down Ant Group’s highly anticipated IPO. Ant, a spinout from Alibaba and the parent of Alipay, one of China’s leading payments companies, filed papers to IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong. In this conversation, Max, Lex and I break down Ant’s business, from the origins to today, discuss growth opportunities and potential headwinds and explore the multi-faceted relationships between Ant and ...
Sep 23, 2020•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, we’re joined by Lex Sokolin to talk through a few interesting developments in the world of fintech. M&A is a continued trend in fintech, with the most recent candidates reported to be UBS and Credit Suisse, the latter of which is also in the news with a new digital bank. Will their effort somehow be different than the abortive attempts of their international peers, including JP Morgan Chase in the US and RBS in the UK? Klarna raised $650 million at a $10.6 billion valuation, making it the...
Sep 18, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Consumer behavior in China has captivated the West for years, and behavior around fintech and payments is no different. Ant Group’s planned $200 billion upcoming IPO raises more questions than it answers in the minds of many in the West, who like me don't have direct experience with super apps and ubiquitous QR code based payments. We recorded a breakdown of Ant Group’s upcoming IPO last week with Max Friedrich and Lex Sokolin, which is under compliance review and will be released soon. Today’s ...
Sep 14, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mike Massaro is the CEO of Flywire, a payments technology company fresh off a $120m Series E led by Goldman Sachs. Matt Harris is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures and one of the smartest fintech VCs on the planet. Both Mike and Matt have been on Rebank before, in episodes I highly recommend everyone check out. In this conversation, we dig into the embedded finance opportunity and Bain Capital Ventures’ prediction that we’re at the beginning of a platform shift that will be as big as the Intern...
Sep 08, 2020•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re joined by Lex Sokolin to break down recently published annual reports from Revolut, Starling and Monzo, three of the leading European digital banks. There are some fascinating insights to be drawn from the documents, especially in the context of the broader global fintech market. This is rich subject matter, and we surely didn’t cover everything. You may even disagree with some of our analysis! Let us know. Please get in touch with thoughts, opinions and corrections. We’ll share all the hi...
Aug 14, 2020•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rob Moffat is a partner at Balderton, a leading European VC, with investments including Revolut, Nutmeg, Wagestream, Zego, GoCardless, ComplyAdvantage and many more. In this conversation, Rob and Rebank co-host Aman Ghei discuss the state of the venture market, fundraising during a crisis, the most interesting new business opportunities in fintech and much more. To subscribe to the Rebank newsletter, including insights, essays and written transcripts of all new episodes, please visit www.banking...
Aug 12, 2020•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The fintech world is not taking the summer off. New developments are coming fast and furious, from fundraisings to product launches to government intervention. Banking for brands startup Bond raised $32 million to capitalize on the exploding trend of B2B2C banking. Samsung Money launched, leveraging SoFi’s infrastructure. As SoFi again seeks a national banking charter, they could become the de facto leader in this space. Kabbage and Intuit launched small business bank accounts as extensions of t...
Jul 30, 2020•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Seth Pierrepont is a partner at Accel, one of the most renowned venture firms in the world and a backer of companies including Facebook, Spotify, Slack, Dropbox and many more. Seth invests in financial technology and data infrastructure and has led the firm's investments in companies like Privitar, AnyFin, Soldo, Worldremit any many others. In this conversation, Rebank co-host Aman Ghei of Finch Capital and Seth discuss how VCs have been adjusting to the new normal of investing remotely, the pie...
Jul 28, 2020•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Krik Gunning is the CEO and co-founder of Fourthline, one of fastest growing companies in Europe. Fourtline verifies the identities of millions of customers for clients like N26, ING, SolarisBank, Degiro, Flatex and many others. Aman and Krik discuss the genesis of KYC and the constant struggle between compliance and risk at regulated institutions. They look at real world examples of how companies are stopping financial crime and how technology offerings in this commoditized market stand out. Fo...
Jul 24, 2020•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Charlie Olson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pando, a Series A stage fintech designing new ways for high financial variability performers to manage financial risk and upside. Pando’s platform allows professional baseball players and more recently business school graduates to pool future earnings potential in ways that smooth income volatility for the group. In theory, this type of approach could help society better allocate talent against opportunities, without the constraint of personal financial...
Jul 22, 2020•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mike Cagney is the Co-Founder and CEO of Figure, a full stack financial services blockchain company with consumer offerings in market or on the way in lending, banking and more. In late-2019, Figure raised $103 million at a $1.2 billion valuation and continues to grow. Prior to starting Figure, Mike co-founded and ran SoFi, one of the most successful consumer fintech companies ever. In this conversation, we discuss Figure’s routes to asset origination and capital markets disruption, Figure’s pre...
Jul 17, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Manuel Silva is the Head of Investments for Santander InnoVentures, Santander’s Corporate Venture Capital arm and a leading fintech investor. InnoVentures' investment portfolio includes companies like Kabbage, Ripple, SigFig, Tradeshift, Curve, Payjoy, Roostify, Trulioo, Klar and Upgrade. In this conversation, Manuel and I discuss advice for founders in a recession, potential for COVID-driven consolidation in fintech, opportunities in LATAM and thoughts on the digital banking business model....
Jul 15, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robo 1.0 success Personal Capital was acquired for nearly $1 billion by Empower, a major retirement savings manager. Softbank-backed insurtech darling Lemonade IPOed at less than $2 billion, in a successful fundraise and listing, and has since seen its market cap rise to over $4 billion. The IPO is a landmark for an insurtech industry in desperate need of successes. And PayPal announces the impending launch of crypto trading to its 325 million uses. The move isn’t overly interesting in its own r...
Jul 10, 2020•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stuart Sopp is the Founder and CEO of Current, a leading US digital bank. Current has over a million users, with a focus on young, financially excluded Americans. In this conversation, we discuss how Current achieves profitable unit economics, what differentiates Current from competitors, key differences between the US and European digital banking markets and more. For all of our past episodes and to sign up for our newsletter, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joini...
Jul 09, 2020•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mike Packer, Partner at QED, and Michael Sidgmore, Partner at Broadhaven Ventures, are active investors in Latin America, with collective portfolio companies including Credijusto, Loft, Nubank and many more. In this conversation, we discuss market dynamics, nuances and opportunities in Latin American fintech and much more. For all of our past episodes and to sign up for our newsletter, please visit www.bankingthefuture.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Mike Packer an...
Jun 30, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, we’re joined by Lex Sokolin to talk through a few recent events that are indicative of what’s important in fintech right now. And boy, is there a lot to talk about. WhatsApp launches payments in Brazil and is unceremoniously shut down by the central bank a week later, MasterCard buys Finicity to protect itself against Visa’s recent acquisition of Plaid, Checkout.com continues its largely silent meteoric rise in payments, Softbank-backed, DAX 30 index component Wirecard “loses" $2 billion ...
Jun 26, 2020•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andy Rachleff is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wealthfront, one of the world’s leading investments and personal finance companies. Building around a core investments offering for young professionals, Wealthfront has added checking, savings and debit functionality plus automation, with the ultimate vision of delivering self-driving money, where personal finance is fully automated by software. Today, Wealthfront is announcing the launch of checking account features in a significant extension of its ex...
Jun 24, 2020•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Oliver Hughes is the CEO of Tinkoff Group, one of the world’s most successful digital banking groups with over ten million customers. Tinkoff is publicly listed, which brings clarity to its operating model in a time when many noteworthy consumer digital banks are pursuing customer acquisition at the expense of profitability. Oliver has led Tinkoff through three financial crises, so brings experience and perspective to the current COVID crisis. This is a fascinating discussion about unit economic...
Jun 19, 2020•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re joined by Lex Sokolin to 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 h...
Jun 12, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eric Poirier is the CEO of Addepar, a leading investment technology company with a ten-year track record serving institutional clients. With more than 400 institutional investor clients with approximately $2 trillion in assets on Addepar’s platform, Eric has a fantastic view into how the smart money responded during the COVID crash and where funds are likely to flow during recession and recovery. Addepar has raised $245 million since inception to build and scale its platform and recently launche...
Jun 09, 2020•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, we’re joined by Max Friedrich and Lex Sokolin. Max is a fintech analyst a ARK Invest, a public markets investment manager focused on disruptive technologies including autonomous tech, robotics, fintech, genomics and next generation internet. Max recently published a report on digital wallets, including Venmo and Square’s Cash App, which is available for download on ARK’s website. I loved this conversation, which could have been twice as long as it was, and hope to continue exploring this ...
Jun 05, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Clay Wilkes is the founder and CEO of Galileo, one of the leading digital banking and payments platforms in North America. Galileo provides much of the technology that powers banking and payments for companies including Chime, Robinhood and Varo, plus the US operations of Monzo, N26, Revolut and many, many more. In April, SoFi, one of the absolute leading US fintechs and an increasingly full service financial institution, announced the acquisition of Galileo for $1.2 billion. The tie up will del...
Jun 02, 2020•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
