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Fintech Takes

Fintech Takes

Written by: 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!Copyright 2026 Alex Johnson Economics Personal Finance Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Fintech Recap: Whop, Revolut, and Chime Buys Stride

    Fintech Recap: Whop, Revolut, and Chime Buys Stride
    Oct 7 2026
    Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. We kick things off with Whop, a creator marketplace that announced last week that anyone can launch a neobank on its platform in 15 minutes. Jason tried it. I unpack why a self-custody wallet built to function like a bank account opens a new kind of regulatory arbitrage. Next, we get into a data breach at Revolut. As Jason reported, a hacker group threatened to sell identity information and account balances and transaction histories of about 680 Revolut users. The group then sent Revolut legal requests for their data (and Revolut complied, for about six months). That's poor timing for a company with conditional approval for a U.S. bank charter. From there, Chime has agreed to buy Stride, one of its partner banks, for $590 million in cash. That keeps the combined bank (roughly $7B in assets) below the $10B threshold that has long shaped Chime's interchange-heavy business model. Jason weighs in on talking points that change when the roadmap does, and on how leverage can shift toward a fintech partner that outgrows its bank. Plus, in our Can't Let It Gos: an AI-generated ad for Kalshi in which a man suspects his girlfriend is cheating, only to learn she's been betting on egg prices, and a termination letter (newly released through a FOIA request) for the official the OCC named in 2023 to run its Office of Financial Technology. --- This episode is brought to you by Increase. Increase offers API-first banking for ambitious technology companies. Companies like Coast, Gusto, and Ramp rely on Increase technology to process more than $500B annualized in payments, card transactions, and loans. Learn more at https://increase.com/ --- 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, Wednesday, and Friday: 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 X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson --- Follow Jason: Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Fintech Takes x C&R Software Presents: Fintech’s Next Test Across the U.S. and U.K.

    Fintech Takes x C&R Software Presents: Fintech’s Next Test Across the U.S. and U.K.
    Oct 5 2026
    Welcome to Season 2 of Collections Conversations, a new 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 1, I sit down with Luke Broadhurst, CEO of Credit Strategy, who has covered the U.K. banking and fintech scene (particularly from a credit perspective), for more than two decades. We explore how U.K. fintech companies treat customers once things go wrong, and what the U.S. can learn from it. Fintech has spent years making onboarding easy. Luke says a missed payment is when a lender's customer centricity either comes through or doesn't. Asked whether AI belongs in decisions like these, Luke says undoubtedly, but a human has to own the consequences, even if a human doesn't press the button. Owning the consequences, he says, is what Consumer Duty teaches. I don't think U.S. fintech has internalized that lesson just yet. We get into: Whether the next era of fintech is a story of scale or of customer centricity (which Luke calls an operating model decision, not a user experience decision) How Consumer Duty went from a regulation U.K. lenders resisted to one the conversation at Credit Week now treats as a force for good Why fintech companies that build the world's best brakes can drive at 500 miles/hour Why smaller firms with less reputational risk are deploying AI while large institutions stay cautious for fear of getting it wrong Luke's advice? Stop thinking technology is the advantage, and put finance before tech. --- 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, Wednesday, and Friday: 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 Luke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-broadhurst-6a40592/
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    45 mins
  • The Investor Diaries

    The Investor Diaries
    Sep 30 2026
    Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by Tim Flacke (Co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth) to unpack The Investor Diaries, their 15-month research project on how low-to-moderate income Americans invest. This is a different kind of episode, one where you’ll hear select voice diaries from the consumers themselves, representing households earning between $25,000 and $80,000 a year. One of the stats from Commonwealth’s research surprised me: 54% of adults living on low to moderate incomes now invest, and retail investing in this cohort has grown 2.7x since 2020. We dig into what pushes new investors to pause or pull money out, and what providers could build to keep them in the market. Highlights include: What changes when you're the first person in your family to cross what Tim calls the "Risk Rubicon"? Why do providers present their products like a catalog, without a point of view? If the business model for helping someone build a small cash cushion is, in Tim's words, "terrible," why should brokerages offer a savings option anyway? What does Commonwealth's research on bank chatbots say about how AI earns trust? Plus, Tim shares how to make the most of Trump accounts and the more than $20 billion now on the table for kids. Tune in for a closer look at a growing group of investors the industry too often flattens into a stereotype. --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus. Better lending starts with better intelligence. A borrower's cash flow only tells half the story, so Ocrolus fills in the rest with behavior signals and industry benchmarking. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more. --- 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, Wednesday, and Friday: 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 X: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Tim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyflacke/ The Investor Diaries: https://buildcommonwealth.org/research/investordiaries/
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    58 mins
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