Hello Fintech Friends,

Welcome to the 1,008+ new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 161,000+ other subscribers. Today's newsletter is brought to you by Ingo Payments.

🍻 We had an active week around the world, with fintech meetups in Toronto and Amsterdam, as well as our first monthly Stable Salon in New York.

📰 We're also excited to announce TWIF Breaking! We are going to begin reporting more breaking news, sharing it with our 160k+ weekly subscribers and 100k+ social media followers. If you have news you'd like us to cover exclusively, let us know at scoops@thisweekinfintech.com.

🥴 We caveated a few weeks ago that the one rule of 2025 was that there would be surprises, and that – where possible – the timeline would get, uh, dumber.

News emerged this week that Ryan Breslow is rejoining online hosted checkout provider Bolt as its CEO. A quick recap, for those keeping score:

• Breslow was embroiled in a legal battle (since settled) with Bolt investor investor Activant Capital over a $30 million loan he took out, secured by Bolt equity. Activant’s suit accused Breslow of adding $30 million to Bolt’s balance sheet in the form of a personal loan and removing board members when they urged Breslow to repay it.
• Breslow was the subject of an SEC probe over allegedly misleading investors and violating securities law.
• While previously leading the company, Breslow was repeatedly accused of inflating metrics and misrepresenting growth.
• Bolt ex-customer Fanatics sued the company seeking to force Bolt to pay up on what it believed were Bolt’s financial contractual obligations.
• Last year, Bolt claimed it had raised $450 million at a $14 billion valuation. It was then revealed that the round consisted of $200 million in equity and an additional $250 million in “marketing credits” from a related party.
• Investors then filed a restraining order and the deal (reportedly) died.
• Per reporting last August, Bolt's annualized run rate revenue was at $28 million in revenue and the company had $7 million in gross profit.
• The company has raised $982 million across 11 rounds.

If you're interested in hearing about... presumably anything other than the storyline above, you can see Breslow – "The Maverick" and "visionary Founder and Chairman of Bolt" – keynoting Fintech Meetup next week.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

(👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm)

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🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

CME Group announced plans to launch Solana futures contracts on March 17, pending regulatory approval. The launch will feature two contract sizes: one for 500 Solana coins and a smaller contract for 25 coins. This move aimed to address growing client demand for more regulated options to manage cryptocurrency price risks. Approval of these futures contracts could pave the way for Solana exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Firms such as VanEck, 21Shares, and Franklin Templeton have already filed for SEC approval to launch Solana ETFs.

📰 Other News

JPMorgan Chase allocated an additional $50 billion toward direct lending initiatives to strengthen its position in the private credit market.

The CFPB dismissed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, which had accused the banks of allowing fraud to persist on the Zelle payments platform.

The FDIC board approved a proposal to roll back a previous policy that increased scrutiny on large bank mergers, reinstating the merger guidelines that were in effect prior to 2024.

Citigroup experienced a clerical error that briefly credited a client's account with $81 trillion instead of the intended $280; the mistake was promptly corrected with no funds leaving the bank.

💬 Quote of the Week

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

TrueBiz* introduced Monitoring 360, an advanced merchant risk monitoring system that provides a comprehensive analysis of a merchant's entire internet footprint to detect evolving fraud tactics.

Trust2Connect, founded by former Equifax executives, unveiled an AI-driven Know Your Business (KYB) platform designed to streamline B2B verification, accelerate account openings, and mitigate payment risks by verifying and scoring over 97 million small and private businesses in the United States.

Socure launched the Identity Manipulation Risk Score, an AI-powered predictive risk scoring system that quantifies identity manipulation risk at account opening, transactions, and disputes, aiming to prevent repeat unscrupulous consumers from exploiting the U.S. digital economy.

Okoora introduced FX360, a new technology redefining financial infrastructure by offering businesses comprehensive tools to manage currency exposure and optimize international transactions.

Lynx Tech launched an AI-powered Anti-Money Laundering (AML) screening solution designed to help financial institutions identify high-risk individuals and entities with accuracy and speed, utilizing proprietary Natural Language Processing models and machine learning to enhance name similarity scoring.

BVNK unveiled an embedded wallet that unifies fiat and stablecoin payments globally, enabling fintechs, crypto apps, payment service providers, and other platforms to offer customers the option of storing, spending, and getting paid in stablecoins and fiat currencies, with the ability to exchange between balances automatically or on-demand.

Shiboleth launched a dashboard for banks to monitor bank-fintech partnerships, using generative AI to flag compliance violations, which can be used to monitor the bank's own compliance.

Ookora launched an embedded FX tool for financial applications.

Power your fintech, bank, or brand with full-service embedded banking—seamless account funding, transfers, payouts, and issuing, all backed by enterprise-grade risk management and compliance. Simplify operations, reduce costs, and launch faster. Find out more today.

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🍻 Upcoming Events

💼 Job of the Week

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📰 Other News

Feeling the heat of enhanced regulatory scrutiny of stablecoins in the US,Tether appointed Simon McWilliams as its new Chief Financial Officer to enhance transparency and compliance by preparing the company for a full financial audit.

The SEC clarified that meme coins, cryptocurrencies inspired by internet memes or cultural phenomena, were not considered securities.

Scammers targeting PayPal users adopted the DocuSign API to enhance the credibility of their phishing emails. By setting up DocuSign accounts and utilizing its templates, these fraudsters sent legitimate-looking invoices from PayPal.

Every Fintech Will Be a Stablecoin Company

In 2011, software was eating the world. And now stablecoins is eating finance.

Eytan Messika

🤝 Partnership Corner

Green Dot Corporation and Marqeta, Inc. collaborated to offer customers convenient and affordable cash services by integrating Green Dot's extensive money movement network into Marqeta's platform, aiming to bridge the digital divide for cash-preferred consumers.

Synovus Bank collaborated with Carefull, a consumer-oriented fraud prevention platform, to offer customers enhanced protections against financial exploitation, particularly targeting older adults.

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👎 The Bad News

Joseph Neal Sanberg, co-founder of Aspiration Partners, was arrested for allegedly conspiring to defraud investor funds of at least $145 million by offering company shares as collateral for a loan he failed to repay, while his associate, Ibrahim Ameen AlHusseini, pleaded guilty to wire fraud related to the scheme.