Hello Fintech Friends,

🎉 We are excited to announce our Boston Happy Hour with Silicon Valley Bank on Thursday, June 20th at 5:30 pm. Be prepared for food, drinks, networking and great discussions; click here to register.

📅 We actually have a whole slate of fintech events coming up – read on below to see the calendar.

Signals: Free tax filing? For Spring? Groundbreaking.

Large fintechs are issuing convertible notes; free tax filing is coming to a neobank (and IRS website?) near you.

This Week in FintechSophie Vo

TWIF x Silicon Valley Bank Happy Hour · Luma

Who: Boston’s best early-stage founders and operators What: Fintech Happy Hour with drinks, light bites and thought-provoking discussions! Where: 53 State St…

This Week in Fintech

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!)

Raising debt capital is a crucial requirement for card, lending, and neobank startups, but most fintech operators don’t come from a capital markets background. That’s why Finley and Cross River Bank put together this comprehensive guide to raising debt capital. It outlines the people, processes, and partners you need to assemble to execute a debt capital raise. Download your free copy here.

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

🎉 Upcoming Events

💼 Fintech Job of the Week

VP of Sales

At Astra, we make the complexity of payments simple. We create advanced payment solutions that are easy to embed into fintech products. With our API, developers can optimize payments for speed, security, cost, and compatibility. Our technology is being used across a variety of industries to instantly and safely send and receive money. We are building out our Sales organization and we are looking for someone who wants to lead and design that organization at Astra. As a lean organization, this person will need to be comfortable working in all stages of the sales cycle with the intention of building a team who will report to the VP of Sales. We need your passion and payment expertise to help us grow the Astra brand. If this sounds like you, we are looking to add key members to join our growing team of dedicated professionals aiming to radically improve the payments space. As one of the first Astra hires, this position comes with a competitive salary, equity options, 401k with company matching, health benefits, and PTO. You will: - Partner with executive leadership on all aspects of the go-to-market strategy. - Develop and implement a strategic sales plan to achieve growing revenue targets. - Build and manage a high-performing sales team focusing on coaching, development, and motivation. - Establish and maintain strong relationships with key customers and partners. - Identify and pursue new sales opportunities in target markets. - Negotiate and close deals effectively to maximize revenue opportunity while minimizing time to market for integrations. - Become an expert in all things payments, from how the Astra platform works to the various payment rails and routes. - Track and analyze sales data to identify trends and patterns. - Make data-driven decisions to optimize sales performance. - Develop and implement sales training programs to enhance team skills and knowledge. - Stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends and best practices. - Join forces with top technology innovators and solution providers. Collaborate closely with our Customer Success, Engineering, and Finance teams for seamless execution. You may be fit for this role if you: - You are an enthusiastic networker. You have experience with identifying and creating connections with the ideal customer contact. - You are a confident and persuasive communicator who can educate, negotiate, and sell at all decision-making levels. - You are an analytical, strategic negotiator with a commercially driven, goal-getting attitude. - You have a proven track record of successfully selling complex solutions in the payments space (8+ years total, 3+ in payments or a related vertical). - You are a team player who enjoys collaborating with teams across different offices, roles, and cultures. - You are self-motivated and enjoy the challenge of learning new things quickly and can think on your feet. What it’s like to work at Astra: Astra is a next-generation financial services company focused on providing advanced payment technology for financial institutions, fintech startups, and enterprises. The company’s full-stack payments platform enables its customers to offer real-time, programmatic transfers between their users’ accounts. We are solving the most challenging and foundational problems of money movement with automation and we are seeking bright, motivated team members to help us build that future. We are a small but effective remote-first team with team members located throughout the US. We hire the right people regardless of location. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment. We believe that such an environment advances long-term professional growth, creates a robust business, and supports our mission of making your financial life simple and automated. We offer generous benefits and perks with an eye to fostering an inclusive environment that recognizes the contributions of all. We’ve worked hard to build an intensely collaborative and creative environment, a diverse and inclusive employee culture, and the opportunity for professional growth. As part of the Astra team, your voice will be heard, your contributions will matter, and your unique background and experiences will be celebrated. Astra is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We welcome all candidates without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, national origin, disability, genetic information, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected characteristic. We prohibit discrimination of any kind and will also consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. Our people are everything, our core values are real, and our mission is ambitious. Join us!

Share your job with 2,000+ fintech people in our Slack #hiring-and-jobs channel.

💬 Quotes of the Week

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Visa launched a set of new tools for issuers that use generative AI components to identify and score enumeration attacks. The VAAI Score will help reduce fraud and operational losses by assigning each transaction with a risk score in real time to detect and prevent enumeration attacks in card-not-present transactions.

JP Morgan is offering faster payments in the US through its new integration with Visa's Direct network, while the bank unveiled a new IndexGPT bucketed investing tool and its retail arm Chase rolled out a series of payments-oriented tools aimed at small-to-medium-sized businesses.

FIS launched Atelio, its own new banking-as-a-service offering built on top of the technology from BaaS platform Bond which it acquired last year.

Australian bank NAB partnered with fintech Banked to launch Pay by Bank on open banking rails to settle near-instant transactions.

German bank KfW is issuing its first blockchain-based digital bond in the form of a crypto security.

📰 Other News

Mastercard is working with some of the biggest US banks – including JP Morgan, Citi, US Bancorp, Wells Fargo, and network Visa – to test a private blockchain network for settling US dollar transactions.

The US' Small Business Administration is reviving a proposal to not just certify banks to make government-backstopped loans, but to be able to make the loans itself to small businesses.

The US Federal Reserve is seeking feedback on its proposal to extend its Fedwire Funds Service and National Settlement Service hours, which are currently Monday through Friday (excluding holidays).

The UK's Vodafone is looking to bring blockchain technology to smartphone users by integrating cryptocurrency wallets with SIM cards, as it looks to raise $3 billion in debt for its India division.

The Bank of Namibia is consulting with NPCI International Payments to help the country develop an instant payments system.

French bank Société Générale and the International Finance Corporation signed an agreement to bolster sustainable finance in developing countries.

Delinquent mortgages are trending up across the US.

The US' CFPB is getting nervous about credit card company mega-mergers in the country.

UK bank TSB will close 36 branches and cut 250 jobs this year.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Startup and small business-focused neobank Mercury* launched its own bill payment and corporate expense management platform.

Global neobank Revolut launched its own standalone crypto exchange for professional traders in the UK.

Consumer roboadvisor and investing app Wealthfront launched an automated bond ladder to maximize treasuries yield on user cash.

Real-time paymetns provider Orum* launched a no-code solution to enable fintechs to verify bank accounts in 15 seconds or less.

Anti-money laundering provider Unit21 launched ACH Risk Scores and Action Event Rules.

Crowded, a fintech provider to nonprofits, launched international currency transfers, enabled by Visa Direct and Cross River's BaaS.

Payment facilitator Worldpay launched the capability for customers to enable Tap-to-Pay on iPhone.

Raising debt capital is a crucial requirement for card, lending, and neobank startups, but most fintech operators don’t come from a capital markets background. That’s why Finley and Cross River Bank put together this comprehensive guide to raising debt capital. It outlines the people, processes, and partners you need to assemble to execute a debt capital raise. Download your free copy here.

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

📰 Other News

Following its most recent earnings announcement, with $1 billion in net profit on $8 billion in revenues, Brazilian neobank Nubank announced that it surpassed 100 million customers in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

Meanwhile, US neobank Dave reported first quarter results, including record revenues of $74 million and $13 million of EBITDA.

UK neobank Zopa announced that, in the four years since it received its banking license, it has amassed £4 billion in customer deposits.

Buy-now-pay-later provider Affirm's revenue jumped 51% year-over-year and it narrowed its expected losses.

Self-custodial crypto wallet developer Exodus Movement received approval to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange, only to have the SEC indefinitely postpone it.

🤝 Partnership Corner

European business banking provider Tide partnered with Adyen's new banking-as-a-service business to launch German small business accounts.

👎 The Bad News

Instant money movement provider TabaPay's proposed deal to acquire banking-as-a-service platform Synapse fell through yesterday, as Synapse cannot locate over $50 million in user funds that it alleges that startup neobank Mercury improperly moved out of its accounts.

Robinhood's crypto division received a Wells Notice from the SEC alleging that it may be running an unlicensed securities exchange.

BlueSnap and its former CEO reached a $10 million settlement with the FTC for knowingly processing payments for "deceptive and fraudulent" companies.

The CFPB is requiring neobank Chime to provide $1.3 million in redress for delaying consumer refunds.

Investing platform SoFi's retail brokerage was fined $1.1 million by Finra over ID verification failures that enabled thieves to steal $8.1 million.

Come meet us in-person at thisweekinfintech.com/events