Hello Fintech Friends,

🌳 Our annual Fintech Picnic is coming back to New York! Save the date on July 22nd at lu.ma/fintechpicnic

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🚀 Lastly, a word from our friends at BTV, who launched their fintech-focused accelerator, The Mint. If you're a fintech founder, spend 3 months in San Francisco getting access to their entire team of founders and operators, their extensive network, and hands-on help to build your dream company. Applications for their 2023 cohort are closing on June 30. Apply here!

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Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

The Fraud Fighters Manual is now available for digital download 🎉 In six exciting chapters across 168 pages, authors from top companies like Brex, Mercury, and Lithic share the best practices of fraud prevention—offering practical strategies and real-world examples to empower fellow professionals in the fight against fraud 💪 Download the Manual now.

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💬 Quote of the Week

📖 Read of the Week

Jared Franklin this week captured the ethos of a lot of our investing at The Fintech Fund in his writeup, Payments Plus:

"Some of the most generational fintech companies are those which I prefer to categorize as "Payments Plus." Payments are core to their value prop, and as a byproduct, the business model relies heavily on transactional revenue. But they also provide value aside from facilitating transactions. These companies usually use payment processing as a wedge to onboard businesses onto their grander software stack."

Some of the best fintech products are not just fintech products, but full-service suites to manage things like e-commerce sales (Shopify), bookings (Mindbody), company formation (Stripe), brick-and-mortar inventory (Square), etc... Enabling payments is a core revenue-drive for these businesses, but that doesn't make them solely fintech businesses. This is, anecdotally, why we like companies like GuruHotel* - building vertical SaaS for hotels, but with a payments component.

Read the full writeup here.

Matt Harris of Bain Capital Ventures also spent some time this week thinking through how AI is going to drive banking system consolidation.

🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

Chase Bank launched their new Freedom Rise card, which lets users get a credit card without a score or credit history.

Experian rolled out a proprietary ‘mule score’ to let banks identify accounts with suspicious activity.

The Netherlands launched its own nationwide contactless public transport payments system.

JP Morgan launched a product suite for sustainable investing data.

Citizens Bank partnered with Wisetack, an embedded pay over time options for in-person services, on installment payments for Citizens Pay.

📰 Other News

More technology consultancies like GFT are adding services to help banks onboard FedNow.

Mastercard’s Start Path Small Business program added five new startups to its inaugural cohort:

• Cumplo: Connects Latin American SMEs with global capital markets to accelerate their growth
• DigiAlly: Builds trust in small and medium enterprise lending through AI-enabled scoring
• PayGoal: Helps companies in Latin America build their acceptance value proposition for merchants
• Tribe Fintech: Leverages an integrated ecosystem of simple digital tools and networks that help SMEs make better business decisions and improve their financial health
• Uome: Enables seamless integration and customization for sole traders and small business owners through a flexible, API-driven platform

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Travel and expense management platform Navan (formerly known as TripActions) launched its Navan Connect product, a suite of expense management tools that allows companies to keep the corporate cards they prefer (or use Navan’s cards) and still get access to the same spend management and expense tools provided by Navan’s platform.

You can learn more about Navan’s new launch in our latest episode of Hey Fintech Friends, where Helen interviews Michael Sindicich, EVP of Navan Expense.

Personal financial management app Monarch* launched an AI-powered personal finance assistant.

Israeli neobank One Zero is also launching a generative AI chatbot for customers.

Betterment, through their Betterment for Work workforce benefits program, launched a 529 savings solution.

Habitto, a Japanese neobank, launched with 0.3% interest on the first ¥1 million deposited.

📰 Other News

Apple will now let users make recurring payments from their Apple Cash digital cards. Businesses will also now be able to accept and scan IDs from the Apple Wallet.

Following an SEC lawsuit, Binance is suspending dollar deposits in its US product and its banking partners are planning to pause dollar withdrawals.

Klarna launched in Romania.

Walmart’s ONE bank will offer 5% interest on balances up to $100,000.

Breef added buy-now-pay-later to its marketing agency marketplace.

The Fraud Fighters Manual is now available for digital download 🎉 In six exciting chapters across 168 pages, authors from top companies like Brex, Mercury, and Lithic share the best practices of fraud prevention—offering practical strategies and real-world examples to empower fellow professionals in the fight against fraud 💪 Download the Manual now.

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

🤝 Partnership Corner

Mexican bank Citibanamex partnered with financial health and compensation app Minu.

Underwriting-as-a-service provider Prism Data* partnered with Provenir marketplace to help lenders make better decisions with cashflow data.

Valyant partnered with Paerpay to bring AI chatbots to drive-thru ordering and payments.

TransUnion partnered with Truework to expand its offering in income and employment verification.

Southeast Asian roboadvisor Endowus partnered with Allfunds to make 160 new funds available to Hong Kong investors.

Iceland's Kvika Bank has selected card-as-a-service provider Enfuce to run its credit card program.

Vestwell and Gusto partnered to provide a retirement recordkeeping service with payroll solutions to businesses.

👎 The Bad News

Embedded card provider Cardless will cut 17% of its headcount.

Banking-as-a-service provider Synapse laid off 18% of its workforce.

Better laid off its entire real estate team and closed down the business unit.

Ukraine’s Privatbank accused its previous owner of fraudulently siphoning out $2 billion via fake loans.

UK stock trading app Freetrade slashed its valuation by 65%, from £650 million to £225 million. The firm posted Q1 revenues of £4.7 million (up 25%) and halved losses to £3.32 million.

Payments Canada delayed the launch of its real-time payments standard for a second time.

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