Hello Fintech Friends,

If you are a recruiter or in charge of hiring for a fintech startup, I’d love to connect with you! We’re planning a few things specifically focused on fintech jobs and connecting the right candidates to the right workplaces, to shorten the hiring timeline for everyone.

To founders, if you are going through layoffs or downsizing, please reach out as well. We have a big network (50k+ readers, 5k+ Slack members) to help give your employees a soft landing.

We published Part Two of Jenny Johnston’s Real-time Real Talk: A Real-time Payments Download this week! If you’ve ever daydreamed of all-day, every-day real-time gross settlement, tried to communicate in ISO20022, or paid a payday loan, this read is for you.

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Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

Fintech Meetup: Deadline to Get Tickets is Feb. 24th! Don’t miss Fintech’s Big Q1 Event. 3,000+ Attendees. 250+ Speakers. 200+ Exhibitors. 30,000+ Double Opt-in Meetings. In-person at the Aria, Las Vegas March 19-22. Get Ticket!

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💬 Quote of the Week

📖 Read of the Week

Regulatory dissections are not usually the most interesting reading (well, for me they are), but I really enjoyed this piece by Wilson Sonsini’s Jess Cheng and Amy B. Caiazza on Demystifying the Banking Regulators’ Recent Crypto Actions: Key Takeaways for Fintech Companies.

There are lessons to be learned by the fintech community from the high-profile crypto meltdown(s) and how they’ve impacted banks over the past few months. Cheng and Caiazza outline four:

1. Banks are not barred from providing crypto custody services
2. Banks are unlikely to be holding crypto assets for their own account
3. There is a path for banks to issue “dollar-denominated tokens” underpinned by DLT
4. The purely crypto-centric bank business model is likely to be a relic of history

As layoffs roll through the industry, we are trying to do everything we can to help people moving between jobs find their next role. If you’re looking for your next company to join, come check out our job board.

If your company is hiring for new roles, come post them with us! Every post gets automatically shared with our Slack community of 5,000+ fintech friends.

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🏦 Financial Services & Banking

📰 Other News

Deposits at US banks continue to fall as consumers draw down on their savings, leading many banks to borrow from Fed funds to cover shortfalls - the highest borrowing rate since 2016.

In related news, all the home-buying startups are stuck holding residential real estate inventory bought at the top of the market.

Following its settlement of a USDC transaction on the Ethereum mainnet in 2021, Visa is looking into converting and settling fiat-USDC transactions on its network.

JP Morgan is getting ready to launch its new neobank in Germany, following growth of its digital bank in the UK.

Meanwhile, Mastercard and Binance are preparing to launch a prepaid card in Brazil.

A week after drafting comprehensive crypto legislation, the UK government is kicking off a consultation on launching its CBDC.

The CFPB is proposing a new rule to limit financial services provider late fees and inflation-related hikes.

UK investment platform Aviva donated £38 million to temperate forest restoration.

Swiss prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against Credit Suisse for a data leak that affected 18,000 accounts.

JP Morgan laid off hundreds of its mortgage business employees.

Brazil’s Open Finance Initiative turned two years old.

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Many more fintech product launches than bank launches this week; nature is healing…

Shopify launched a suite of blockchain commerce tools such as loyalty tokens, NFTs, and crypto wallet payments.

Revolut launched crypto staking functionality to customers in the UK and Europe.

Google Pay (disclosure: where I worked) launched tokenized virtual cards in autofill for AmEx and Capital One cards.

Treasure launched its Managed Treasuries product to let businesses hold funds in actively rebalanced T-Bills.

Blip Labs launched a new bill management experience for banks, fintechs, and credit unions.

European digital wealth manager Moneyfarm launched a digital investing.. Guide? Experience? called platform as a service.

B2B payments firm Mondu launched Mondu Sell, an omnichannel business payments product.

Nucleus365 launched a rapid transfer payment option for European merchants.

Bloom Credit launched near real-time credit bureau report furnishing.

📰 Other News

Bucking the trend, banking startup LevelField acquired local bank Burling Bank in its bid to become “the first FDIC-insured bank to offer digital asset services” (aka bitcoin purchases).

Apple’s buy-now-pay-later service is expected to launch this quarter.

New social investing app Follow will tap influencers to let consumers replicate their trading strategies.

Mercado Pago and Paypal partnered to facilitate remittance payments to Mexico.

Alloy partnered with Enigma to facilitate deeper small business intelligence.

Sightline partnered with Visa on new casino payment solutions.

Crypto infrastructure provider Ramp won UK regulatory approval to build a crypto off-ramp product.

India’s biggest retailer, Reliance Retail, will start accepting digital rupees. B2B payments firm Tassat wants to incorporate Fednow into its blockchain payments.

A new platform is bringing music royalty rights to consumer investing.

Neonomics expanded its open banking checkout product to Finland. Flutterwave came to Egypt (and to reality TV). Atlantic Money extended its foreign exchange transaction service across Europe. KYC/AML platform Alloy* expanded to the UK.

UK agriculture bank Oxbury broke even just two years after launching and Monzo revenues grew 250%, putting it on the path to 2023 profitability.

A New York judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit against Coinbase that had alleged it sold unlicensed securities. In the same vein, South African retail giant Pick n Pay will accept bitcoin payments in its 1,628 stores.

Irish financial software provider Ion Group was hit with a devastating ransomware attack.

Affirm missed on earnings, forcing the buy-now-pay-later company to cut 20% of its workforce and shut down its crypto unit. Australian buy-now-pay-later provider Openpay declared bankruptcy.

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