Hi all! Julie here. Today I am thankful that our amazing wedding photographer sent our full album yesterday. This was exactly what I needed to cheer me up after all the news this week. Hopefully a photo with Tux cheers you up too.

PS: If you live in the New York area and are looking for a wedding, elopement, engagement and/or proposal photographer, I HIGHLY recommend ours. She was absolutely incredible.

The News

SoFi goes public

This in itself isn't surprising since SoFi had been hinting at a SPAC before, but perhaps the fast timing is. On Thursday, Chamath Palihapitiya announced that his company would be merging with SoFi to take it public. Here's the full release, and here's a link to the investor presentation. I joked on Twitter that you should take a drink every time Chamath calls SoFi the AWS of fintech. Please don't actually do that though since our hospitals are already at reduced capacity.

There's a good amount of info addressed in the presentation, but below are two slides that stood out to me since SoFi hasn't been giving out much financial information for awhile. While they have a far smaller number of members compared to that of Chime and other Challenger Banks, one could argue that SoFi's wealthier customer set is more valuable. Note that this merger values SoFi at ~$8B. Less than Chime, Robinhood and others, but better than what a lot of people at or close to SoFi had been anticipating. FTT subscriber Jason Mikula also did a great tweetstorm that you should check out.

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More M&A

It's not just SoFi with the M&A news this week. AvidXchange acquired Core Associates so it can move further into the accounts payable space for the construction industry. While the deal terms were not disclosed, AvidXchange says this will make them "one of the foremost AP automation providers for the construction market."

Shopify bans Trump

It's not just Facebook that is locking Trump out. Shopify and PayPal have both removed Trump related accounts after Trump supporters took over the US Capitol on Wednesday. I have a feeling MAGA diehards will still find a way to get their hats, but at least these companies stood up for what is right.

Robinhood traders

With an IPO expected this year, traders on the Robinhood platform are wondering if/when they might be able to trade the very company they're using to buy and sell stocks commission free. Well, according to this story from my old colleagues at Bloomberg, they might get early access.

"The Menlo Park, California based company has weighed allocating a significant minority of the shares it will list to clients, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the details aren't public. No final decision has been made on how much stock it might sell to its own customers, or if it will proceed with the plan, the people said."

MTA goes digital

Ok so one of the best things to happen to the MTA since I moved to New York is the ability to just scan my phone at the turnstyle and walk through. I LOVE THIS FEATURE! At first it was only available at select stations, but as of this week, it's fully rolled out.

According to the article, "Omny already accounts for over 10% of all taps in the MTA system, up from four per cent a year ago. Since the system was launched at a limited number of stations in May 2019, more than 35 million taps have been recorded with bank cards issued in 137 countries."

The outstanding question is how it will integrate for things like the monthly metro pass. I think they have a bit of time to figure it out since most people aren't back to work yet, but it's something to keep in mind since they plan on completely phasing out the iconic metro card.

Saying goodbye to Simple

The Oregon-based startup emailed customers on Thursday letting them know it is shutting down. TLDR: BBVA acquired Simple in 2014 for ~$100M. BBVA said it would be transitioning Simple customers to BBVA accounts but did not provide details about when. BBVA USA was acquired by Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank in November. BBVA is closing Simple as part of the PNC acquisition

Community Highlights​
On Thursday, we added a new writer to our premium roster! Now for $25/month (which a lot of people expense at work) you get access to my premium Sunday newsletter as well as Charley Ma's Thursday newsletter! He'll be alternating with another author we're introducting next week :) Sign up here.

And yet again, FTT subscriber Frank Rotman of QED Investors unleashed another incredible tweetstorm this week. It's a must read.

Career Corner

Two jobs from Alloy this week in honor of our new FTT Expert Charley Ma:

1. ​Product Director, Monitoring. This is an ideal role for a technically-focused product manager who is looking to own one of Alloy's product roadmaps and lead a team of Product Managers. You'll work closely with the CEO and technical leaders on developing strategy and shipping product. Expect to drive the product life cycle and work at all levels of the release process.
2. ​Senior Full Stack Engineer. This role is great for someone who's excited to help maintain and build out features in Alloy's web app, which enables fraud detection and classification of transactions, data ingestion, integrating with new clients and 3rd parties, and platform-level initiatives. You'll design and build new features, work on bug fixes, and support the team.

That's all for Friday. Be sure to check your inbox tomorrow for Cokie's Column and a sneak peak of what we've been writing for our premium subscribers.

Julie VerHage is the co-founder of Fintech Today, where she focuses on editorial content and brand. Prior to joining, she was Bloomberg’s first fintech reporter, covering Robinhood from before it was a billion dollar company, breaking the news that Plaid was acquiring Quovo, and interviewing executives on Bloomberg TV and at several large conferences.

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