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Hi all, Julie here.

I move to Austin in 11 days...so you could say my life is a bit hectic right now. But, it’s also caused me to go through a bunch of NYC memories over the past couple of weeks. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, NYC is the greatest city on earth and moving here was the best decision I ever made. While I don’t think NY will be back in full swing for another year or two, I do think it’ll come back stronger just like it always does. And with all the fintech happening here, you know I’ll be back to visit soon :)

Visa's Continued DC Troubles

Visa doesn’t seem to have many friends in DC these days. After calling off its deal with Plaid after regulatory scrutiny, it’s facing another probe. According to the WSJ, the Justice Department is investigating whether Visa is engaging in anticompetitive practices in the debit-card market. The antitrust group is looking at whether Visa has been limiting merchant’s ability to route transactions through lower cost networks. The WSJ makes the good point that the way in which debit transactions are routed is a highly contentious issue. The Durbin amendment requires that merchants have the ability to choose from at least two unaffiliated debit-card networks to route transactions. Meanwhile, merchants have alleged that they are often unable to route online debit-card purchases over smaller networks when Visa or Mastercard is on the front of a card. As a result, they often pay higher network fees. Not good. The regulator is also looking into the incentives Visa pays banks that issue its cards to see if they encourage this behavior.

Facebook Digital Currency Departure

Facebook’s digital currency project led by former PayPal executive David Marcus continues to lose executives. This time, it was Kevin Weil, one of the co-founders of the initiative and a former executive at Instagram. The Diem digital currency and Facebook’s Novi digital wallet has had a tough road, though Marcus and others always knew it would be based on conversations I had with them at the time of the announcement in 2019. Neither Diem or Novi have launched yet. Weil will be heading over to Planet, a company that uses satellites to take photos of the Earth once every day to demonstrate how the world changes.

Plaid’s New Round

First off, I’m still waiting for someone to sell me shares of Plaid. Second, sounds like the valuation I’d get would be a bit higher than the price Visa was going to pay for it. According to The Information, Plaid is raising about $600M in a funding round that could value it at between $10B and $15B. Altimeter Capital, a hedge fund turned VC, is said to be leading the financing.

Nubank's New Numbers

Brazilian challenger bank and fintech giant Nubank released new financial information this week. I’m just going to copy and paste the highlights from FTT subscriber and Nubank employee Frank Fumarola, but you should read the full piece here (Google Translate will be needed) .

Highlights:

• Deposits: grew 2.6x YOY
• Revenue: grew 79% YOY
• Customers: grew 68% YOY to 33M (avg 36K/day)
• Consumer lending: grew to R$1B
• Bad debt: 3.7% (down from 4.4%)
• Losses: down 26% YOY

Square’s Bitcoin Move

While you will still pay fees to buy and sell Bitcoin, Square's Cash App said this week that its users can now send and receive Bitcoin with no fees. I’d love to get more info on how many Bitcoin related transactions are taking place on the platform and how that has changed over the past year or so. To market the move, the Cash App team also announced a $1M giveaway in Bitcoin on Twitter.

Editor’s note: I entered and won $10 of Bitcoin which will someday be worth $1M since Bitcoin is going to the moon.

Second side note: the Oakland Athletics are close to selling a luxury suite using Bitcoin. Consumers can pay one Bitcoin in exchange for one of 10 luxury suites for the 2021 Major League Baseball season at the stadium.

Two stellar job postings today:

1. ​Director of Engineering at TripActions Liquid: TripActions Liquid is a next generation payments and spend management solution that is disrupting the market by taking advantage of the latest fintech infrastructure from providers like Stripe, Visa, Plaid, and Modern Treasury. The company has raised over $800M including a recent $155M at a $5B valuation from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed to help accelerate the payments and spend offering with a plan to become a public company in the next few years. TripActions Liquid is looking for a Director of Software Engineering to help lead a product-focused engineering team. This is a very unique role which combines the small team feeling of a startup launching a brand new product, with the perks, opportunity size and impact of an established company.
2. ​Senior Software Engineer at True Link: This team looking for a skilled Senior Software Engineer who will deliver code to make thoughtful fintech products happen! You’ll spend most of your time shipping features to support its trusts and investment operations businesses. The engineering team carefully balances the needs of speedily pushing out new features while supporting an ever-growing portfolio of existing features. True Link takes pride in lending its technical skills toward a social good mission it cares about. The company is always working to make its hiring experience more inclusive, and welcome the opportunity to work with engineers from all backgrounds and identities.

**If you're interested in having a job featured in Fintech Today, reach out to jordan@fintechtoday.co

I'm personally very much looking forward to tuning in to this panel on March 24! Some awesome women in fintech here.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg 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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