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Hi all, Julie here.

Writing this in the airport heading back to Austin. Huge thank you to Jackie Reses for hosting our event with Lightspeed at her gorgeous home last night! Loved meeting people from Square, Robinhood, Anchorage, Modern Treasury and more. I would tell you what we talked about, but what happens at Jackie’s dinner table stays at Jackie’s dinner table ;) Looking forward to hosting more salon dinners like this in the future! Be sure to sign up for FTT+ to stay in the loop and for invites :)

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Company News

Apple x Goldman x BNPL

Honestly this was only a matter of time. Not so great for my shares of Affirm yesterday in any case though. Bloomberg had a scoop that Apple and Goldman are working on a new BNPL service that will let consumers pay for any Apple Pay purchase in installments. It’s supposedly called “Apple Pay Later” and will use Goldman as the lender for the loans (also makes sense given all the other things these two have worked on together). Curious if this will happen at the checkout (like Affirm) or be something the consumer chooses after the purchase (like AmEx). Still bullish on BNPL being a trend, but all of these announcements beg the question of whether this is a race to the bottom.

Funding/M&A

Railsbank Funding Round

Railsbank announced a new $70M round led by Anthos Capital. The UK-based startup is another in the banking-as-a-service space that appears to be gaining traction, building APIs for banking, payment cards and credit products. The company said the money is going to largely go towards product expansion. The startup argues that it’s different from competitors in that it has built a lot of its own infrastructure, but I’d bet a lot of its competitors would make a similar argument if I asked them. Thankfully for all of these guys, there’s plenty of demand to go around.

Crypto Watch

ECB Digital Currency

More Central Bank Digital Currency news! This time from the European Central Bank, which approved an “investigation phase” for a digital euro. Don’t start thinking this means we’ll get one soon though. This phase will last 24 months and aims to address key issues on design and distribution, according to an ECB statement. It also said it has no plans to replace cash, and that this would merely compliment it. ECB President Christine Lagarde has been more keen on this idea than other central bank leaders around the world, partially because she is very publicly against private crypto assets.

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