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Hi friends, Parker here. Happy Monday!

With the Messari Mainnet conference kicking off today in NYC, the energy in the city is electric. I attended a few satellite events last night and ended up meeting some Fintech Today readers. So great to meet you! If you’re reading this, here’s your shoutout!

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between Fintech and DeFi. What inherent tensions and juxtapositions exist between the two industries? What gaps in the market could collaboration between the two industries fill? And, will we continue to see a growing cultural “othering” between the players in the industry? If you have any thoughts or interesting content on this topic, my DM’s are open.

What else? We’re giving away a free FTT hat to one of the next 50 people to complete this 3-min survey on Fintech Today events. Be swift!

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Today's Partner, Treasury Prime

Which would you rather have: A plane ticket, or a Playstation 5? With Mythia’s debit card for gamers, some lucky users earn the latter with their rewards.

Airline miles rewards don’t appeal to all card users — so fintech Mythia decided to offer rewards tailored to gamers. The Treasury Prime fintech partner launched its card in 2021 as the first debit rewards card for gamers. Read how Mythia gamified its debit card to appeal to a young and influential market.

Company News

Intuit X LA Clippers

It’s interesting to see fintech and DeFi companies beginning to collaborate with sports teams, with Sam Bankman Fried’s FTX purchasing the naming rights to the Miami heat area back in March and now with Intuit purchasing the naming rights to the LA Clippers’ new arena. The Intuit/LA Clippers area is scheduled to open in Inglewood in 2024, and will be called the “Intuit Dome”. For a quick refresher, Intuit is a fintech company trading Nasdaq with a $156.4 billion market cap. Intuit’s products include TurboTax, Credit Karma, and QuickBooks. Interested to hear what Ian thinks of this trend.

Lithic Launches Program To Bring Cards To Market Faster

Lithic, a card-issuing API platform announced today a new partnership program designed to bring card products to market faster and more seamlessly. Current partners for the launch include Sila, Canopy, and Wyre. Through the integration, fintech companies can use Lithic as a card-issuing API alongside a range of best-in-class products serving adjacent needs, like crypto/fiat conversion and holding digital wallet balances.

Stripe Opens London Office

Today, Stripe announced plans to open a new office in London that will focus on open banking, embedded finance, and bank partner integrations. The office will lead Stripe’s work on open banking in Europe, including a new pay-by-bank feature set to pilot next month. The office will also develop Stripe’s embedded finance products across Europe and build more bank partner integrations in the region. The EU expansion comes as the firm reportedly prepares to IPO next year.

Funding and Deals

Toast Raises IPO Range

This morning, SaaS fintech Toast filed a new S-1 detailing a higher price for its shares, moving from a previous range of $30 to $33 to a range of $34 and $36. This is a great sign for Toast, indicating that the company may be worth more in its debut than initially expected. Toast is restaurant-focused, selling software regularly while also providing technological solutions to financial problems. You can read more about the new IPO price range here.

Open Mineral Raises $33M To Trade Metals

Open Mineral, a global digital trade platform for base metal commodities, just raised a $33M Series C. The round was led by Mubadala Investment Company, with participation from Xploration Capital, Emerald Technology Ventures, Statkraft Ventures amongst others. According to Open Mineral’s CEO Boris Eykher, "The metal trading industry’s future is in digital data and analytics… Just as eBay revolutionized retail purchasing by bringing more choices to buyers and sellers, we aim to do the same for physical commodity producers in a curated, trusted environment of the Open Mineral platform."

Neo Raises $64M Series B

Neo, a Canadian fintech that partners with traditional banks to help people spend, save, and earn rewards, just raised a $64M Series B. New Series B investors included Greenoaks Capital, who’s invested in Robinhood, Stripe, Discord, and Altos Ventures, who’s backed Roblox and Korean challenger bank Toss. Neo plans to use the fresh round of funding to grow its team, launch new integrated partnerships with retailers, and innovate its product roadmap.

Crypto Watch

Wyoming-based DAO wants to go public

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) out of Wyoming is looking to register with the SEC as a public company. American CryptoFed DAO LLC is one of the first DAOs to formally request SEC recognition via S1 registration and is reportedly the first DAO out of Wyoming. The U.S state made a significant mark in the space last year when they passed a much-contested law allowing DAOs to be chartered in, and recognized by, state authorities as LLCs.

Coinbase Abandons Lend After SEC Pushback

Coinbase has officially abandoned its plans to launch a new digital asset lending product Lend after US securities regulators threatened to sue the company if they were to release it. Coinbase- the largest US cryptocurrency exchange in existence- said in a statement on Friday that it had made a “difficult decision” to drop the Lend product “as we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole”. It’s a tough back down for Coinbase, whose CEO Brian Armstrong sent a strong message to the SEC last month on Twitter, arguing that the Lend product did not constitute security and accusing the regulators of lacking transparency and “sketchy behavior” in pursuing Coinbase.

Revolut Pays WeWork In BTC

On Friday, Revolut announced it used bitcoin- purchased from exchanges- to pay for its Dallas WeWork membership. The British neobank, which is valued at $33B, says the move underscores its commitment to, and belief in, the future of crypto. “We are a strong believer in crypto having real-life use cases in the future of payments. The advantage of paying in crypto is the ability to make nearly instant payments without middlemen who charge large international remittance fees,” a spokesperson said. The spokesperson added that Revolut is “working towards a future of everyday use cases for crypto in payments” for their 15 million users.

Together With Fintech Meetup

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Fintechs already signed up include Agora Services, Alloy, Alviere, Array, Atomic, Autobooks, Bill360, BillGo, Billtrust, Bixie, BlueSnap, Digital Onboarding, Embedded Financial Technologies, Finn AI, FISPAN, SigFig, Synctera, TassatPay, Treasury Prime (and many, many more!).

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We have dozens of amazing roles on our job board from companies such as Truework, Alloy, Coinbase, Affirm, Klarna, Chime and many others! If you’ve had luck landing a job or have roles that you would like to highlight, we want to hear from you!

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​Parker Jay-Pachirat is Chief of Staff at Fintech Today. Before FTT, she worked in product management for three years across several companies, also gaining experience in venture working for Unovis Asset Management and Impulsum Venture CoLab. Parker graduated from Occidental College in May of 2021 with a specialized focus on brain-machine-interfaces. Her senior thesis interrogated the way in which commercialized brain-machine-interfaces will disrupt society's prevailing models of ability and disability. In her free time, Parker enjoys reading, skiing, and techno.

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