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Hi all, Julie here.

To those of you that went to Diplo last night and are over the age of 30 like myself, I salute you. I literally woke up the same time Jordan was getting back to his hotel room (given, I’m two hours ahead of him, but still).

Anyways, two things I want to mention: Jack Dorsey might get screwed by both hyperinflation and a new tax on unrealized capital gains. Also, here is an amazing blog about how banks use old tech that doesn’t support special characters, so somebody with a special character in their name sued the bank and won because GDPR requires “accurate” storage of personal data.

I am not making that up. Anyways, we’re super excited for our Monday night event at Money 2020! Jordan and Ian will be there. Huge thanks to Activant, Truework, and Mercury for sponsoring :)

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Company News

Chime 2022 IPO

A lot has changed for Chris Britt and Chime since I was hanging out with the team at Plaid’s Money 2020 party a couple of years ago. Back then, I think Chime was worth about $4B? Now it’s likely to go public at $30B+ next year (and 2022 is only about 65 days away, just saying).

Shares of Wise Tumble

Speaking of public companies, shares of Wise are falling (now below their listing price) after clearing houses teamed up to launch cross-border payments. The news that Facebook was finally piloting its digital wallet that offers no-fee, instant transfers didn’t help either. Oh, and second-quarter earnings were released last week and missed analysts’ estimates. The stock now trades 30% below its peak reached on September 22.

Marqeta x Uber x Branch

Love seeing more and more partnerships in our space. Card issuing platform Marqeta announced a new partnership with Uber Freight and Branch (workforce payments) at Money2020 today. The goal of the partnership is, amongst other things, to make it so carriers can get paid much faster. Typically, it can take 30 days or more, but this will make it so they can get paid in a matter of hours. Branch’s digital wallet will also have features to help carriers on the platform grow their business including a fee-free, FDIC-insured checking account and a commercial card that has fuel rewards.

Funding and Deals

PayPal Not Pursuing Pinterest (For Now)

I wouldn’t be surprised if this changed, but remember that rumor that PayPal might be buying Pinterest? Turns out it’s not happening….at this time, at least. PayPal shares rose 6%+ on the news, while Pinterest shares tumbled.

Crypto Watch

The Facebook Leak and Crypto

Now, the leak itself doesn’t have much to do with fintech, but according to a new piece in the New York Times, the leaker (Frances Haugen) bought some crypto “at the right time.” Haugen told the Times that she’s fine financially partially thanks to her great market timing. Here’s a clip:

The reality, she said, is that she has her own financial resources, and has accepted help from nonprofit groups backed by Mr. Omidyar only for travel and similar expenses. “For the foreseeable future, I’m fine, because I did buy crypto at the right time,” she told me. She noted that she had moved to Puerto Rico to cope with a health condition — but also to join her “crypto friends” on the island, whose capital gains tax exemptions have made it a hub for that novel financial system.

TripActions x Coinbase

I’m biased since TripActions is our launch sponsor for Crypto Tonight, but this news seems pretty cool and is part of the reason they wanted to do said sponsorship. The team announced a new partnership with Coinbase today that enables TripActions Liquid users to be reimbursed in their preferred form of currency directly into their Coinbase account for any personal or manual spend. So expense reports were already gone, and now you can get reimbursed in ether to pay for your NFT gas fees rather than USD. I guess my big question here is at what time the two teams are calculating the exchange rates. This might not always be the case, but a lot of cryptocurrencies are obviously still pretty volatile. This might be worth a post for our new newsletter :)

Bakkt X Mastercard

If anyone here owns shares of Bakkt, well, they made a nice return today. Hopefully you’re not a billionaire and won’t get taxed on those unrealized capital gains…

​CNBC is reporting that Mastercard is getting ready to allow any of the thousands of banks and millions of merchants on its payments network to integrate crypto into their products. That includes Bitcoin wallets, credit and debit cards that earn rewards in crypto and enable digital assets to be spent, even loyalty programs where airline or hotel points can be converted into Bitcoin. Why does this impact Bakkt? Well, Mastercard is partnering with the crypto firm in order to launch this (Bakkt will provide custodial services).

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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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