Rebank: Fintech Analysis

Today, we're joined by Shamir Karkal, co-founder of Simple, the first digital bank in the US, and now co-founder of Sila. Founded in 2009, Simple was the original digital bank, conceived and built to give people more control over their money. After a few successful years, Simple was acquired by BBVA for $117m, under whose ownership it operated until early-2021, when it was shut down. Simple was lo...

Today, we're joined by Viktor Nebehaj, Co-Founder of Freetrade , a free stock trading platform in the UK. Founded in 2016 and launched to the public in 2018, Freetrade has grown to over 500,000 users in just over two years in the UK alone. For the full backstory, check out our episode with Founder Adam Dodds from February 2019, available at bankingthefuture.com. In this conversation, Viktor takes...

Welcome to our much anticipated first episode of 2021, and what a start to the year it has been.    Last week was a trainwreck as Gamestop, which was initially bid up by Redditers in an attempt to punish Wall Street, crashed back to earth when the very free brokerage platforms that purport to democratize investing for the 99% shut off trading in the most active stocks, benefitting hedge funds at t...

Today, is a special episode, of great personal importance to me. I have been learning and studying and training in fintech for years, both as a founder and through this podcast, where I'm able to have conversations with the most visionary and impactful founders, CEOs and VCs in the world of fintech. For the past year, I've been channeling all of this experience and insight into a new company, call...

Andrei Cherny is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aspiration, a socially conscious bank challenging the traditional banking industry ethos. Prior to founding Aspiration, Andrei worked as a speechwriter for Bill Clinton, authored books on public policy and war history, served as Assistant Arizona State Attorney General, held senior positions at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Center for American Progre...

Today, regular contributor Lex Sokolin and I are joined by Anne Boden, Founder and CEO of Starling Bank, one of the original wave of app-only digital banks in the UK. Starling has built a diversified bank and achieved profitability for the first time in October, a rarity for digital banks. Originally a retail-only offering, Starling has built out business banking and banking-as-a-service offerings...

Ali Niknam is the founder and CEO of bunq, a fully licensed digital bank based in the Netherlands and available in 30 countries across Europe. Prior to starting buns, Ali founded TransIP, the largest domain name and web hosting provider of the Netherlands. Ali is the sole investor in bunq, having invested €80m in the company to date. As of July 2020, the bank had €650 million of user deposits. In...

Pierpaolo Barbieri is the Founder & CEO of Ualá, an Argentinian consumer fintech taking South America by storm. Founded just three years ago, Ualá has already amassed more than two million customers in its native Argentina and recently expnanded to nearby Mexico. Unlike consumer banking offerings in many developed markets, which compete with incumbent banks, Ualá's main competitor is cash in marke...

Ryan Gilbert is General Partner at Propel Venture Partners, a Bay Area venture capital firm backed by BBVA. He is also as of very recently CEO of Olympus Acquisition Corp, a $750 million SPAC that listed on the Nasdaq in August. In this conversation, we look at why SPACs are coming back in fashion, pros and cons of SPACs versus traditional fundraising and listing routes, Ryan's plans for the futur...

Today, Rebank co-host Aman Ghei is joined by Seb Wallace, an investor at Triple Point, an early stage UK venture capital firm that has invested in companies including LendInvest, Credit Kudos, CountingUp and many more. In this conversation, Aman and Seb discuss strategies for remote seed investing, the skew they're observing in terms of how venture money is flowing, startup opportunities Seb sees...

We're joined by a pair of fintech analysts, Max Friedrich of ARK Invest and Lex Sokolin of ConsenSys, to break down Ant Group's highly anticipated IPO. Ant, a spinout from Alibaba and the parent of Alipay, one of China's leading payments companies, filed papers to IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong. In this conversation, Max, Lex and I break down Ant's business, from the origins to today, discuss growt...

Today, we're joined by Lex Sokolin to talk through a few interesting developments in the world of fintech. M&A is a continued trend in fintech, with the most recent candidates reported to be UBS and Credit Suisse, the latter of which is also in the news with a new digital bank. Will their effort somehow be different than the abortive attempts of their international peers, including JP Morgan Chase...

Consumer behavior in China has captivated the West for years, and behavior around fintech and payments is no different. Ant Group's planned $200 billion upcoming IPO raises more questions than it answers in the minds of many in the West, who like me don't have direct experience with super apps and ubiquitous QR code based payments. We recorded a breakdown of Ant Group's upcoming IPO last week with...

Mike Massaro is the CEO of Flywire, a payments technology company fresh off a $120m Series E led by Goldman Sachs. Matt Harris is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures and one of the smartest fintech VCs on the planet. Both Mike and Matt have been on Rebank before, in episodes I highly recommend everyone check out. In this conversation, we dig into the embedded finance opportunity and Bain Capital Ve...

We're joined by Lex Sokolin to break down recently published annual reports from Revolut, Starling and Monzo, three of the leading European digital banks. There are some fascinating insights to be drawn from the documents, especially in the context of the broader global fintech market. This is rich subject matter, and we surely didn't cover everything. You may even disagree with some of our analys...

Rob Moffat is a partner at Balderton, a leading European VC, with investments including Revolut, Nutmeg, Wagestream, Zego, GoCardless, ComplyAdvantage and many more. In this conversation, Rob and Rebank co-host Aman Ghei discuss the state of the venture market, fundraising during a crisis, the most interesting new business opportunities in fintech and much more. To subscribe to the Rebank newslett...

The fintech world is not taking the summer off. New developments are coming fast and furious, from fundraisings to product launches to government intervention. Banking for brands startup Bond raised $32 million to capitalize on the exploding trend of B2B2C banking. Samsung Money launched, leveraging SoFi's infrastructure. As SoFi again seeks a national banking charter, they could become the de fac...

Seth Pierrepont is a partner at Accel, one of the most renowned venture firms in the world and a backer of companies including Facebook, Spotify, Slack, Dropbox and many more. Seth invests in financial technology and data infrastructure and has led the firm's investments in companies like Privitar, AnyFin, Soldo, Worldremit any many others. In this conversation, Rebank co-host Aman Ghei of Finch C...

Krik Gunning is the CEO and co-founder of Fourthline, one of fastest growing companies in Europe. Fourtline verifies the identities of millions of customers for clients like N26, ING, SolarisBank, Degiro, Flatex and many others. Aman and Krik discuss the genesis of KYC and the constant struggle between compliance and risk at regulated institutions. They look at real world examples of how companies...

Charlie Olson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pando, a Series A stage fintech designing new ways for high financial variability performers to manage financial risk and upside. Pando's platform allows professional baseball players and more recently business school graduates to pool future earnings potential in ways that smooth income volatility for the group. In theory, this type of approach could hel...

Mike Cagney is the Co-Founder and CEO of Figure, a full stack financial services blockchain company with consumer offerings in market or on the way in lending, banking and more. In late-2019, Figure raised $103 million at a $1.2 billion valuation and continues to grow. Prior to starting Figure, Mike co-founded and ran SoFi, one of the most successful consumer fintech companies ever. In this conver...

Manuel Silva is the Head of Investments for Santander InnoVentures, Santander's Corporate Venture Capital arm and a leading fintech investor. InnoVentures' investment portfolio includes companies like Kabbage, Ripple, SigFig, Tradeshift, Curve, Payjoy, Roostify, Trulioo, Klar and Upgrade. In this conversation, Manuel and I discuss advice for founders in a recession, potential for COVID-driven cons...

Robo 1.0 success Personal Capital was acquired for nearly $1 billion by Empower, a major retirement savings manager. Softbank-backed insurtech darling Lemonade IPOed at less than $2 billion, in a successful fundraise and listing, and has since seen its market cap rise to over $4 billion. The IPO is a landmark for an insurtech industry in desperate need of successes. And PayPal announces the impend...

Stuart Sopp is the Founder and CEO of Current, a leading US digital bank. Current has over a million users, with a focus on young, financially excluded Americans. In this conversation, we discuss how Current achieves profitable unit economics, what differentiates Current from competitors, key differences between the US and European digital banking markets and more. For all of our past episodes and...

Mike Packer, Partner at QED, and Michael Sidgmore, Partner at Broadhaven Ventures, are active investors in Latin America, with collective portfolio companies including Credijusto, Loft, Nubank and many more. In this conversation, we discuss market dynamics, nuances and opportunities in Latin American fintech and much more. For all of our past episodes and to sign up for our newsletter, please visi...