Consumer payments aren’t just a product line anymore.
They’re the next war zone.

@jpmorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon published his annual shareholder letter this week, and he flagged an interesting dynamic for banks and fintechs: @jpmorgan The battle lines?
→ Data access
→ Third-party rails
→ Direct-to-consumer models

Fintech saw them as an opportunity.
Banks now see them as a threat.

@Fiserv just made a major play to capture more market-share in Europe.

The payments giant acquired CCV, a Dutch paytech with a 67-year history, expanding its @clovercommerce platform across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. 👇 @Fiserv @clovercommerce This is Fiserv’s second acquisition in weeks (following Payfare) and a clear signal:
It’s doubling down on embedded payments and omnichannel infrastructure.

Why does this matter?

Stock transfers are finally getting a 21st-century upgrade.

For decades, transfer agents—the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that tracks share ownership—have barely evolved.

Outdated systems. Slow processes. Zero innovation.

Now, Fidelity is stepping in with the first major stock transfer overhaul in 30 years. Fidelity Stock Transfer is a digital-first transfer agent solution designed to modernize how public companies track and manage shares.

For companies going public, this is a huge shift from the legacy, paper-heavy world of stock transfers.

This is a good time to talk about the dangers of joining fintech startups with super high valuations relative to their progress (or ARR). Let's assume that you have two fintech companies, Startup A (low-profile) and Startup B (buzzy), competing head-on to build exactly the same product.

(It's more like 5 per YC cohort these days, but...)

What's the danger of joining the buzzy, highly-valued startup?

A couple ago, I left my BD & Strategy job at @GooglePay. The next morning, I was on a flight from New York to Kampala for a @twifintech meetup. Attitudes on fintech across Africa – on fintech outside of the US for that matter – have shifted dramatically over the past couple years. It’s amazing to see examples like @ycombinator lending its brand to startups from Sudan.

techcrunch.com/2022/03/08/sud…

We all know that Q1 was a crazy quarter for fintech fundraising - but just how crazy was it?

Fintech companies raised *$17.7 BILLION* in Q1, more than 55% over the highest quarter we've ever tracked. The number of #fintech deals has been sharply ticking upwards:

- 130 funding rounds in Q1 '20
- Up to 211 rounds in Q4 '20
- Up to *301* rounds in the last quarter

This has been my theory for a couple years and it's exciting to see it come to fruition.

@Apple never wanted to be a credit card company. It wants to create lock-in benefits to its core money-maker: the iOS ecosystem, and it wants to (privately) own more types of user data.

https://twitter.com/noyesclt/status/1289227091217715200

Mobile and QR payments took off in other countries (eg. Alipay/WeChat Pay in China), but they lagged significantly in the US for years.

Why? No superapps. Many people have credit cards, but not everyone has *one* app that they can use to pay for anything, anywhere.