Posts tagged WeChat Pay
Is Ant Financial the best Fintech in the world? Let's analyze the IPO!
Is Ant Financial the best Fintech in the world? Let's analyze the IPO!

In this conversation, Max Friedrich of ARK Invest, Will and Lex 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.

Max, Will and Lex dig into Ant’s business, from the origins to today, discuss growth opportunities and potential headwinds and explore the multi-faceted relationships between Ant and other big tech companies and national governments.

We cannot understate how impressive Ant Financial has become, connecting 700 million people and 80 million merchants in China, with payments, savings, wealth management and insurance products integrated in one package. The company also highlights the likely road for traditional banks — as underlying risk capital, without much technology or client management.

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China, big tech, digital investing, paytech, IPO / SPACLex SokolinAnt Financial, China, Alibaba, Yahoo, WeChat Pay, Square
Growth of brand banking, tragedy of OnDeck vs. Kabbage, and the Indian Fintech war between WhatsApp and WeChat
Growth of brand banking, tragedy of OnDeck vs. Kabbage, and the Indian Fintech war between WhatsApp and WeChat

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 facto leader in this space.

Kabbage and Intuit launched small business bank accounts as extensions of their already deep relationships with SMBs.

And WhatsApp is trialing all sorts of financial services in India just as Chinese fintech super apps are being banned from the country.

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big tech, China, digital transformation, paytech, digital lendingLex SokolinOnDeck, Kabbage, WhatsApp, Thought Machine, Bond, Galileo, Marqeta, Cross River Bank, Green Dot, Radius Bank, Railsbank, Twilio, Samsung, SoFi, Varo, WeChat Pay, Ant Financial
How to Build a $3.5B Profitable Digital Bank with Tinkoff
How to Build a $3.5B Profitable Digital Bank with Tinkoff

Oliver Hughes is the CEO of Tinkoff Group, one of the world’s most successful digital banking groups with over 10 million customers. This is one our most interesting conversation to date, full of fantastic operating advice.

Tinkoff is publicly listed with a $3.8 billion market capitalization, which brings clarity to its operating model in a time when many noteworthy consumer digital banks are pursuing customer acquisition at the expense of profitability.

Oliver has led Tinkoff through three financial crises, and brings experience and perspective to the current COVID crisis. This is a fascinating discussion about unit economics in digital banking and winning business models with a CEO with thirteen years of experience in this space.

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neobank, paytech, digital lending, entrepreneurshipLex SokolinTinkoff, Nubank, WeChat Pay, Russia, Capital One
Amazon/Goldman partnership, TikTok banking license, and Ethereum fintech through the lens of Aggregation Theory & Super Apps
Amazon/Goldman partnership, TikTok banking license, and Ethereum fintech through the lens of Aggregation Theory & Super Apps

If you are in finance and only looking at banks, you are missing out on the real change agents. Here's some cross-industry action that we will unpack this week.

Amazon selected Goldman Sachs to be the lender of choice for small business loans. TikTok maker ByteDance is working with a Singaporean business family to get a financial license. And small business bank Starling is integrating Slack, energy switching service Bionic, and health insurance provider Equipsme into their marketplace. And we might as well talk about the Plaid Exchange launch, and end on the computational economy of Ethereum.

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super app, macroeconomicsLex SokolinAggregation Theory, Paytm, Ant Financial, WeChat Pay, Facebook, Amazon, Marcus, TikTok, Starling, Slack, Curve, Plaid, Ethereum, MetaMask
Cash App, Venmo, Digital Wallets and Challenger Banks with ARK Invest
Cash App, Venmo, Digital Wallets and Challenger Banks with ARK Invest

Welcome back to the Fintech Blueprint / Rebank podcast series hosted by Will Beeson and Lex Sokolin. Max Friedrich is a fintech analyst a ARK Invest, a public markets investment manager focused on disruptive technologies including autonomous tech, robotics, fintech, genomics and next generation internet. Max recently published a report on digital wallets, including Venmo and Square’s Cash App, which is available for download on ARK’s website. In this conversation, we explain why Cash App has seen exponential growth.

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neobank, paytech, eCommerceLex SokolinARK Invest, Square, Venmo, WeChat Pay, Ant Financial, Samsung, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Zelle, PayPal, N26, Bitcoin, Gen Z