In the last year I don't think there is any area of fintech that has received more attention than the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) space. And it is not just the Synapse debacle, it is all the consent orders that have come out of the bank regulators. We have a banking system that pretty much demands that fintech companies partner with banks and we are still yet to figure out what the optimal business model is here.
My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Jason Mikula, the publisher of Fintech Business Weekly and the Head of Industry, Strategy, Banking and Fintech at the risk decisioning platform Taktile. He has become one of the leading authorities on BaaS and has recently authored a book on this topic. It is the most comprehensive look at BaaS and the many challenges it has faced and we delve into these challenges in this episode.
In this podcast you will learn:
- How Jason ended up living in the Netherlands.
- His impetus for starting the Fintech Business Weekly newsletter.
- What attracted Jason to focus so much on Banking-as-a-Service.
- Why he decided to write a book on BaaS.
- How he frames the difference between BaaS and embedded finance.
- Why fintech companies have been attracted to omnibus or FBO accounts at banks.
- The interview that Jason did with founder and former CEO of Synapse, Sankaet Pathak.
- Where we are with the Synapse saga (as of mid-February, 2025).
- What Jason thinks the likelihood the impacted consumers will get their funds back.
- Whether we will ever learn what happened to missing 90-odd million dollars.
- His thoughts on the middleware model that was core to the development of BaaS.
- How he views the BaaS model evolving long term in the U.S.
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