Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I talk about fintech companies that we're definitely not giving investment advice on! The theme of this episode is infrastructure galore.
We kick things off with Ubyx, who are essentially building the Visa for stablecoins–a network of merchants, issuers, and acquirers with a standardized incentive and legal structure that could help stablecoins finally qualify as cash equivalents. We’re not yet at the Visa moment of mass merchant adoption and real interoperability pain (all pain points are still mostly theoretical), but Ubyx is betting that moment’s coming fast. They’re one to watch, especially if you love good nerdy whitepaper...
Next up, Codex. They recently raised a seed round (with participation from Coinbase and Circle, among others) to build a layer 2 blockchain network specifically for stablecoins. Codex wants to be the sleek payments rail for stablecoins, and while “just another blockchain” fatigue is real, there’s logic in going vertical. They’re also pitching themselves as a liquidity hub, which, if it works, could be a major edge in reducing fragmentation.
Then, there’s Agent AV, which is basically Shopify for AI agents. They’re tackling the wild west of agentic commerce, where bots now shop on our behalf. E-commerce was built to keep bots out—but now, humans are deploying bots on their behalf. The challenge, then, is separating the good bots (authorized agents) from the bad. That’s why a two-sided mode, building for both agents and merchants, makes a lot of sense. It’s early days, but they might be laying rails for a whole new kind of shopping experience.
And finally, the dark horse of the episode: Experian. Yes, that Experian. They just launched a new cashflow-based credit score and, in a twist, are skipping the bottom of the data stack to go full-FICO. In an open banking world, they don’t want to be the bureau—they want to be the scorer.
No end-of-show manifestations on this go-around; Simon already manifested the biggest fintech nerd gathering ever, Fintech NerdCon, so Alex is manifesting an excellent inaugural NerdCon in Miami come November.
00:02:36 - UBYX
00:16:25 - Codex
00:30:05 - Agent AV
00:41:14 - Experian
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Companies featured:
https://www.ubyx.xyz/
https://www.codex.xyz/
https://www.experian.com/
Fintech Takes