The Challengers 13: Covid 19's impact on digital banking, growth slows at OakNorth, Square as a bank

In this episode of The Challengers, Josh Liggett and Zack Miller explore the pandemic's impact on incumbent banks as well as on challengers. Zack mentioned fears are high and that's creating rumors that certain challengers are failing. Josh believes it's a good time for incumbents to really get focused around digital. They have no other choice. Next, the hosts discuss OakNorth, which is still Europe's fastest growing startup. But growth of its loan book is slowing, whether by design or by market forces. The bank is profitable -- perhaps the only one of many challengers to reach this milestone. Square gets a license and Zack believes that we'll see Square move strongly into lending to merchants using its technology. Like PayPal, Amazon, and Shopify, this captured lending is powerful and makes a ton of sense from a service model perspective. It can also be quite lucrative. Credit Sesame, like Credit Karma a few months before it, is rolling out a banking product, Sesame Cash. PFMs want to own the money movement piece for their customers. Lastly, we mention Bill Harris' new firm, One, which just launched in private beta after a $17 million funding round. Harris was CEO at PayPal and Intuit, and founded Personal Capital before this. In perhaps the worst launch timing in history, One will use dashboards with consumer credit at its core to help middle Americans with their money. Before we jump into the podcast, I wanted to introduce you to Outlier, Tearsheet’s leading membership program. It’s designed for top fintech and financial service professionals to stay on top daily of the biggest trends, the top companies, and the leaders of this next generation of finance. Get industry briefings by experts like the ones we’re doing this January on best practices in PR and customer acquisition. Find out more at Tearsheet.co/outlier