In this engaging discussion, Alexis Zhu, Head of Global Partnerships at Stripe, and Yunyu Lin, Head of Applied AI at Ramp, delve into how AI is reshaping the payments industry. They explore AI's critical role in fraud prevention and workflow automation. The conversation touches on the exciting future of real-time payments and personalization in e-commerce. They also examine strategic decisions in integrating AI, the emergence of stablecoins, and the hilarious anecdotes that highlight the evolving landscape of financial technology.

This week, I managed to grab some time in the (very busy!) schedule ofNeha Narkhede. Neha is an Indian American technology entrepreneur who is the founder & CEO of Oscilar, co-founder and former CTO, and current board member of Confluent (CFLT NASDAQ).As a software engineer atLinkedIn, she helped develop the open-source messaging systemApache Kafka, now used by more than 80% of the Fortune 500. In 2014, she co-foundedConfluent, which helps organizations process large amounts of data to create transformative real-time products and was listed on the NASDAQ in 2021.Neha has been listed as one of America’s Top Self-Made Women by Forbes, Forbes’s Top 50 Women In Tech, MIT Tech Review’s Innovators under 35, and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People. Neha has a Master in Computer Science degree from Georgia Tech.We talked about everything from the founders' journey to the rise of AI to building a multinational financial risk org atOscilar.

Hi everyone! Jillian and I are thrilled to be kicking off our podcast series on all things AI. In our premier episode, we're joined by Naftali Harris, CEO and Founder of Sentilink, a company that stops fraud for over 300 banks and financial institutions, including 10 of the 15 largest in the U.S. as well as Aman Abraham, Co-founder & CEO of DeepTrust, which focuses on protecting voice and video communications from deepfake-driven social engineering attacks. In this episode, we cover:✅ How fraud has evolved over the past decade✅ The double-edged sword of AI—both as a tool for fighting fraud and as a weapon for fraudsters✅ The surprising ways synthetic fraud works ✅ Why basic security measures still matter more than you’d expect✅ Real-life examples of scams—including a jaw-dropping $25 million fraud case And yes, we even get into some fun personal stories (who knew Naftali didn’t graduate high school and Aman has some serious soccer skills? 🥅⚽). If you’ve ever wondered how AI is reshaping the fraud landscape—or just want to hear from two brilliant minds tackling one of fintech’s hottest topics—you don’t want to miss this episode. Thanks for Fundbox for sponsoring this episode! If you are a platform looking to provide your small business customers with seamless access to working capital, Fundbox offers embedded lending solutions that integrate directly into your platform, providing a full suite of capital products tailored to your customers cash flow needs.

Hello Fintech Friends, 👋 Welcome to the 1,679+ new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 157,000+ other subscribers. Today's newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Fintech Meetup. 📢 We're looking for great Fintech Freelance Writers! If you would be interested in writing for TWIF, let me know by replying to this email. This year, we're building up our writing team on a lot of new projects. 🎟️ Quick reminder that Stablecon prices go up tonight at midnight, will we see you there? One Big Thought This week, I was planning to make the big story of newsletter about the US Executive Order on digital currencies and stablecoins. And then the President of the United States launched his own fintech company...? And then X announced that it's working with Visa on its 'everything app' with the goal of becoming a fintech company. And then global neobank Revolut rolled out a new commercial real estate lending arm. If there's one rule of the 2025 timeline, it's this: There will be surprises. I'm sure I'm missing a few other massive announcements this week, but one big thought: 2025 feels very different from the past few years. It's invigorating to see companies taking risks again. Capital markets are rewarding companies again for healthy growth. After the easy-money days of 2020/2021, fintech spent the past couple years growing up, and now when a neobank moves into CRE, it's a credible move. Will this year see Klarna, Circle, or Stripe go public? How many users will Revolut and Nubank have by EOY? How many countries will TBC operate in? Will Affirm buy a card network? Will Brex and Ramp bury the hatchet and join forces to become Bramp (or Rex?) One guarantee: There will be surprises. Also, while I have you here, a few thoughts on the digital currencies EO: The EO doesn't actually change anything so far, in that banks, fintechs, and crypto companies can't take direct guidance from the EO and change their operations accordingly. But what it does mean is that this administration's posture will be much less hawkish towards new financial products. The EO establishes a digital currency working group with the remit of proposing a regulatory framework governing digital assets in 180 days (!) with initial findings due in 30 days (!) This is not a long, meandering '5 year plan.' The EO expresses a direct preference for privately-issued stablecoins over central bank digital currencies. Not surprising, given the pro-markets orientation of this administration, but it brings up some interesting questions about how private coins will be regulated, whether they'll be treated differently than tokenized deposits, and how other countries' CBDCs will interact with US stables. Sadly there doesn't seem to be a great technical primer (yet) on the product distinctions between CBDCs and stables – just a lot of consulting firm marketing docs – but I'd love to share one, if someone can find one and forward it to me.

This month, I spent some time with Nova Credit founder and CEO Misha Esipov to talk about his company, one of the original innovators in alternative consumer credit, underwriting, and financial data. Misha has been running Nova Credit since 2016, when he and his co-founders graduated from Stanford Business School. He founded the company predicated on the insight that – even for well-qualified graduate students – it was impossible for people to move to the US and apply for credit. The company has grown far beyond its initial product set, and recently celebrated their $45 million Series C in late 2023 from Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, Index Ventures and Y Combinator. Misha Esipov is the co-founder and CEO of Nova Credit. Before founding Nova Credit, Misha was a private equity investor at Apollo Global Management, a $232 billion global alternative asset manager. Misha started his career at Goldman Sachs, where he helped execute more than $10 billion in corporate financing, mergers, and acquisitions. Misha holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Finance from New York University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. You can find him here on LinkedIn and Twitter. Nova Credit is a credit infrastructure and analytics company that enables businesses to grow responsibly by harnessing alternative credit data. The company is a CRA that leverages its unique data infrastructure, compliance framework, and credit expertise to help lenders fill in the gaps that exist in traditional credit analytics. Nova Credit provides access to the fragmented universe of consumer financial data and transforms it into compliant, actionable risk analytics through a suite of solutions designed to increase conversion through expanded coverage, speed, and reliability. Leading organizations, such as American Express, Verizon, HSBC, RBC, SoFi, Scotiabank, Appfolio, and Yardi, work with Nova Credit to make smarter credit decisions through cash flow underwriting with Cash Atlas™, quickly and accurately verify income with Income Navigator, and reach new-to-country consumers with Credit Passport®.

In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with fintech pioneer Renaud Laplanche, Upgrade Founder & Former LendingClub CEO. Some say LendingClub kicked off the modern fintech era with its digital lending solution, and Renaud has had a front seat to this industry every step of the way through their IPO in 2014. Renaud has been recognized on Bloomberg Markets’ Most Influential List, won the Economist Innovation Award, and was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative for expanding access to affordable credit.  After LendingClub, Renaud co-founded Upgrade. Upgrade  is a fintech platform providing affordable and responsible credit, mobile banking, and payments products to over 6 million customers in the US and Canada, and has issued over $35 billion in credit since its founding in 2017 - $8 billion just in the past year. ⁠Upgrade raised⁠ $280M Series F at a $6Bn valuation in 2021, led by Coatue and DST, and other investors including Ribbit, Dragoneer, and more. In a challenging era for consumer fintech, Upgrade has found a way to break the mold and continue growing, expanding products, making acquisitions, and more. Ryan and Renaud recorded the episode at Upgrade's beautiful SF HQ on a foggy day in San Francisco. They cover the acquisition of his first company by Oracle + how LendingClub came to be, a deep dive on Upgrade's funding model and how it translates into savings for their customers (they work with over 250 loan buyers), the Uplift acquisition and lessons learned, the importance of culture, how he structures his day, his love of sailing, and how Upgrade is utilizing AI. Episode Highlights 1:30: LendingClub founding story and Renaud's entrepreneurial origins 4:08: Why he founded Upgrade 6:17: Upgrade's target market, products, and diverse customer base 7:48: A deep dive on Upgrade's funding model and how it translate into savings for their customers 11:37: The rise of private credit and using high cost of capital funding at the other end of the market 13:45: Tactical advice to founders raising their first-ever credit facilities and warehouse lines 16:37: Acquiring Uplift, what drew Renaud to them, and key lessons/guiding principles for M&A he's learned over his career 26:15: His growth as a leader and the hardest part of his job 27:54: His lifelong love of sailing and how it has helped him as a leader 29:28: How Upgrade is deploying AI internally 31:36: Rapid fire round (managing VCs, sailing memories, fintechs he's watching, what retirement might look like) -- Renaud Laplanche is the co-founder and CEO of Upgrade. Prior to co-founding Upgrade, Renaud founded LendingClub, a Fintech pioneer that quickly became America’s largest provider of personal loans. In recent years Renaud received multiple awards and nominations. Among other distinctions, Renaud was recognized on Bloomberg Markets’ Most Influential List, an annual ranking of the World’s top 50 most influential leaders across technology, finance, and politics. Renaud also won the Economist Innovation Award, and was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative for expanding access to affordable credit. Renaud holds the Newport-Bermuda sailing record, with the only crossing ever achieved under 24 hours. He received an MBA from HEC and London Business School and a law degree from Montpellier University in France. Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is an investor on the Ventures team at OMERS, the direct investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with over $130Bn in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

Emmalyn Shaw is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Flourish Ventures, specializing in financial services, while Satya Patel is Co-founder and Partner at Homebrew, known for fintech investments. They share their inspiring journeys in fintech, discussing early experiences that shaped their careers. The conversation dives into the challenges of investing in AI, the rise of embedded finance, and the innovation opportunities within the sector. They also recommend impactful books that have influenced their perspectives and reflect on personal milestones.

René Lacerte, founder of BILL, and Frank Mastrangelo, co-founder of Bancorp and PayAmigo, share their remarkable journeys in shaping the FinTech landscape. They reminisce about their pivotal dinner meeting in 2006 and the exhilarating experience of taking their companies public. The duo discusses the persistent challenges in global commerce, the transformative potential of blockchain and AI, and the emotional lessons learned from their fathers. Personal stories about adoption and community through sports also make for a heartwarming exploration.

Explore the transformative moments in fintech from 2024, highlighting the rise of super apps like Nubank. Discover how companies like Revolut navigated regulatory waters while facing the tension of innovation and scrutiny. Unpack the burgeoning role of stablecoins and cutting-edge AI in reducing currency volatility and enhancing security. Delve into the government's impact on innovation, including the introduction of free tax filing software. Finally, reflect on Ripple's advancements and the ethical considerations shaping the industry's future.

Join Tomer London, Co-founder and CPO of Gusto, dedicated to empowering small businesses, and Anu Hariharan, Co-founder of Avra and former Y Combinator partner, as they explore fintech's evolution. They discuss the complexities of payroll systems, the impact of AI on finance, and the transformative potential of startups. Personal insights reveal their inspirations—from historical icons to morning routines—while sharing lessons from setbacks that shaped their resilient journeys in the ever-changing fintech landscape.