Fintech moves fast. But here at Fintech Takes, Alex Johnson and his rotating panel of guests move faster so that you can stay on top of the latest and greatest news in the industry without breaking a sweat.
Welcome to Fintech Takes—the place where fintech’s biggest nerds come to sit back, relax, and completely geek out.
Join Alex and a lineup of fintech’s brightest minds as they dissect what’s happening in fintech and banking.
Each week, Alex and his guests recap the most interesting developments in fintech and explore the industry’s most pressing questions, diving headfirst into the intricate workings of some of the industry’s most ground-breaking business models and unpacking the emerging players that promise to shape fintech’s future.
From riveting conversations with fintech’s most relevant operators to comprehensive recaps of the month's most compelling news stories and in-depth analyses of the latest regulatory developments, Fintech Takes is your one-stop-shop for navigating the fintech universe.
Subscribe now to join fintech’s nerdiest podcast around!
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Fintech moves fast. But here at Fintech Takes, Alex Johnson and his rotating panel of guests move faster so that you can stay on top of the latest and greatest news in the industry without breaking a sweat.
Welcome to Fintech Takes—the place where fintech’s biggest nerds come to sit back, relax, and completely geek out.
Join Alex and a lineup of fintech’s brightest minds as they dissect what’s happening in fintech and banking.
Each week, Alex and his guests recap the most interesting developments in fintech and explore the industry’s most pressing questions, diving headfirst into the intricate workings of some of the industry’s most ground-breaking business models and unpacking the emerging players that promise to shape fintech’s future.
From riveting conversations with fintech’s most relevant operators to comprehensive recaps of the month's most compelling news stories and in-depth analyses of the latest regulatory developments, Fintech Takes is your one-stop-shop for navigating the fintech universe.
Subscribe now to join fintech’s nerdiest podcast around!
Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about fintech startups we’re absolutely not giving investment advice on.
First up is EtherFi Cash, a DeFi-native credit card (from Ether.fi) that flips banking math. You load stablecoins onto the card as collateral. From there, you can either spend them directly or lock them up to borrow cash against them (earning interest on the coins you park, while borrowing at a lower rate). It’s non-custodial, meaning you’re fully responsible for your crypto, and the card itself runs on Visa through a partner. It’s over-collateralized lending dressed up as a card, and maybe regulators will end up treating it that way.
Next up is Lunos AI, an AI agent that collects invoices like a polite but relentless coworker. It reads emails, remembers context, negotiates, and learns. Today it automates AR (accounts receivable); tomorrow, it’ll be talking to AP (accounts payable) bots on the other side. Think of it as the first step toward self-driving cash flow.
Then, there’s the evocatively named Circuit & Chisel. Their XTP protocol lets AI agents pay each other per use instead of signing up for endless subscriptions. Imagine a digital assistant renting a data tool for ten seconds. It’s built by ex-Stripe and Chainlink folks who see where this is going: a future where software pays software.
Finally, there’s Figure. Mike Cagney (of SoFi fame) successfully took his blockchain lending company public. Figure started with home-equity loans and now runs one of the largest on-chain real-world asset markets (outside of U.S. Treasuries). Its innovation lies in using blockchain to automate the costly back-office work of loan origination and trading. It’s faster, cheaper, and fully traceable (and it’s rated by the same agencies that review traditional securities).
Plus, some closing manifestations: whoever builds the MCP or the protocol that lets AR and AP AI agents talk to each other is sitting on a billion-dollar startup. Banks should treat stablecoin yield as the next interchange moment, and as for anyone touching DeFi lending … remember, the same consumer-protection laws still apply.
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Companies featured:
https://www.ether.fi/
https://www.lunos.aI
https://circuitandchisel.com/
https://www.figure.com/
Fintech Takes
Fintech moves fast. But here at Fintech Takes, Alex Johnson and his rotating panel of guests move faster so that you can stay on top of the latest and greatest news in the industry without breaking a sweat.
Welcome to Fintech Takes—the place where fintech’s biggest nerds come to sit back, relax, and completely geek out.
Join Alex and a lineup of fintech’s brightest minds as they dissect what’s happening in fintech and banking.
Each week, Alex and his guests recap the most interesting developments in fintech and explore the industry’s most pressing questions, diving headfirst into the intricate workings of some of the industry’s most ground-breaking business models and unpacking the emerging players that promise to shape fintech’s future.
From riveting conversations with fintech’s most relevant operators to comprehensive recaps of the month's most compelling news stories and in-depth analyses of the latest regulatory developments, Fintech Takes is your one-stop-shop for navigating the fintech universe.
Subscribe now to join fintech’s nerdiest podcast around!
