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I asked a couple dozen female founders and founders of color in fintech about their experiences raising money from VCs and how that process can be improved.
Here’s what they said: workweek.com/2022/10/15/how…
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Alex Johnson
19.5K posts
Alex Johnson
@AlexH_Johnson
Writing and podcasting from the 🏔️ | @FintechTakes
Katılım Mayıs 2009
3.7K Takip Edilen28.6K Takipçiler
@TheHumanInLoop @ravi_riley That’s not Chime’s target customer base, but fintech has solved that too. Check out Mercury.
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@AlexH_Johnson @ravi_riley True for spend, but what happens when customers want to move serious money *out*? Chime's model works because most users treat it like a checking account. The rails matter less until someone tries to wire $50K and hits a 3-day hold.
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@marathonchrisb Yes, but it feels the same to the end customer. They don’t care how it gets done.
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@AlexH_Johnson Chime floats the funds but ACH still takes days to clear. That's credit extension, not settlement reform. Oracle-connected blockchains offer the instant finality legacy rails cannot.
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@mikulaja Arguably don’t need reciprocal coverage if you’re not lending it out!
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If deposits can come in this quickly, by definition, they can also LEAVE this quickly. Ultra fast growth in a FI, whether deposits or especially credit, always warrants a closer examination of what's going on. People w/hands on experience know this.
Rex Salisbury@rexsalisbury
Just in - @ereborbank posted their 1st call report. In 7 weeks since opening, they've already hit $1.1 billion in deposits. unprecedented growth for a de novo (or fintech) For comparison - Grasshopper Bank (also a tech-focused NYC de novo) took 7 years to reach the same number, and only got there via acquisition - Square Financial Services, even with Block's enormous merchant base, sits at $495M after 5 years. - Mercury took 4 years - Chime took 6 At $1 billion this makes them ~1,000th largest bank in America (out of ~4,500). If they want to be a top 100 bank, thats ~$20 billion of deposits. 5% of the way there in 7 weeks. Next up...what do they do with those deposits? Will be watching how loans ramp from here!
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Alex Johnson retweetledi
Here's the heart of the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise.
Transaction rewards (cashback etc) = good.
Deposit interest-like = bad
Loyalty programs, subscription services = not good enough if they resemble yield
But if not yield, crypto has options
Brendan Pedersen@BrendanPedersen
SCOOP: Sens. Tillis and Alsobrooks have finalized a compromise on stablecoin yield. Punchbowl News has the text - bans rewards that are “economically or functionally equivalent” to deposit interest - balances *can* be used for rewards if companies clear the “equivalent” test
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@FrancisQuinnJr This seems very plausible to me. I'd be curious to know if Erebor is on track to eventually get a master account.
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The Federal Reserve’s Master Account and Services Database did not yet list Erebor Bank as having an active account as of March 2026. So, if the Fed master account (which is granted on a separate track by a different regulator) has not yet been approved for Erebor and operationalized, a continued dependence by an OCC chartered bank on correspondent banks is not surprising.
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Why? They have a bank charter. The whole point is to get direct access rather than going through a correspondent bank.
Jason Mikula@mikulaja
Mini-scoop: @ereborbank is leveraging Coastal Community Bank as a correspondent, per an investor presentation Coastal filed with the SEC earlier this week:
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@ravi_riley @AlexH_Johnson The real problem is the pay cycle, not the settlement time
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@AlexH_Johnson Just chatted with someone at Erebor. It seems like it's the other way around, Coastal is using Erebor as a correspondent for international payments!
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@AlexH_Johnson Real talk: Getting a charter doesn’t automatically come with the: tech, controls, people expertise, scale, risk appetite or the multitude of other things required to enter a complex new product category.
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@ravi_riley They haven’t but it doesn’t really matter. The experience for the end user is what is most important and Chime takes very little credit risk on the backend.
We should still upgrade the rails, of course. But this isn’t an entirely unsolved problem.
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@AlexH_Johnson Maybe UX-wise for the end user due to credit risk Chime takes, but that doesn’t mean they’ve solved the problem with the rail
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@AlexH_Johnson LOL! Yes. And the solution to this "unsolved problem" is "Let's replace our entire tech stack and rewrite compliance for a product that we already lose money on." It's a business case that just writes itself.
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@arshbot I’ll be curious to see when the ramp up period ends and they’re allowed to get direct access …
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@AlexH_Johnson This is very common. To offload high-operation business like international wire transfers or etc.
They just got approved 2 months ago. There’s a lot to ramp up on
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@jameswester Totally agree with that! It just strikes me as funny when folks say it’s an unsolved problem when, from the end customers’ POV, that’s not really true, regardless of whether it’s the risk or the rails that is being used to solve it.
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@AlexH_Johnson You're not really missing anything. It's just that ACH isn't an escrow service. It's a messaging service. The idea that "money is sitting around" is nonsense. Chime advancing funds does accomplish someone getting money, but it's not settling. It's a risk, not rail, decision.
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The employee wants the money as soon as they get paid. They don’t care how it gets done. Chime advancing the funds while the ACH transactions clear accomplished that goal, no?
Chime is obviously just one provider. They don’t work with everyone. But their solution is now becoming a table stakes feature among U.S. neobanks and even some traditional banks.
Upgrading the underlying payment rail would be another way to solve the problem and stablecoins would be one option for doing that. However, unless we’re talking about cross-border payroll (which was not the focus of the original tweet) I don’t really see how stablecoins are a better option than FedNow or RTP.
Unless I’m missing something?
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@robblackwellAB The podcast is a bit of a companion to the one you just did with Mike on AI!
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Am downloading for my next plane ride (which is in an hour).
Alex Johnson@AlexH_Johnson
If you want to learn a lot about stablecoins and not be subjected to any hype or nonsense, this would be a good week to read and listen to @FintechTakes.
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If you want to learn a lot about stablecoins and not be subjected to any hype or nonsense, this would be a good week to read and listen to @FintechTakes.
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