Eduardo Lopez 🇨🇺

I put together a reading list to help new hires get up to speed on Fintech and payments. Ton of great books & blogs in here from @sophgoldb, @siddiquiahmed, @ReggieCYoung, @lithic, @ModernTreasury, @unit_co_, and @treasuryprime. Hope you find it useful: fintechgtm.substack.com/p/us-fintech-a…

@jordan_ross_8F marketing

Anthropic ran their entire marketing operation with one person. $380 billion company. Paid search. Paid social. SEO. Email. App stores. One non-technical hire doing all of it — for 10 months. I pulled it apart. Compared it to every system we've built across the clients we've worked with. Then asked myself one question: If I had to reverse engineer this from scratch — what would it actually look like? Turns out the architecture isn't that complicated. I mapped the whole thing into a 47-page PDF you can upload directly to any LLM. It coaches you through building your own version step by step. Comment "marketing" and I'll send it over.

You don’t have to target this phrase to appear in the search results for it. With broad match, you can target “corp cards” and appear in sponsored search results for whatever phrases google sees as related to that term. You have corporate card in your search, so makes sense. The quotes around no kyc only impact the organic results. Important to call out none of their headlines or ad copy mentions no kyc.

Free advice to whomever is running Google Ads for card issuers... and negative keyword for "no KYC," hopefully save you some money!

I am a proud US citizen and founder of a successful startup that employs 94 employees in the US and 180+ employees globally. I was in Dubai on a business trip meeting with financial institutions to help them fight financial fraud in the region, but now I am stranded. I expected the @usgov to do something to get US citizens out but I haven't seen any meaningful action. After 4 days of adrenalin and constant fear, I feel demoralised and abandoned by our government. It’s difficult watching other countries – UK, Israel, Spain, Italy and India – repatriate their citizens or ensure that commercial flights continue operating to bring them home. I became a naturalized US citizen because I believe in the American dream, and the idea that in a crisis, America never leaves its citizens behind. I see that American dream being shattered not just for me, but for tens of thousands of other Americans left stranded. I have 3 requests of our government: 1. Can the @usgov ensure the commercial airlines don't cancel US bound flights? I've booked a dozen flights to leave Dubai and ALL of them got canceled, even as flights to other countries continue operating. 2. If that is not possible, can the USG organize planes, commercial or military, to evacuate Americans out of Dubai and the surrounding region? I saw a very hopeful note from the Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs which states, “the US State Dept is in touch with 3,000 Americans and that we should call 1-202-501-4444 for assistance with departure options.” But that is unfortunately not accurate. I am enrolled in Step and have only received generic messages. Further, on calling that number, the message you get is: "Please don't rely on the USG for assisted departure or evacuation at this point. There are currently no evacuation flights at this time." 3. With funding cuts to the US consulates and with attacks on US embassies in the region, there’s no one that Americans can reach out to in the broader GCC region. Can we set up an emergency hotline within the US that actually works, and that has someone who is taking down more details? @SecRubio just stated that there are 1500 Americans who have contacted asking for assistance to evacuate. How did they do that because I am completely at a loss on who to call? I called up 1-202-501-4444 and all I got is a generic message. Myself and other Americans need help getting back home.

@grahamismyname @sardine @Riskified This is definitely a bug - thanks for calling it out. We’ll get this fixed. In the meantime, sardine.ai is the place to be :)

@sardine are you guys acquiring or getting acquired by Riskified? Was just on the MRC site that you’re the lead sponsor of and your logo goes to @Riskified 🧐

@twifintech Love it - about time there's a mainstream fraud newsletter. Let's go!

Introducing This Week in Fraud, a new newsletter focused on fraud, fintech, and financial crime, led by Nick Holland. Fraud is getting industrial in 2026. New research flagged this month warns that generative AI is accelerating impersonation, deepfake-driven social engineering, and highly tailored phishing, making attacks cheaper, more scalable, and more convincing. Nick breaks down what that shift means in practice, plus the other headlines shaping fraud, digital identity, and financial crime right now. Read the first edition here: thisweekinfintech.com/this-week-in-f…

@elenakvcs Great article! Only comment is that Levels has been one of the most prolific coders, way before AI. His github is marvel to look at. Idk if i’d use his tweet as an example of people with no technical background. The guy literally only deploys to main branch, he’s a legend

@businessbarista Claude

I want to start a community dedicated to Claude Code. It’s become the gateway drug to coding and experiencing the power of AI for tons of people. This will be a space for people to share killer use cases, agentic workflows, proven prompts, and connect with other CC obsessives. Comment “Claude” if you want to join.

@dwarkesh_sp @maxwellfarrens is awesome. Really enjoyed worked with both of you on the ad. The episode is a banger. Looking forward to the next one 🙌🏽

Max is being very humble. But most of what I know about judgement, execution, and stakeholder management has come from working with him. Come join us!

Early Warning CEO, Cameron Fowler just mentioned that they are adding stablecoin support to Zelle. Zelle already has more volumes than Block's CashApp or Paypal's Venmo. With stablecoins, they will be a legitimate challenger to cross-border fintechs like Revolut or cross-border remitters like Remitly and Western Union. The announcement from EWS CEO is scant on details, however, we can expect both stablecoin based pay-outs and pay-ins being supported. Stablecoin pay-outs and pay-ins bring different risks to the table for EWS. Pay-out to a stablecoin wallet increases fraud risk exposure for Zelle by ORDERS of magnitude. Many folks don't realize but Zelle is not really real-time (most of the time). When you make a Zelle transfer to someone – if both banks support RTP, then the transfer settles instantly. However, with RTP adoption still growing. In the majority of cases, the transfer settles at the end of day over ACH. What does this mean for risks in Stablecoin pay-outs? Stablecoin pay-outs will happen truly instantly. Which means that fraud checks have to happen inline at the time of a payment. And the ability to interdict and stop a transfer is then even more paramount. Pay-ins from a stablecoin wallet bring forth ORDERS of magnitude more due diligence requirements on banks that are not used to doing crypto transaction monitoring. The challenge lies in ensuring that the source of funds for incoming stablecoins is not associated with illicit activities. Banks will be forced to think about questions like – do I allow only pay-ins that are strictly A2A (account-to-account) to control for money laundering risks. That is, Soups should only be allowed to bring in stablecoins from a wallet that the bank knows is also owned by Soups. You’d be right in seeing that A2A restrictions break the promise of open-loop incoming pay-ins i.e. allowing anyone to accept stablecoins from anyone. In order to achieve that true promise of open-loop stablecoin payments, we would need to combine crypto transaction monitoring (to interpret taint associated with the counterparty wallet) together with other activity of the client. And what do you do if you received crypto from a tainted address known to be associated with a money launderer or terrorist financier? Maybe you should have not received them to begin with – therein lies the promise of real-time inline transaction monitoring! The good news is that at @sardine, this is the foundation that we were built upon And that's what we’ve been doing for the past ~6 years working with the top crypto exchanges, fintechs and money remittance companies in the world. Our vision is: - To bring onboarding and transaction monitoring together in one platform - Combine fiat and crypto transaction monitoring in one platform - And do it all in-line in real-time (within 100s of msec) These are truly exciting times. What other open questions do you all have as you think through this EWS announcement?

@corwinperdomo 🔥🔥🔥

been a good week

Grateful to our partners at @a16z and @GustoHQ for helping bring this SF @Techweek_ panel to life. @snagpa, @soupsranjan, and @astrange dove deep into how AI agents are reshaping the fight against financial crime.

@sytaylor @tempo Congrats man. Already miss jamming w you. Best of luck 🙌🏽

Guess what, Fintech Nerds? I got a new job. I'm joining Tempo, the payments-focused L1 blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. I’m moving to an advisor role with Sardine (💙)to focus on @tempo as my full-time day job. (And yes, I’ll still be doing Brainfood, Nerdcon, and Tokenized. Because I love this stuff.) I covered my full rationale for joining in the Fintech Brainfood that just dropped.

🚨 BREAKING: Citi unveils it's stablecoin strategy. And it's GENIUS (😁). Circle spent years fighting for regulatory clarity. Guess who benefits when the Genius Act passes? The banks. Here's what most people missed:

Visa wants to give AI Agents "tokens" so they can pay without you ever seeing a checkout page. Visa's CEO told investors this is their #1 priority. Here's how it will work 👇

Guess what? We're launching an event!!! @FintechNerdCon is 2 days, 19th and 20th November, Miami, Fl. No sales booths, no meetings One main stage. The best content curated b these folks 👇. Hackathons, workshops, Rant's, live podcasts and so much more. Tickets on sale NOW

Crazy. Has anyone heard or has this happen before? I ordered a new iPad from @Apple Delivery scheduled today via @UPS UPS driver knocks on my door and tells me this…. Then tells me that some guy flagged him down on the road (a few min away from my house) and told UPS driver he has a package for him (me), and he will take it, he’s in a hurry and needs it for work. The UPS driver confused, tells him he has to deliver it to the address, and keeps going. Driver gets in his car and follows him to my house, as the UPS driver gets out of van, the guy goes up to his door and says he needs it now, pulls out an ID to show him. The UPS driver made him sign for it and gave it to him. (Didn’t look at ID bc not required). The guy takes the package, gets in his car, and speeds away. UPS driver suspicion is now high, walks up to my house to verify and see what’s going on. To his surprise/fear - I walk out and confirm yes, I am me. …. Now we are waiting on police. …. Fact 1: This guy knew my name and my address and that I had a package being delivered today. SUPER scary. What do we think the probabilities are? 1. My email or Apple account is ‘hacked’? 2. UPS system is hacked 3. Apple is hacked?

You can now integrate @sardine Issuing Risk APIs using Model Context Protocol (MCP) and LLMs like Claude or tools like @cursor_ai. If you issue cards, you can implement fraud rules directly from your IDE or LLM. Here's how it works 👇

Wow! @stripe just dropped the annual letter and the numbers are HUGE. - $1.4trn of Total Processed Volume - Acquiring Bridge for $1.1bn - $500m ARR for Billing alone 💸. I had a 20 minute Q&A with John Collison and here's what we talked about

@sytaylor @rexsalisbury Deepfakes in banking are a growing concern. The lack of accountability for bad actors highlights the need for better AI governance—something we must address urgently.