Popular Fintech

Published my regular @twifintech column on publicly traded Fintech companies: Summer earnings, winter vibes In my previous column in June, I warned that under the surface, public fintechs were not OK. The second quarter earnings season has proved me right, only it’s turning out even worse than I expected. The TWIF Index is badly underperforming both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, and the gap is widening. FICO $FICO, FIS $FIS, Fiserv $FI, PayPal $PYPL, Coinbase $COIN, and even Block $XYZ, which seemed to be finally reaccelerating growth, all took hits after reporting earnings. Card schemes are still holding up well, but have begun to underperform the broader indices. There are isolated pockets of strength in areas like lending. And then there are the true standouts, like Robinhood $HOOD and Shopify $SHOP, both big wins for Cathie Wood, whose ARK Fintech Innovation fund $ARKF also holds Circle, Bitcoin, and... Palantir. Fintech companies are still innovating, winning market share, and growing earnings, and many have balance sheets strong enough to fuel further growth or survive a downturn. So why does this earnings season feel like winter for fintech? Why the concern? What is the market seeing that I can’t? Follow the link in the reply 👇🏻

How Coupang missed the Fintech opportunity It won in e-commerce, but lost the wallet war Coupang $CPNG, the “Amazon of South Korea”, controls close to 40% of the country’s e-commerce market and serves almost half the population. Even with its dominant position, Coupang continues to grow, with analysts projecting $45 billion in revenue by 2027. That made me think Coupang must have a strong Fintech arm, just like Mercado Libre $MELI with Mercado Pago or Sea $SE with Shopee. But I was wrong. Coupang’s Fintech business is limited to a wallet, Coupang Pay, and a co-branded credit card, WOW card. Limited disclosures suggest that these products have a marginal contribution to the company’s top line. So what happened? My conclusion is that Coupang lost the wallet war. South Korea experienced a major shift from card payments to mobile wallets, and Coupang was late to respond. Coupang’s wallet came too late, Samsung, Naver, KakaoPay, and Toss had already built strong footholds. And in Fintech, payments come first. If you control payments, you earn the right to offer loans, insurance, and investments. Coupang missed that chance. Follow the link in the reply to read my deep dive 👇🏻

It started with a game Sea didn’t start as a Fintech, but it sure became one I continue to explore companies that aren’t traditionally seen as Fintechs, but have quietly built sizeable Fintech businesses along the way. This week, it’s Sea Limited $SE. Headquartered in Singapore, Sea operates three major platforms across Southeast Asia: Garena (gaming), Shopee (e-commerce), and Monee (financial services). Sea started as a gaming company and used profits from Garena to fund its push into commerce and financial services. The result? One of the largest e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia, and one of the region’s biggest Fintech players. Like Mercado Libre $MELI, Sea’s Fintech journey began with a wallet to support online purchases. And like Mercado Pago, it’s consumer credit that’s now driving the next wave of growth. The synergy between e-commerce and financial services is real, and both Sea and Mercado Libre are proof of that. Follow the link in the reply for my deep dive 👇🏻

Coinbase is quietly taking on Visa and Mastercard The company's new protocol brings stablecoins closer to everyday commerce On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS Act, a new law that sets clear rules for stablecoins in the U.S. It allows not just banks and Fintech companies, but also retailers to issue their own stablecoins. The market reacted quickly: Visa $V and Mastercard $MA shares dropped about 3%, while Coinbase $COIN and Circle $CRCL jumped more than 10%. The message was clear: investors now see stablecoins as a serious challenge to Visa and Mastercard's dominance in payments. At first, I was skeptical. Even in the most optimistic scenario, stablecoins seemed far from replacing cards, which offer strong rewards, global acceptance, and solid consumer protections. But later that day, I came across the Coinbase Commerce Payments Protocol, and it made me rethink my thesis. The protocol doesn’t just bring key card features into stablecoin payments. It also lays the foundation for an ecosystem of players who are financially motivated to drive stablecoin adoption in commerce. Maybe stablecoin payments will go mainstream faster than I thought. Follow the link in the reply for my deep dive 👇🏻

How Mercado Libre built a Fintech empire From solving checkout to rewriting financial services in Latin America I went down the rabbit hole of researching commerce platforms with Fintech arms, and Mercado Libre might be the most impressive example out there. What started as the Amazon of Latin America has quietly morphed into one of the region’s leading Fintech companies, now aiming to build the largest digital bank in Latin America. The company’s Fintech arm, Mercado Pago, was born out of necessity to facilitate payments on its marketplace. But from there, it grew naturally into a full-stack financial platform. Along the way, it built the Latin American equivalents of PayPal, Square, and Affirm, and now it’s putting the pieces together to become a full-service bank. If there’s any company that can challenge Mercado Libre, it’s Nubank. Nubank had a head start in lending and already pulled ahead in users and revenue. But with Mercado Pago now scaling aggressively, the real battle will play out in Mexico. Wall Street thinks both companies can thrive, and I think it’s going to be a hell of a fight. But who doesn’t like a rivalry between two amazing companies? Follow the link in comments for my deep dive 👇🏻 $MELI $NU

Shopify's second act Targeting the opportunity beyond SMB e-commerce Originally built to support a snowboard shop, Shopify $SHOP has grown into a leading global commerce platform. It now powers millions of merchants across 175 countries, processes hundreds of billions in GMV, and has become one of the most important companies in global commerce. But here's what makes Shopify's story remarkable: while many companies plateau after finding their niche and reaching scale, Shopify keeps expanding its TAM. It’s going after the enterprise segment, expanding into offline retail, and pushing aggressively into international markets. This puts Shopify on a collision course with some of tech's biggest names, Adobe, Salesforce, and SAP, but with one decisive advantage: speed. Shopify and its Fintech partners, Stripe, Affirm, and Global-E, can ship faster, iterate more quickly, and serve customers with less friction. And in a world where commerce is increasingly software-defined, that might be the most powerful edge of all. Follow the link in the reply for my deep dive 👇🏻

Small business, big opportunity Where will small businesses bank in the future? Small business banking is quietly changing. Square and Shopify now offer small businesses everything from payment acceptance to corporate cards and savings accounts. Spend management platforms like Ramp and Brex are taking a similar path, with offerings like Brex Banking and Ramp Treasury. What began as payment processing or expense management has evolved into a push to become the primary banking partner for small businesses. The main goal behind these expansions is to capture operational deposits, the day-to-day business cash that represents the most valuable part of small business banking. So, where will small businesses bank in the future? Follow the link in the reply for my deep dive 👇🏻

There's more to Fiserv than Clover Fiserv’s growth engine runs deeper than Clover I have been planning to research Fiserv $FI for a while. My perception was that the market loved this company purely because of Clover, a modern POS solution for small businesses. Clover has been delivering impressive growth, successfully competing with the likes of Square. I’m glad I finally did this research. What I found is that two-thirds of Fiserv’s business is hardly at risk of disruption. It competes with other incumbents, like FIS, but faces little competition from the new generation of fintech companies. At least for now. In the meantime, the company continues to improve its operating efficiency and buy back its stock, which turns single-digit revenue growth into consistent double-digit growth in earnings per share. So Fiserv should be fine, even if Clover can’t maintain its strong momentum. Follow the link in the reply for my deep dive 👇🏻

Marqeta is back What Stripe and Adyen did in acquiring, Marqeta could do in issuing FIS $FIS is buying Global Payments’ $GPN issuing business for $13.5 billion, which will make it the second-largest issuer processor after Fiserv $FI. Based on the deal’s valuation multiples, Fiserv’s issuing business should be worth around $20 billion on a stand-alone basis. And that brings me to Marqeta $MQ, a modern issuer processor with a $2 billion market cap, nearly $1 billion in cash, and no debt. The company went through a challenging period in 2022–2024, but I think it’s back on track and has what it takes to go after giants like Fiserv and FIS. Adyen and Stripe are catching up to the big merchant acquirers by outgrowing them. I think Marqeta can do the same in issuer processing. Follow the link in the reply for my deep dive! 👇🏻

Adyen’s platform play $ADYEN Adyen nailed the enterprise. Now it wants to conquer SMBs. 👇🏻 popularfintech.com/p/adyen-for-pl…

It's still Day 1 for Nubank Brazil was only the beginning Nubank $NU is objectively one of the most successful Fintech companies out there. In Brazil, they have reached the scale of the incumbents and yet maintain the growth rates of a startup. Innovative, highly profitable, and deeply loved by its customers. However, on the recent earnings call, David Velez, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said that it is still Day 1 for Nubank. He’s set ambitious goals for the company, so ambitious that, if achieved, Nubank’s accomplishments to date could seem like a footnote. Nubank wants to become the largest financial institution in Latin America, expand beyond financial services, and…wait for it…become a global player. I believe it was the first time that they had explicitly told investors that they are working on expansion beyond Latin America. Let’s dive in because this is super exciting! (follow the link in the reply) 👇🏻

Adyen’s got company Notes from Shift4 Investor Day One of my main takeaways from Shift4 Investor Day is that the company has outgrown the restaurants and hospitality segments. Over the years, they experimented with serving customers from other segments, which culminated with the launch of the Shift4 “Unified Commerce” product. “Unified Commerce” is a platform for serving global omnichannel merchants. Online acquiring, in-person acquiring, the U.S., Europe, Latin America, you name it - “Unified Commerce” can help. The name “Unified Commerce” and the product slogan “One Platform. One Integration” should ring a bell to anyone who is familiar with the European merchant acquirer Adyen. It is not fair to continue comparing Shift4 to Toast; Shift4 is going into head-to-head competition with Adyen and Stripe. The launch of “Unified Commerce” made this rivalry official. What’s puzzling, though, is that Shift4 used to be valued lower than Toast (based on earnings multiples) because Toast generates a large portion of its revenue from software, while Shift4 was seen primarily as a pure payments company. But now, the market assigns Shift4 $FOUR a lower multiple than Adyen $ADYEN, another payments company, even though both are delivering similar growth. So what’s wrong this time? Follow the link in the reply to read my thoughts 👇🏻

From Faster Payments to PIX: Wise’s infrastructure play Why Wise is building a global payment network I’ve been planning to write about Wise $WISE.L for a long time. Wise is a UK Fintech company (founded by two Estonians) that enables individuals and small businesses to send and receive money internationally at significantly lower costs than traditional banks. Wise competes with PayPal Xoom, Remitly, and a bunch of traditional remittance companies. However, under the hood, Wise is a totally different play pursuing a much bigger opportunity. In pursuit of its mission, making cross-border payments fast and cheap, Wise is building a global payment network, aiming to connect to as many domestic rails as possible and eliminate the need for correspondent banks. In this respect, Wise is somewhat similar to Citigroup, one is one the largest correspondent banks in the world. Similar to Citi, Wise establishes a local presence, gets regulatory permissions, and eventually wants to connect to local rails. Citi’s network is its crown jewel. And Wise is replicating it. Now, imagine if Citi had the technological muscle and agility of Wise and could put its global network in the hands of consumers and small businesses instead of solely serving large enterprises and other banks. This sounds like a massive opportunity, doesn’t it? And it is an opportunity that Wise is pursuing. Follow the link to read more (requires premium subscription) 👇🏻

The many faces of Affirm Affirm is more than just a point-of-sale lender. But what exactly are they? Remember the phrase, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Superman”? That’s what comes to my mind every time I think about Affirm $AFRM. Is it simply an online lender with a smarter customer acquisition strategy? An up-and-coming credit card challenger? Or is it something else entirely - something we haven’t quite labeled yet? Affirm has evolved a lot over the years. They started with a checkout button to help customers finance online purchases. Then went on to launch the Affirm Card, a new breed of cards that combines debit and credit capabilities. And now they want to power credit for all debit issuers out there. But here’s what confuses me most: Affirm says it's “building a new kind of payment network.” Not a lending network. Not a commerce network. A payment network. That suggests Affirm’s ambitions might go far beyond what it is today. Isn’t it exciting? Follow the link in the reply for my deep dive 👇🏻

Embedded lending: the next big opportunity or a niche play? The opportunity in embedded lending is largely untapped. Who's going to capture it? I have written a lot about embedded payments, which refers to the integration of payments into software platforms. Companies like Shopify $SHOP, Toast $TOST, and Bill $BILL generate billions in revenue from payment processing. Adyen, in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, estimated the embedded lending opportunity (as in potential revenue) to be $48 billion. Embedded lending is believed to be an even larger opportunity than embedded payments, and remains largely untapped. My research suggests that individual lending programs have struggled to capture this opportunity. Despite years of effort, major embedded lending programs like Square Loans and Shopify Capital have captured a small fraction of this opportunity. Perhaps, this opportunity is not that large after all? Or, perhaps this opportunity won't be captured by individual lending programs, but rather by embedded lending providers that power multiple small programs? Think Stripe Capital for Platforms, Adyen Capital, Parafin, and YouLend. This is an exciting area! Follow the link in the reply to read my research (requires a premium subscription) 👇🏻

PayPal's fresh bid for relevance Notes from PayPal Investor Day 2025 $PYPL On his very first earnings call as the CEO of PayPal, Alex Chriss raised a concern: “We are doing a lot of things, but are we focused enough with our resource allocation?” PayPal just held its investor day, and it was a great and insightful event. But one thing was missing - focus. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my concerns that PayPal was trying to do too much. Turns out, they want to do even more. The new management hasn’t cut a single product or service - if anything, they are adding more. Even crypto is back. Many stars need to align right for PayPal to achieve its targets. However, I think the complexity of PayPal’s strategy and the execution risk are already reflected in the stock price. So this is not what I want to write about. What excites me is the company’s longer-term ambition. PayPal wants to become a commerce platform. They actually have to, as they are falling behind the competition in payments. It’s a long shot and will take years to materialize, but if they manage to pull this off… Read my latest @PopularFintech essay by following the link in the reply 👇🏻

Is there any hope for Block? Yes, if Jack Dorsey lets his team deliver Block’s $XYZ fourth-quarter shareholder letter was disappointing. Square has fallen behind the competition in terms of growth. Cash App’s user growth has stalled. Yet, Jack Dorsey prioritized building open-source software, mining hardware, and the non-custodial wallet. However, it seems that the rest of the Block’s team is working hard at reigniting growth in Block’s existing businesses. Square is doubling down on its growth in the mid-market seller segment, and Cash App is doubling down on lending. These plans are real and are expected to start changing the company’s growth trajectory as soon as the second half of this year. Will this turnaround happen while Block’s chief is focused elsewhere? I hope so. I hope Dorsey’s quest for the next big thing doesn’t distract the rest of the team. I hope Square and Cash App get the resources they need to execute their plans. Maybe that’s a lot to hope for, but hope seems to be a necessary trait for any Block shareholder. Read my latest @PopularFintech essay by following the link in the reply 👇🏻

Robinhood $HOOD has quietly built one of the largest crypto marketplaces in the U.S. Although they are still smaller than Coinbase $COIN, they can leverage their loyal brokerage customers to scale this business quickly. And the pending acquisition of Bitstamp will further help them reach Coinbase's scale. Of course, Coinbase has been diversifying its revenue streams and is years ahead of Robinhood in many areas. Some of Coinbase’s revenue streams, such as prime financing and institutional custody, seem to be out of reach for Robinhood, at least in the foreseeable future. However, the real battle may begin when securities tokenization takes off. Robinhood would have a head start, but it's unlikely that Coinbase would ignore this opportunity. This is a rivalry between two great Fintech companies, and I think that it doesn’t matter which side you’re on - both companies are just getting started. Follow the link in the reply to read my latest @PopularFintech essay 👇🏻

PayPal wants to be everywhere Can they stay focused this time? PayPal $PYPL reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2024 results this week. Braintree payment volume growth decelerated to 2% YoY (from 29% YoY a year ago). International payment volume growth decelerated to 7% YoY (from 17% YoY a year ago). The company guided for unimpressive 4-5% YoY gross profit and 6-10% non-GAAP EPS growth in 2025. So what’s next? A payments company needs payment volume growth to grow earnings. The answer: PayPal has almost 230 million monthly active users…and they want to do more for them. PayPal wants to lend to consumers and small businesses. They want to issue debit cards. And I believe they will try to scale their in-store payment acceptance business. PayPal will hold an Investor Day later this month. I expect Investor Day to clarify PayPal's core focus moving forward. While PayPal has plenty of growth opportunities, they cannot pursue them all. We have already seen a lack of focus before, and it didn’t end well. Follow the link in the reply to read my latest @PopularFintech essay 👇🏻

"No one is disrupting banks." Yes, that's the topic of this week's @PopularFintech article. Please don't hate me. The link is in the reply 👇🏻