Backend Benchmarking quarterly Robo report is a classic for me and I watch for it religiously (this is the 18th edition). With so much consolidation in this Fintech subsector during 2020, with no IPOs or SPACs, one would think that it is a relatively boring subsector and consider the Robo report a business-as-usual update of numbers and rankings.

The reality is that the `Robo market` has gone beyond its first stage of offering a few model portfolios, automating investment processes and reducing costs. Several companies now offer banking features and others have added advice planning apps.

Examples of Banking features…

The Robinhood saga is fascinating because it brings to the forefront so many issues.

It has been seen as a

A cultural clash between the hedge fund elite and the empowered retail investor (by Fintech innovations). Bringing to the forefront the Occupy Wall Street movement and the unregulated power of the crowds.

A governance conundrum facing privately held powerful social media platforms and privately held grown-up Fintechs; should they have the power to block users? Bringing to the forefront voting rights and decentralized finance core concepts.

A capital markets failure because the bondholders of nearly bankrupt companies have been ironically…

It was 2015 when I joined Bernard Lunn on Daily Fintech and profiling Xignite was amongst my first blogs. I had just met Stephane Dubois CEO and Founder in Zurich as part of his European tour at the Zurich Fintech gathering on “APIs-essential infrastructure tool”.

Xignite — a wind intensifying the Fintech fireworks

Xignite was helping the robo-investing Fintech vertical grow. Fast forward to today and there is no doubt that Xignite has grown. In the first half of 2020, they reported

In April 2020 alone, Xignite saw over 365 billion API hits, or more than 12 billion a day…

While anything growing exponentially these days, can be characterized as Bubbly and could actually be Wobbly, the question to ask yourself is whether you are compensated for the risks you are taking. This is no new insight or something that applies to one class of investable assets and not to another.

Today I won't talk about public stocks or private market valuations or cryptocurrencies. I want to focus on stablecoins and more so on the currently dominant share which is stablecoins backed by the US dollar. …

The US SPAC boom continues, and I do admit that I decided to invest in one of them just this month. It is part of eating my own lunch, but I promise I won’t talk my books (until my SPAC investment finds its target).

Last September I first wrote about SPACs with a focus around Fintech targets.

At that time, the data showed that 50% of US IPOs are SPACs! and in the Fintech space, Bancorp was the entity with solid presence as a manager of several SPACs in the series FNTC, FNTE, etc.

As the SoFi and BakkT SPAC…

Happy New year!

21 is an archetypal number with several patterns associated with it. The gospel of St. John has 21 chapters, the apostle Paul wrote about 21 sins, and Jesus Christ appeared in 21 places in Palestine to confirm his resurrection. Some claim that 21 is a symbol of maturity and perfection (in the context of the Bible).

Those that believe in guardian angels, interpret 21 as the time for new beginnings and changes.

From a mathematical perspective, 21 is not a prime number but a compound number and the product of 3 and 7. Of course, seven is…

I rarely write multiple blogs about one company. Stripe is an exception. Over the past few months, I wrote about their aggressive investment activates and their innovation stack, and now about one of their latest offerings, the Stripe Treasury.

Stripe has been aggressively investing in startups — 22 and growing

The Stripe innovation stack and its 6 million Github commits

Stripe’s mission is to increase the GDP of the internet by making it easy to launch and run an online business.

Stripe has had a developer focus in payments and the Collison brothers, John and Patrick, insist that they will not be seeking a banking license, unlike several other grown-up Fintechs. …

A reality check based on the latest Salesforce report

Customers’ concerns are pointing to low levels of impact and satisfaction from the up-to-date digitalization in financial services.

A recent Salesforce survey, “State of the Connected Customer,” reports that only 27% feel that the financial services industry is actually customer-centric, and only 23% think that the industry handled the pandemic well! At the same time, customer expectations post-pandemic are elevated.

Now, how disappointing is this market feedback after billions of dollars spent in funding Fintech innovations and with hundreds of Fintech unicorns globally?

Salesforce`s recent survey provides multiple insights around the…