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Gathering online banking creds via phishing backed by user consent is one thing but how the heck does Plaid do so without user consent?

On a side note, this is yet another gentle reminder that personal data is worth peanuts for the guy to whom it belongs and translates to big bucks only in the hands of the firm that uses it for targeted advertising and other pursuits.

Music has evolved over the years in at least two ways that I can fathom: (1) I can buy a single song instead of entire album (2) I can download / stream a song on multiple platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, etc.

But, when it comes to adjacent products from the same Media industry, (1) It's not easy / possible to buy a single episode of a TV show or news article (2) A given TV show is typically available only against a single OTT subscription like Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, etc.- not all. 

Before trying to exhort an entirely different industry like Banking / Wealth Management to evolve like Music, I'd ponder over why the evolution in Music has not even been replicated by adjacent products like TV Shows and News Articles that belong to the same Media industry.

Tectonic shift, customer centric, ESG ... HSBC is making all the right noises but why do I think this new fintech investment arm sounds exactly like the catch-all "Investment Banking SBU" I'd covered in BNPL Ain't Killing Banks. It's Making Them Rich that goes laughing all the way to the bank despite Fintechs eating the same bank's Retail Banking or Business Banking SBU's lunch? 

"Many banks invest in Fintechs, either directly or via VC funds that invest in Fintechs. Due to frothy valuations enjoyed by Fintechs, VC funds deliver 15-20% returns to their Limited Partners a/k/a Investment Banking divisions of banks. Therefore, whatever interest and fee incomes that are lost to BNPLs by the Retail Banking SBU of a bank are more than made up by the MOIC (Multiple On Invested Capital) earned by the Investment Banking SBU of the same bank."

When Chime, Revolut, NuBank and other loss-making Neobanks are enjoying such frothy valuations, it's a shame to hear that Monzo is experiencing such existential threats. 

TY @GabrielOnyango for the clarification but can you say for sure that Klarna uses illlion data outside of Australia?

As you can see from this screenshot, when I tried to register and get a free credit report, illion insisted on Proof of ID and Address in Australia.

This is not the first time a random new kid on the block is claiming that an incumbent 800 lb chimpanzee is inferior and that it will kill it, yada yada yada. Not saying Flinks can't disrupt / make a dent on Plaid but it's highly unlikely to happen via superior data quality. From what I know, data quality does not matter as much in the present days of credit decisioning via AI / ML compared to Rules as in the past.

Once upon a time, people looked at house prices and compared it with their bank balance and concluded that they could not afford the house and decided to stay on rent. Then banks came along and offered mortgages, which made it possible for the same people to buy homes. However, mortgages also introduced the risk of losing the home in future if the homeowner lost their job or were unable to make their mortgage payments for whatever reason. To that extent, mortgages did not really make houses affordable but simply kicked the unaffordability can down the road. But, despite that, mortgages are mainstream today. So will BNPL.

IMO, affordability is a moving target. What is unaffordable today can be packaged as affordable tomorrow by a financial product that's backed with adequate marketing and lobbying. BNPL is just the flavor of the season but it's not the only such financial product. AFAIK, there's no consistent legal definition of affordability across all situations. 

Some people celebrate such financial products as Financial Inclusion, Democratization, GDP Booster, etc. Some others diss them for creating Debt Trap. Choose your poison.

That said, like Mortgage, Credit Card and other credit products, BNPL will be subject to regulation in the forseeable future. My prediction about BNPL loyalty program came true faster than I expected. Let's see what happens to this one!

Nice post!

Earlier this month, I made a bold prediction that BNPL providers will launch a loyalty program. I didn't expect my prediction to come true so soon via Vibe from Klarna!

On a side note, I don't understand the concern about BNPL leading to people buying "products they don’t even need." It's not a secret that around 30% of GDP of capitalism / developed nations comes from discretionary goods aka products that people don't need. As Martin Kihn of Gartner put it aptly, "Capitalism requires the construction of needs that do not naturally occur". IMO, by fueling purchase of discretionary goods, BNPL is performing the yeoman service of keeping the lights of capitalism on!

Memory serves, MasterCard had launched an A2A payment product in the past called PayByBank or PayWithBank. Wonder if PayFromBank will fare any better. To a large extent, in markets that have high credit card and POS penetration, A2A is a solution seeking a problem from Consumers / Payers pov. If regulators don't cap MDR for it, A2A might not be the panacea for Credit Card MDR evil that Merchants might expect either.

It's (Ron) Shevlin, not Shelvin:)

It was right in your first citation.

Matt Levine recently commented that one of the big problems in finance is that bankers become bankers because they don't like reading. Daloopa indeed solves a big problem in the industry. I first heard about Daloopa from its sponsored ads in Byrne Hobart's newsletter, from which I also learned that 80% of the time spent by financial analysts goes towards manually extracting qualitative and quantitative data from statutory filings of companies and other long PDF reports. May Daloopa give the Dr. Michael Burry advantage to everyone in finance. (For the uninitiated, Dr. MB is one of the big shorts featured in Michael Lewis's eponymous book, whose secret sauce was his ability to pore through long winding reports and spot gotchas that most other financial analysts miss).