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4.25% APY seems too good to be true.

"Fierce is FDIC-insured, what do I care if it goes bust?" you might ask. 

Fair question, except that Fierce itself is not a member of FDIC, only its underlying bank is.

"Banking services provided by Cross River Bank, Member FDIC." ~ www.getfierce.com.

So, FDIC will not pay out if Fierce goes bust but only if Cross River Bank goes bust. 

Also, if Fierce goes bust, will its customers be recognized by Cross River Bank and given access to their funds?

PS: These questions have been raised about Chime and other neobanks. Varo obtained a banking license as a way of providing a convincing answer to them.

It's debatable whether there's any extant law against crypto staking, ergo not clear that someone is even seeking "ignorance of the law" as a defence. 

But, for the sake of argument, assuming there is, let's see what disruptive startups in other regulated industries have done. As I highlighted in Fintechs Need Marketers And Lobbyists, Not Lawyers:

“As startups launch in heavily regulated industries such as food, health, transportation, and housing, clashes with the law have become as common in Silicon Valley as office ping-pong tables. The MOST COMMON APPROACH to these regulatory battles—successfully embraced by lodging site Airbnb, ride-hailing app Uber, fantasy football site FanDuel, and DNA testing and analysis company 23andMe— is to IGNORE THE TROUBLESOME LAW as long as possible. For a long time, the advice was, just keep your head down, build the kind of network you need to be viable, and then once you have viability, NOBODY IS GOING TO BE ABLE TO SHUT YOU DOWN."

Unfo for the crypto industry, it couldn't become "too big to comply" fast enough.

Got it!

Stunting the new in favor of the old has been a feature, not bug, of EU regulation. Hopefully, after BREXIT, one'd think this would've changed in UK.

That said, when it comes to Open Banking, a technology that compels regulated parties like banks to open their doors to third parties, it's only fair that they'd want to ensure that only third parties of "one size" and above are given access.  

TY @MatthewSalisbury. Number Intelligence reminds me of TrueCaller. 

Great post!

Over the years, there's been no end of posts extolling the virtues of Open Banking at a semi-philosophical level without getting down to the brass tacks of how it can provide business value. Disclosure: I've written some of them myself:) e.g. 

Open Banking: EU v. USA

Against that backdrop, props for describing some compelling use cases of Open Banking / Open Finance. 

I also keep saying that, despite lack of regulatory mandate, USA has 80M users of Open Banking, which suggests that OB apps there have solid value proposition and may be a good starting point for other regions seeking inspiration of OB use cases.

Great post!

I'm in sales / marketing and I know how sales reps pounce on incoming leads and enthusiastically call whatever number they see on lead forms.    

As a sales manager, it's not a smart move to dampen your sales guys' enthusiasm by telling them to conduct due diligence on every number they dial.

Apart from steep international call charges, contamination of pipeline data is another problem caused by Wangiri 2.0 when the fake lead enters the company's CRM system.

Wangiri 2.0 is easily one of the most diabolical cybercrimes I've heard of. 

Apart from looking up a "Wangiri 2.0 Telephone Directory" - assuming one exists - before making each and every call, I can't think of any solution to this problem. Do you know of any?

This is insane!

Is there a precedent of any other bank upgrading its internal system integral to Open Banking workflow without seeking consents again? 

On a side note, every time my bank upgrades the version of its ATM switch software - which is once in 6 months or so - I lose my "Favorite Transation", which, IMO, is one of the most innovative features I'd seen in retail banking when it was launched 10+ years ago.

There are so many definitions of Embedded Finance going around including some that would apply to retailers from the 1950s! Obviously that definition can't be right?

Kudos for defining Embedded Finance as a Capability. I use the following description: "Embedded Finance is not a non-financial company but a technology-cum-business-process that's used by a non-financial company to offer financial services as an integral part of its core product / platform. Ergo it's a Horizontal, Not Vertical".

Coming to the part about "without the consumer needing to get in touch with a bank". Well, at some point, consumer is on Klarna / Bank website / app in the case of BNPL as Embedded Finance? I agree that the consumer does not seek out a bank / fintech consciously but it's a fact that a consumer does eventually "get in touch" with them in Embedded Finance.

This point is subtle in online commerce but, when it comes to brick-and-mortar stores, as I highlighted in BNPL Ain't Killing Banks. It's Making Them Rich, fintech BNPLs approach the consumer at the aisle instead of waiting for consumer to be connected with them at the retailer checkout. So BNPL is more like "Financing at Point of Aisle" rather than Point of Sale. I argue that this is the key reason why Fintechs will always have a huge lead over Banks in BNPL.

Dearth of information on perpetrators of APP Scam is consistent with my opinion that it's very hard to catch them.

Why Is It So Hard To Catch Cybercriminals?

Forcing banks to reimbuse APP scam victims is a canonical example of Drunk Under Lamp Post regulation.