Expand CEO running an SMB-focused fintech in a downturn, Plaid adds crypto to its network, and 2022 DataDay Guide – Tearsheet

by James · August 3, 2022

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‘We have no intention of walking away from the banks’: Expand CEO Andrew Jamison on running an SME-focused fintech in a downturn

The SME sector is a kind of middle child – simple as a consumer, but with the complexity of a business.

This mid-market segment has been overlooked by the traditional financial industry, and fintechs are still trying to figure out how to profitably serve this segment, as this sector operates on fairly thin margins and there is a lot that can happen on the loss side.

Extend is one such fintech that targets this market.

Extend CEO Andrew Jamison told Tearsheet how the fintech sells software, and its customers are banks across the US. Instead of targeting the SME sector by offering an alternative to traditional banking, Extend took a different approach – it decided to try to fix the system from the inside.

Plaid amplifies crypto portability by adding leading exchanges to the network

Around 145 million Americans, or 56% of the country’s adult population, report having owned a cryptocurrency at some point. Furthermore, as stock markets crash and inflation rises, 46.5 million Americans who have never owned crypto in the past are looking to buy some next year.

As an increasing amount of American wealth is now held in crypto, Plaid is adding leading exchanges to its network, allowing consumers to connect their crypto wealth to the fintech apps they use. The firm bridges the data portability gaps between Web3 and regular digital finance.

The 2022 Guide to DataDay

When Tearsheet first introduced the DataDay conference three years ago, the issue of screen scraping was a major point of discussion. This year it was barely mentioned. The development towards direct data sharing agreements, APIs and tokenisation has widened the industry’s opening towards enabling new use cases.

Here’s Tearsheet’s DataDay Guide 2022 to learn about:

the companies, technologies and products that drive today’s financial computing industry
how financial data and open banking help FIs keep pace with customer demands
bank-fintech partnerships and how they are becoming more important
and more…

Download the DataDay guide here

Just look at the charts

1. The 15 biggest downturns in 2022

2. A significant proportion of consumers use BNPL as a financing option

Today’s stories

PayPal is the boss in the SME lending sector
PayPal did not provide exact quarterly figures for its “Working Capital” loan product, but it did reveal total originations since 2013 – 1.3 million loans for a total of $25.6 billion in the US, UK, Australia and Germany. Although there is an international component, the totals are higher than rivals OnDeck and Square Capital in the same time period. The company’s SMB lending business draws little attention given that its payments business, which includes Venmo, is so massive. (beaten off)

Amex launches digital, cross-border payment solution for US small businesses
Amex is helping small businesses keep pace with global competition with the launch of American Express Global Pay, a new cross-border payment tool for small businesses based in the US. It allows businesses to make domestic and international B2B payments to suppliers in more than 40 countries and 12 currencies using the mobile-optimized website. (Finovate)

A volatile year continues for Robinhood, which is cutting 23% of its workforce
Robinhood lays off 23% of employees. The layoffs come just three months after the fintech let go of 9% of its full-time employees. At the time of its latest layoffs in late April, Robinhood had about 3,100 employees after letting go about 300 workers — a 23% reduction in staff would amount to about 713 employees affected, leaving roughly 2,400 employees at the company. CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev conveyed that layoffs are “particularly concentrated” in the company’s operations, marketing and program management. (TechCrunch)

Novo rolls out Express ACH
Novo, a small business financial platform, announced that the company launched Express ACH, a service that will allow all of Novo’s SMB customers to process same-day ACH payments. (Finextra)

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