Issue #367 - The Effects Of Competition June 7th, 2022

The competition in the BNPL market rises: after the announcement of Apple, which introduced its Apple Pay Later, the popular Buy Now, Pay Later firm Affirm fell 6%.

Josh Brown, CNBC contributor and financial advisor, says it clearly: there are too many fintechs that are publicly traded. The point is that maybe there won’t be enough opportunities for all of them – and maybe this is the reason why many fintech stocks are falling.

Crypto traders and investors are aware of the decline that hit the crypto market. Despite the hard market downturn, Jamie Dimon – JP Morgan CEO – says that this is just the beginning – especially for assets like Bitcoin, Ether and Cardano.

Blockdaemon, a blockchain company, and StakeWise, a staking platform, launched a new staking protocol focused on institutional investors – Harbour. Users will be able to stake ETH on the platform and will receive Harbour tokens that can be used on other DeFi platforms to maximize their investments.

Chris Gabriel shares his opinions about the importance of understanding the nature of memes to understand the whole economy and any kind of structure in our society.

Julie Fredrickson raises a very interesting question: will DAOs drive a new innovation cycle? As the industrial revolution was the result of organized groups of people who worked towards the same economic goal, the next revolution could be led by this new form of organization with no leaders – Decentralized Autonomous Organization.

Also a banking provider like Yobota joins the BNPL market: the London-based company is partnering with Tranch – a Buy Now, Pay Later startup – to provide clients with more flexible payment methods.

Apple announced its new BNPL product – Apple Pay Later: it can be used where Apple Pay is available, and will allow people to split payments into four equal payments with no interest.

The mobile money service provider, M-Pesa, and the giant Visa, partnered to expand the number of countries where users can pay by using the service managed by Safaricom. With this partnership, Visa is further entering the African markets.

The pandemic changed our vision of work, and highly skilled professionals make no exception: many professionals are leaving companies like Facebook and Goldman Sachs to work for fintech startups. Higher pays, more flexible work and better opportunities are the main reasons behind this exodus.