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Related Headlines
| 03/01/2022 | New Mexico signs rate cap bill into law |
| 03/09/2021 | Fintech law goes into effect in Mexico |
| 02/01/2020 | Mexico's AlphaCredit raises $125M |
| 02/27/2019 | PayPal to do small biz loans in Mexico |
| 10/09/2017 | SMB lending in Mexico gets a boost |
Stories
Fintech Law Goes into Effect in Mexico
March 9, 2021
It will be a big year for fintech in Mexico, with at least 93 fintech firms in the process of obtaining a Financial Technology Institution (FTI) license.
Lawyer Rene Arce Lozano, an advisor with the international Hogan Lovells law firm, wrote about the new “fintech law”; the first of its kind in Latin America. Many firms will see an authorization in the coming year from the National Banking and Securities Commission.
“Over the last few years,” Lozano wrote, “the fintech ecosystem in Mexico has evolved to become one of the most developed in Latin America.”
Mexico, home to 441 startups- the largest fintech hub in central America- passed the law in 2018 that went into effect this past year 2020, nurturing the creation of dozens of Mexican neo banks and electronic payments firms.
The new law sets regulations for payments and open banking and has stirred up excitement for fintech enterprise in the country as a whole. But according to Financial specialist Stefan Staschen, the law isn’t the cure-all.
“The law covers only two types of fintech companies,” Stashen wrote. “It does not provide regulatory guidance for other services, such as fintechs offering balance sheet lending, big tech companies launching financial services, investment services other than crowdfunding, or central bank digital currencies.”
The new law may be a great start, but it is the first step to broader regulatory approval to the diverse financial tech world. Staschen works at the CGAP– an international advocacy group based in Washington that aims to extend financial inclusion throughout the world.
New Mexico Bill Would Allow State Employees to Repay Loans Via Paychecks
January 15, 2018
Proposed legislation would enable New Mexico to offer small loans to state employees that are paid back via deductions from their paychecks.
Put forth by Democratic state Senator Bill Tallman, the bill would put a 30 percent ceiling on interest rates for loans obtained via the program and limit repayment to 12 percent of gross salary or wages.
According to the Associated Press, Tallman says the bill is aimed at lowering debt burdens on state workers.
Should it pass, Tallman’s initiative would serve as another step for the state in its current battle against predatory lending tactics. As of this month, small lenders in New Mexico are held to a maximum of 175 percent interest on all loans finalized from January 1, onward.
Doug Farry, executive vice president of Employee Loan Solutions Inc., which deploys the employee lending service, True Connect, believes such a strategy can prove successful at the state level.
“It’s a benefit program,” said Farry while discussing the bill. “There’s no reason why it can’t work for a state government as well as a county or city.”
Aimed at empowering workers that face obstacles when applying for credit via traditional avenues, True Connect mainly serves private employers but has seen increased interest in the public sector. This includes government organizations such as Santa Fe Public Schools and others within the state of New Mexico.
At no cost to their participating employer and without submitting a credit score, workers can sign up for small loans via the company’s website.
Typically the funds are deposited with in one business day, and the loan is repaid over the course of 26 paychecks at a flat rate of 24.9% interest.
New Mexico’s decision regarding the practice is yet to be determined, but should the bill pass, the state may soon have followers.
Farry says that True Connect is currently in talks with multiple state governments about including a similar system in their benefits package.
Business Lending in Mexico – From the Front Lines
January 20, 2016It’s no secret that the financial technology (FinTech) industry has exploded and its effects are being felt around the world. With its epicenter in the US (arguably the UK), it quickly caught on in other major markets like Europe, Australia and Canada. The main narrative for the FinTech industry plays as follows: First, a huge local market has incumbents (local banks), which make it hard for the local population to move or obtain capital (payments and loans, respectively). Then, a bunch of clever people arm themselves with tech, tools and capital to come up with a better solution than the incumbents in their markets; and as people in the US are looking west, east and north to see how this tune plays out in different markets, I have seen how the FinTech phenomenon is growing strongly down south, here, in Mexico.
Mexico’s FinTech market is made up of the same parts as in the rest of the world. It has huge potential, but surprisingly only few people know about it. With roughly a third of the population of the US (123 million people), and an economic value similar to that of Australia and Canada, Mexico´s local market is in dire need of financial services. In our company’s market, domestic credit represents a meager 31% of GDP[1]! It’s 69% in Brazil by contrast. The USA has a startling 194%. This means that the Mexican private sector is not receiving enough capital in the form of financial products from local financial institutions. The same phenomenon exists in the payments space. For example, in the point of sale (POS) industry, there are currently 8 POS per 1,000 people in Mexico. The US has more than double that at 21 POS per 1,000 people, and Brazil has 3x at 24 POS per 1,000!
Regarding the incumbents, the banks, Mexico is known as the land of monopolies. While in the US there are literally thousands of banks, in Mexico, there are just over 40 banks, with the top 20% holding close to 80% of the market and its profits. Furthermore, Citibank’s and BBVA´s Mexican operations are some of their most profitable worldwide. Large banks like these enjoy extraordinary profits, and have been slow to adapt to new technological trends, service niche markets and provide services which could cannibalize bank revenues. After all, why would a monopoly innovate if it holds most of the market in its hands?
And then there are the people trying to solve this problem. Many Mexicans travel to study in the world´s top graduate programs and return to Mexico to act on what they learned. Domestically, Mexico churns out 3 times as many engineers per capita than US universities do. So currently there is a boom in the number of start-ups in Mexico[2]. And as start-ups tend to do, they are targeting one of the largest and hairiest problems this country has to offer: Financial Services. As a result, the likes of “500 Startups”, “Tech Stars”, “Village Capital” and “Y-Combinator”, and several Silicon Valley VC funds have turned their attention south. Several Mexican start-ups have been raising increasingly larger rounds from local and US investors to quickly tackle the opportunities in the loans and payments spaces.
These Mexican companies are developing solutions for the national problems and they know how to do it with the local culture in mind. Even though the US and Mexico share one of the longest borders and a huge migrant flow, they have developed at different speeds, which present different challenges. Two examples of this divergence: The FICO credit score, created in 1970s in the US, barely made its way down to Mexico some 4 years ago. However in terms of regulation, Mexican banks have been quicker to meet regulatory compliance (Basel I/II) than most of their US counterparts[3]. So the new players up to bat here at home, the online lenders, merchant lenders, mobile POS, remittances, bitcoin exchanges, peer-to-peer market places and the like, are raising capital both locally and abroad to create the technology to service the large Mexican financial services market. And in many cases, they are trying to get the formula right to create a beachhead to jump into a larger and broader international Latino market.
—
Footnotes
[1] – In other words, how much capital is being provided by all the private financial institutions in the country to all the private interests (consumers and companies) in comparison to the GDP. A lower number means that the private sector is not providing enough capital to match the countries production. A higher means the private sector is matching or exceeding the capital needs of the private interests.
[2] – A few months ago “The Economist” made a small homage on the Mexican start up scene – http://www.economist.com/news/business/21647624-nascent-tech-hub-may-succeed-solving-local-problems-techs-mex
[3] – The high compliance of the Mexican Banks has been a byproduct of the boom and bust cycle that the country has had. So more than a voluntarily action, the central bank forced the local players to meet the international requirements.
Debunking Jameson Lopp’s Rebuttal on the ‘Jack Dorsey is Satoshi Nakamoto’ Theory
December 1, 2025Back in February 2025, prominent Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp attempted to debunk the theory that Jack Dorsey was Satoshi Nakamoto. Unfortunately, almost all the information he relied on for his arguments were either wrong or required leaps of the imagination. While I addressed this immediately after he posted them here and here, they’re being republished here:
Lopp: “During the time period of 2009 & 2010, Jack Dorsey was not only Chairman of the Board of Twitter, but also the CEO of the fledgling startup Square. It’s quite clear that he was an extremely busy person not only overseeing multiple companies, but traveling around the world meeting important people, doing press interviews, speaking at conferences, promoting philanthropic causes, and more. His activities do not fit the profile of someone who had the time and mental bandwidth to also be building a completely new financial system from scratch while maintaining perfect anonymity.”
Counter:
Twitter: Jack was fired from Twitter in mid-October 2008. He was made “silent” Chairman with no active role in the company and did not return in an active capacity at Twitter until March 28, 2011. So there is no conflict with his role at Twitter as he did not have an official job function there during the time period in question.
Satoshi Nakamoto published the White Paper on October 31, 2008 and sent his last farewell email in April 2011. This reinforces the plausibility that Jack is Satoshi since Satoshi appears right after Jack leaves Twitter and exits right as Jack returns to Twitter. Also, Jack published a reference to the name Satoshi in March 2011, showing that it had been the first tweet ever made by his best friend & love interest (Crystal Taylor) on the beta version of Twitter.
Square: Was Jack too busy launching Square? The company was founded February 11, 2009 and didn’t launch until December 2009. Coincidentally, Satoshi complained about being too busy with work during the same time period.
June 14, 2009 – Satoshi Nakamoto: “Thanks, I’ve been really busy lately.”
July 21, 2009 – Satoshi Nakamoto: “I’m not going to be much help right now either, pretty busy with work, and need a break from it after 18 months development.”
May 16, 2010 – Satoshi Nakamoto: “I’ve also been busy with other things for the last month and a half. I just now downloaded my e-mail since the beginning of April. I mostly have things sorted and should be back to Bitcoin shortly.”
July 8, 2010 – Satoshi Nakamoto: “I’m losing my mind there are so many things that need to be done.”
August 27, 2010 – Satoshi Nakamoto: “Sorry, I’ve been so busy lately I’ve been skimming messages and I still can’t keep up.”
April 23, 2011 – Satoshi Nakamoto: “I’ve moved on to other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone.”
So if Lopp’s argument is that Jack would’ve been really busy with launching Square then Satoshi complaining about being really busy during the same time period actually reinforces the plausibility of it being Jack.
Lopp: “Jack Dorsey worked with the US Federal Government to visit several countries (Iraq, Mexico, Russia) on behalf of the US tech industry. Does anyone truly believe that Satoshi Nakamoto, who was extremely wary of gaining attention from governments, would be working directly with them?”
Counter: A lot of people truly believe Satoshi worked with the government or was the government. The characterization that Satoshi was “extremely wary of gaining attention from governments” is not based on anything, unless he was referring to the incident in which Satoshi advised people not to donate Bitcoins to WikiLeaks. That incident ironically makes it more plausible that Satoshi was Jack Dorsey because Twitter received a secret court order regarding WikiLeaks (December 14, 2010) a day apart from Satoshi’s last activity on the Bitcoin forum (December 13, 2010). Square was also courting a relationship with Visa, which had made it a policy to restrict funds to WikiLeaks. The Square / Visa partnership was announced on April 27, 2011, four days after Satoshi’s last farewell email.
Lopp: “The first version of the Bitcoin software was Windows only, meaning that Satoshi developed it on Windows. I’m sure Jack used Windows at some point in his life, but he has been a die-hard Apple fan ever since the original iPhone came out. You can find many posts where he refers to various Apple devices he uses. I personally recall speaking with him several years ago and learning that he doesn’t even use laptops or desktops, but sticks to iPhones and iPads. It appears that may have even been true back in 2010. While reading through his 6,200 tweets I saw many referencing Apple products but none regarding Microsoft or Windows.”
Counter: Windows had a 95% share of the entire desktop OS market in 2009. No serious developer that was planning to appeal to mainstream desktop users would’ve developed for anything other than Windows even if they were a “die-hard Apple fan.” Regardless, Jack used Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Blackberry OS, and several flavors of Linux including Gentoo.
Lopp: “I think the best we can do is to show that the person was out and about doing things while Satoshi was known to be sitting at a keyboard.”
Counter: Lopp assumed that posting comments to the internet in 2009 and 2010 required one to be “sitting at a keyboard” despite Jack being a prolific Blackberry user (since at least the year 2000) and later an iPhone user.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because on November 6, 2009 Jack tweeted “Late lunch with @fredwilson” and 5 minutes after that, Satoshi committed code to the Bitcoin SourceForge repository. I’m not sure what this is supposed to imply. Is it not possible that Jack was going to have a late lunch with Fred Wilson but committed code before heading out to do that? Lopp makes the assumption that Jack has to be sitting at the table with Wilson when the tweet is sent for this supposed conflict to be true. Lopp forcing whatever narrow meaning he wanted to tweets to fit his narrative and making the additional assumption that Jack could not post from a smart phone to the internet under the Satoshi name are the basis for his entire rebuttal. Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because on November 27, 2009 Jack tweeted that he was furniture shopping with Alyssa Milano and that 35 minutes prior to that Satoshi posted to the forum. Not sure what this is supposed to imply. Satoshi can’t post to a forum and then go shopping? Have people never posted to a forum and then gone somewhere afterwards? Would it not be possible for Satoshi to post to a forum from a phone even if it means he did it while shopping? Ironically, I’ve posted previously about the possibility of Alyssa Milano specifically being in on the Satoshi secret. Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because on December 9, 2009, Jack tweeted that he was walking to meet the Mayor of Paris at City Hall (in Paris) and then 18 minutes later Satoshi posted to the forum. Lopp presumes that Jack was not capable of posting to an online forum while waiting at City Hall to begin the meeting. When did the meeting start? How long did he wait? People post online while they sit and wait for meetings. I have personally sat in government buildings and waited for meetings with officials and passed the time by posting to forums. Why is this considered to be impossible? Answering emails and posts is and was a commonplace thing to pass the time. Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because he attended a long company meeting on February 26 that ended at 10pm and Satoshi made posts on the forum at 6:17pm and 6:48pm. Okay? He couldn’t have posted before the long meeting? Pretty weak. Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because on May 20, 2010, Jack tweeted that he was in a car with his brother to go out to dinner with his family and 10 minutes later Satoshi posted to the forum. Was it Jack driving or his brother? Because if it’s his brother, then Jack can post from his phone to the forum while they’re driving. But if it’s Jack driving, then how is he also tweeting? Hmmmm…. Or did they get to the restaurant already and they are waiting and Jack is posting to the forum from the restaurant. I’m still lost on why Jack couldn’t post to a forum from his phone. Why are these things conflicts again? I myself was posting to forums from my phone in 2010. Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because on May 26, 2010 he tweeted that he was headed to meet Senator Cory Booker at 5:01pm and Satoshi posted to the forum at 5:16pm (with a file attached) and again at 5:34pm. Booker tweets at 7:32pm that he had just met Jack and Jack tweeted at 7:45pm that he had just met Booker. It seems like they actually met late then, perhaps around 7pm. Not sure why it’s considered impossible for Jack to say that he’s headed to a meeting and subsequently post to a forum (with an attachment) before actually being in the meeting itself, which doesn’t appear to have taken place for a while. Maybe Jack left later than he said he was leaving or maybe Jack got there and ended up waiting around for a very long time before the meeting and played on his phone and posted to the forum as people do when they’re bored. Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because on Saturday, July 10, 2010, Jack tweeted at 6:17am local time that he was getting ready to go on stage and present Square, followed by Satoshi posting four sentences to the forum at 6:36am local time, followed by Jack tweeting “Boom.” at 6:45am. (The screenshots says 9:17 and 9:45 respectively because they show my timezone) Lopp presumes that “getting ready” means that the presentation, which he believes to be at Square’s headquarters, was starting within minutes or seconds of that first tweet and that the subsequent tweet of “Boom” meant it was over. Satoshi posting in between these times therefore makes it impossible to be Jack.
This presentation was taking place at the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho, an invite-only event for major tech moguls. Jack was even at the Sun Valley on Ice show that evening. There is no evidence I have seen to suggest that “Boom” meant he had finished giving his presentation but Lopp needs us to believe that in order to create a conflict in the timeline to support his argument. Not very good.
Lopp points to the fact that Satoshi posted to the forum precisely during the short window that Jack was meeting with the President of Chile in Santiago on July 14, 2010. Satoshi posted at 9:10pm UTC time on the forum which would have been 5:10pm in Santiago.
Jack:
(1) says at 3:36pm that he’s on the way to meet him and that they will spend an hour together
(2) suggests that their meeting was already over by 5:03pm.
At 4:10pm a tweet goes out from the President’s account about their meeting. It does not confirm they are actually together yet even if it implies they are.
Satoshi posts to the forum at 4:25pm.
Jack signals the meeting is over with a tweet at 5:03. Satoshi posts at 5:10pm local time. While narrowly outside the perceived window, it is outside of it, and we don’t know when the meeting actually ended. It could have been over at 4:45, for example. A tweet at 5:03 doesn’t mean it ended at exactly 5:03.
It is well documented that Jack and the President met but it is not known for precisely how long. It could have been 10 minutes as these are how these things go, particularly with important figures like a head of state. Lopp takes the hour at face value and combines it with his belief that Satoshi did not have access to a cell phone in order to make his debunking work. Besides, couldn’t Jack have typed up his forum post prior to the meeting and then finally posted it after the meeting? Not good enough
On July 21, 2010, Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because Jack was at an Apple Store in Chicago where his company was hosting a demo of Square starting at 12 noon all while the forum shows that Satoshi posted at 11:07am and 12:31pm local time that same day. I’m not sure why Satoshi being in a computer store would imply it would be impossible to post a message from a computer or from a phone. The more substantive post of the two that Lopp relied upon was the one that was made an hour before the demo. For this to be a conflict, it would require Jack to literally be doing a Square demo himself during the exact minute of 12:31 when Satoshi posted. Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because on July 28, 2010, Jack was attending a baseball game while Satoshi was posting on the 28th. Unfortunately Lopp got the dates wrong. Jack was at the baseball game on the 27th, not the 28th, as evidenced by the 9:19pm PT tweet on July 27, 2010 that he uses as his evidence.
Lopp misread the dates.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because he tweeted on August 14, 2010 that he was walking to meet with Scott Harrison for lunch and that an hour and 18 minutes later Satoshi posted two sentences on the forum that he had solved an issue with compiling the Bitcoin software. Ok? Which means what? Which means we have to presume that Satoshi had been busy doing this work exactly during the lunch time window and then rushed to post about it immediately to the forum? Satoshi couldn’t have solved it earlier and then posted it on the forum later when he got around to it like right after a lunch meeting? Not very good.
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because he tweeted on August 22, 2010 at 4:25pm that he was listening to music while on the highway when Satoshi posted to the forum at 3:51pm, 4:01pm, 4:21pm, 4:55pm, and 4:57pm local time. I like this one to Lopp’s credit because there’s a link in Jack’s tweet to a purported photo of Jack behind the wheel looking out through the windshield. And so the argument here is that Jack can’t be posting to the forum because Jack is too busy driving! But we only know this because Jack is tweeting! And with a photo too? So if Jack is really driving, he is still apparently capable of taking a photo while driving and tweeting while driving, which hurts the case that he couldn’t also be capable of posting to the forum. Or there’s the possibility that someone else was actually driving and he was busy posting to the forum from his phone. Or… that Jack actually made that tweet about being on the highway hours or days after it actually happened. Or it never happened at all and it was online content for engagement or a dream of something nice. But if we give this one the benefit of the doubt and say Jack was really driving at that time, we can’t ignore that the evidence of him driving is a result of him playing on his phone while doing it. These “conflicts” are not very good at debunking Jack as Satoshi because they require leaps of the imagination
Lopp says that Jack can’t be Satoshi because he tweeted on September 19, 2010 that he walked 1,256 steps in the span of 425 minutes and that Satoshi posted to the forum twice during this time period and made a code commit. I did the math and it seems 1,256 steps is only 0.6 miles and 425 minutes is over 7 hours. This seems to actually support the theory of someone sitting around all day and builds on the case that Jack is Satoshi to make the code commit. Not very good and even supports Jack as Satoshi
Lopp: “I find the aggregate of all the evidence to provide so much doubt that a reasonable person would conclude that it’s far more likely that Satoshi was someone else.”
Counter: Try again.
Revenue Based Financing Continues to Spread at Global Pace
September 30, 2025
Earlier this month, Uber Eats joined the revenue-based financing movement by partnering with Pipe Capital.
Karl Hebert, Vice President of Global Commerce and Financial Services at Uber, said of it, “We are happy to team up with Pipe to bring working capital to Uber Eats. Restaurants are our partners at Uber, and the backbone of our communities, yet many struggle with access to capital.”
It’s an unsurprising step considering rival DoorDash rolled out a merchant cash advance program nearly four years ago, though Uber arguably began experimenting with MCAs nearly ten years ago. And Uber is hardly doing it just to do it. Uber, for example, rolled out Uber Eats Financing, a revenue based financing product in Mexico through a partnership with R2 this past January, which went so well that they also rolled it out in Chile months later.
📢 Announcing a big milestone for R2 & @Uber!
Following a successful launch in Mexico, we’ve expanded our partnership with Uber Eats to Chile — bringing frictionless access to capital to thousands of merchants across the region. https://t.co/61WgP1ZtHy
— Roger Larach (@rogerlarach) April 30, 2025
In Chile with R2, the service is described as taking place entirely within the Uber Eats Manager App with a 5-minute application process and payments made automatically and deducted by a fixed percentage from sales made using the platform.
In the US with Pipe, it says that the Uber Eats App Manager will show capital offers from Pipe that are customized based on restaurant revenue, cash flow, and business performance.
Uber joins Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, Intuit, Stripe, DoorDash, PayPal, Square, GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace and others in offering a revenue-based financing product.
Revenue-based financing as a product type is available in but not limited to the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, UK, Germany, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, Nigeria, India, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, and more.
American Fintech Council (AFC) Welcomes Acting Director of the CFPB Scott Bessent and Doubles Down on its Commitment to Champion Earned Wage Access (EWA) Through Federal and State Advocacy
February 3, 2025Washington, D.C. (February 3, 2025) – The American Fintech Council (AFC), the premier industry association representing responsible fintech companies, innovative banks, and the largest number of responsible Earned Wage Access (EWA) providers, is intensifying its efforts to ensure responsible EWA services remain accessible to American workers. Through federal engagement and testimony before eight state legislatures so far across the country, with two upcoming hearings in Nebraska and Utah, AFC is committed to supporting clear, pragmatic regulation for EWA to empower consumers and foster responsible innovation.
“Earned Wage Access is an essential financial tool for millions of American families, offering a safe and responsible alternative to the predatory credit products of the past,” said Phil Goldfeder, CEO of the American Fintech Council. “For generations, workers have been captive to an arbitrary pay period system that separates their work from their wages. EWA restores this connection, providing greater financial flexibility and stability for those who need it. AFC and responsible EWA providers are committed to establishing a regulatory framework that protects consumers and preserves access to EWA by recognizing that this product is not a loan, and should not be regulated as such.”
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also serves as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), AFC urged the pursuit of a formal rulemaking process that would allow consumers and industry participants to convey the nuances and benefits of responsible EWA products. AFC emphasized that responsible EWA providers offer a non-recourse, fee-transparent alternative to traditional credit products that helps workers access their earnings when needed, without late fees or penalties. AFC also highlighted the need for consistent federal regulation to address the patchwork of state laws that risk undermining the stability and availability of EWA services.
In a previous letter to the CFPB in February 2024, AFC asked for formal legislative rulemaking process, but the request went unheeded by then-Director Chopra. Instead, the CFPB issued a proposed informal interpretive rule, which discussed a novel and inaccurate interpretation of EWA and was never finalized. In addition, the CFPB rescinded its 2020 Advisory Opinion–the Bureau’s only official position on EWA–in the final moments of the previous administration, leaving industry participants without a clear understanding of the CFPB’s position.
In addition to federal advocacy, AFC representatives recently testified at hearings on EWA in Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, and Vermont, as well as two hearings in Washington state, with upcoming testimony in Nebraska and Utah, to speak about the consumer benefits of these offerings and the need to support responsible EWA practices. AFC will continue to monitor legislative and regulatory developments around EWA at the state level, and is prepared to engage collaboratively with any state considering guidance around this technology.
“A regulatory framework for Earned Wage Access must be grounded in a clear understanding of its role as an empowering tool for financial stability—not mischaracterized as traditional credit,” said Ian P. Moloney, SVP and Head of Policy and Regulatory Affairs at AFC. “EWA provides workers with immediate access to their hard-earned wages, helping them avoid the cycle of high-interest debt and predatory financial products. Misguided regulation risks sidelining this critical innovation, leaving millions of Americans without a safe, transparent alternative to address their financial needs. AFC is committed to ensuring that regulatory decisions are informed by facts and protect the unique consumer benefits EWA provides.”
A standards-based organization, AFC is the premier trade association representing the largest financial technology (Fintech) companies and innovative banks offering embedded finance solutions. AFC’s mission is to promote a transparent, inclusive, and customer-centric financial system by supporting responsible innovation in financial services and encouraging sound public policy. AFC members foster competition in consumer finance and pioneer products to better serve underserved consumer segments and geographies.
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Forget the Metaverse, I Bought Real Land
February 20, 2024
In 1958, developers purchased 82,000 acres of barren land that was situated a hundred miles north of Los Angeles with a plan to build a sprawling metropolis for 400,000 future residents. As it instantly became the third largest city in California by land area, they chose an appropriately symbolic name, California City. It was a flop from the start. Although powerful marketing led to the sale of 50,000 lots by the early 1970s, the city only had a population of 1,300 people by 1969. That was bad enough that the Federal Trade Commission intervened in 1972 and forced a settlement that allowed thousands of landowners to get refunds. California City held on, however, and it’s now home to nearly 15,000 residents. It even has its own airport. But still, what it has become is still remarkably short of the original vision.
All of this history was something I breezed through right before I impulsively clicked a button on my screen asking me to confirm my purchase for a lot there. One click. That’s apparently all it took to become the newest member of a potential future neighborhood in California City, one that might not ever come to fruition. But how I found it in the first place is the real story. It appears that in the modern era this sleepy desert outpost has become a bit of an experimental laboratory for something relatively new in the real estate world, converting properties into NFTs.
Here’s how it’s done. A landowner places their property into an individual trust and ownership of that trust is governed by whomever owns the corresponding NFT on Ethereum. In effect, the owner of the trust would be defined by their ugly hex address, like this one for example: 0x64233eAa064ef0d54ff1A963933D0D2d46ab5829. It’s actually quite basic and it’s all made possible by a “proptech” company called Fabrica.
Founded in 2018 and backed by investors like Mark Cuban and Zain Jaffer, properties tokenized by Fabrica “can be traded instantly, used as collateral and are compatible with all NFT platforms,” the company states. “The product automates sales transactions, facilitating title transfer, payments and regulatory compliance.” Fabrica facilitates the on-ramping of your land into an NFT and even provides its own marketplace for buyers and sellers. That’s where I got mine. Interested parties can read up on a property’s on-chain history and even check the title. There’s also a cool little Google Earth-like animation that flies the user to their specific plot of land. The experience feels a lot like buying a plot of virtual land in a video game or the metaverse except this land is real. That means that sleek little NFT in your digital wallet comes with real responsibilities like property taxes, which Fabrica works to keep the owner informed about. It also means any and all liabilities of property ownership. The upside is that you can go and visit it in real life and even develop it. You can’t do that in a video game.
Although I’ve counted six properties in California City that are immediately identifiable as NFTs, it’s hardly the only place in the United States where this is being done. Properties available for sale as NFTs as of this writing include locations across Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, San Bernardino-CA, and even Orange, New York. Some are very remote and speculative, while others are a part of normal civilization and priced accordingly. Buyer beware of course given the serious nature of these assets.
Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to understanding how this is all possible is the widespread misconception of what NFTs are. Most of the American population lives under the mistaken impression that NFTs are cartoon art pictures like Bored Apes or CryptoPunks that were all the rage in 2021 and to some extent are still popular in niche circles, but almost anything can be tokenized. More recently, for example, domain names are being converted into NFTs to facilitate faster sales and quicker payouts. The same is true now here with land. Not only can land ownership change hands in the blink of an eye by transferring the NFT but one can also easily tap into the value by pledging it on a peer-to-peer NFT loan marketplace like NFTfi. Fabrica officially announced a partnership with NFTfi this past December, for example. The possibilities are endless
For the perpetual skeptics of all things blockchain that are convinced real business will only ever be done in the real world, a visualization of an NFT on a crypto wallet app might not be all that convincing, especially if the icon for it is situated right next to one of those expensive monkey pictures that kids wouldn’t shut up about years ago. The proof then is in the adventure. With a drive of less than two hours from Downtown Los Angeles, there’s a little plot of land on a quiet street known as Yerba Boulevard. It’s covered in weeds and reddish soil. Empty plains make up most of the backdrop but the suburbs are very slowly creeping their way there. In fact, I’ve since learned who my neighbor is across the street. It’s a 26,000 square foot cannabis facility that was just built in 2022. I bet the owners would be into NFTs (😂). Since that facility is up for sale, numerous 3D surrounding views exist of my plot. Turns out I can even walk to the airport. It’s not much but it’s home to me and all I could afford for the purpose of this story and learning what it was all about. Maybe those 400,000 planned residents will eventually want my land and it’ll make me a millionaire. Ah the allure of California City.
Is Your Big Brand a Bank? You Can Turn it into One
August 16, 2022
“Any entity that has employees, customers, and fans can create a banking infrastructure that looks just like a bank,” said Yuval Brisker, Co-founder and CEO of Alviere. Founded in 2020 as a spinoff of Brisker’s previous firm, Mezu, Alviere is ringing in the next generation of fintech through its embedded finance solutions.
Brisker wasn’t talking about turning the corner diner into a bank, but rather about providing the infrastructure to enable the largest companies and brands in the US to be one-stop shops for financial services, including banking.
“[It could look] like a bank in every sense,” he said, “FDIC insured, providing a savings account with yield, being able to ultimately give them a credit card, that is not a co-branded credit card, but it’s a single brand…”
Alviere has already spent loads of time dealing with the hard parts, building the tech, but also navigating the regulatory framework to make this concept a reality.
“We are a 100% regulated entity, meaning we’re not piggybacking on a banking license,” Brisker said. “We are actually licensed across the United States in every state that takes a license (except Montana). We are licensed with the federal government in Canada and Quebec and in the English speaking provinces, we’re in the process of completing our licensing in Mexico, and in Europe and in the UK.”
Brisker says this proactive approach is a “big differentiator” against the competition because they really want to provide the full services end-to-end. And that’s a big range given that it spans from bank accounts to payments to cards to cryptocurrency.
In making this possible, partnerships are key. Alviere has multiple bank partners across the globe, the company claims, one among them being Community Federal Savings Bank in the US. Alviere even solidified a deal with Coinbase back in March that enables brands to provide crypto services to their customers all through their own branded technology.
Retail customers might not ever know the name Alviere because they remain in the background, Brisker explained. The brands would, but the customers would only see themselves interfacing with the brand, which is basically the whole point.
“We tell [brands] those customers will never be our customers,” Brisker said. “We’re never going to take over the customer relationship.”
Larger companies have probably entertained this whole idea at some point already, according to Brisker. The potential to capitalize on a loyal customer base by trying to offer them financial services is increasingly being looked at.
“If you’re one of those companies and you also look at the same time how difficult it is to get into this business, both from a regulation, an ecosystem, and a technological point of view, then you’re probably putting that on your back burner and saving this for another day,” he said. Alviere, however, can make this a reality right now.
“We have all the contracts, we have all the relationships, you just need to have one point of contact, one API, one relationship, one contract, and that’s us,” Brisker said. “And we take care of everything else.”
But perhaps it’s all a big bet, because would customers actually use financial services offered through non-bank brands that they’re fans of otherwise? Technically, they already are.
When Alviere launched two years ago, more than 1 out of every 2 Americans had already used a Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) service, an embedded financial concept that’s taken off around the world. BNPL sales amounted to $100 billion in 2021 in the US alone.
“We believe that there’s a huge opportunity for more traditional beloved and essential brands to become the financial service providers for [people] coming of age,” Brisker said. “And then of course there’s a huge unbanked population that for whatever reason has not entered the financial system here and abroad, which we think that through the affinity with sort of less foreboding, less anxiety, stress-ridden relationships like some people have toward banks that they will be more inclined to come into the financial system through the back door of the system, the front door of the brands they already know and patronize.”
Business Funding in Mexico... the canadian market is very well established but next up is mexico, a country with a much larger population than canada... |
See Post... mexico is bringing rapists here" and , , "the concept of global warming was created by and for the chinese in order to make u.s. manufacturing non-competitive." or , , "crazy joe biden is trying to act like a tough guy. actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. he doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. don’t threaten people joe!" or , , "if the morons who killed all of those people at charlie hebdo would have just waited, the magazine would have folded - no money, no success!", , do y... |
See Post... mexico to save money. he inherited (from obama) a decent economy and takes credit for that, and, dismisses covid as a real problem and the worst civil unrest is going on due to the far right and left in a war of political tension. if the only reason your voting for potus is corporate tax hikes, that doesn't help the majority of america. and let's not forget, with the house (dem) and senate (gop) any bill that is potential, has to pass both sides which rarely do. dems are looking to sweep this election with senate, house and, presidency. lets see what happens n... |
See Post... mexico to save money. he inherited (from obama) a decent economy and takes credit for that, and, dismisses covid as a real problem and the worst civil unrest is going on due to the far right and left in a war of political tension. if the only reason your voting for potus is corporate tax hikes, that doesn't help the majority of america. and let's not forget, with the house (dem) and senate (gop) any bill that is potential, has to pass both sides which rarely do. dems are looking to sweep this election with senate, house and, presidency. lets see what happens n... |
