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Will Stripe buy PayPal?
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A Bloomberg report about a possible Stripe acquisition of PayPal has spurred intense discussion in the fintech industry. After all, Stripe is the digital payment colossus of 2026, the most valuable private fintech firm in the world. PayPal once dominated the online payment processing market, but not anymore. Any conversation about the digital payments pioneer…
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Klarna fights an uphill battle with investors
Swedish payments giant, sometimes bank and stablecoin issuer Klarna is learning that it’s a lot harder being a listed fintech firm than a unicorn whose eye-popping valuation is decided by private investors who cannot resist hitting the inflate button. The aura of invincibility enjoyed by erstwhile unicorns like Klarna dissipates pretty quickly after an IPO “pops” and…
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Why Swift Is Still The Global Payments Hegemon
Many a well-funded fintech upstart has burst onto the scene with the intention of challenging the dominance of the Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) payments network. The Belgium-based interbank messaging network is and continues to be a convenient poster child for the woes of traditional correspondent banking. Yet disrupting the organization has proven,…
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Why most Australian neobanks have failed or been bought
In many countries, neobanks are thriving. Australia is not one of them. In fact, we would say Oz is where neobanks go to die. If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider this: Just one major native digital Australian lender has survived for a decade. That would be Judo Bank. More on Judo in a moment.…
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Why Google Fintech Is A Bigger Success Than Meta
Google and Meta are both Web 2.0 giants that are among the largest companies in the world by market capitalization. Google dominates search globally outside of China, while Meta – including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – has a huge share of social media platforms ex-China. One area in which the two tech juggernauts differ sharply…
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Why the UAE is a better crypto hub than Hong Kong
We still remember clearly when Hong Kong abruptly decided it wanted to be a cryptocurrency hub. It was late 2022, and the city, reeling from Covid-19 restrictions, needed to get its mojo back as quickly as possible. The timing was almost comical, coinciding neatly with FTX’s dramatic implosion. Almost 3 ½ years later, Hong Kong’s…
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Grab doubles down on fintech
Singaporean super app Grab reached its first full year of profitability in 2025, posting US$200 million in net income. For a company once best known for burning cash in a race to the bottom against Uber and later GoTo, this is an important milestone—even if investors remain skittish: Grab’s stock has fallen 22% over the…
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The Return of Bank Balance Sheets in Fintech Strategy
For most of the last decade, fintech liked to pretend the balance sheet was optional. You could build beautiful software, acquire customers cheaply (until you couldn’t), and “partner” your way around the messy parts like funding, liquidity, capital, and regulatory accountability. Banks, for their part, were happy to play utility: hold the deposits, originate the…
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TRM Labs hits $1 billion valuation
Crypto crime fighting has become a big business out of necessity. In 2025, over $3.4 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen. About $1.5 billion was attributed to the February 2025 hack of the Bybit exchange, while hacks targeting individuals also rose to over $700 million. North Korea is responsible for the majority of stolen crypto funds.…
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Is Revolut’s rise unstoppable?
Since its inception, Revolut has had a sweeping global vision. Not always a realistic one—as seen by its negligible presence in China and regulatory struggles in India—but almost always more ambitious than its competitors. After all, what other fintech startup is valued at US$75 billion, has 70 million users, and purports to be building the world’s…
