Why revisit celebrity fintech history

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined again by Carlos Caro (author of the Free Toaster newsletter and host of the Free Toaster podcast) to continue the conversation we started on Carlos’s podcast about MrBeast's acquisition of Step and what it means for the fintech ecosystem.

This episode picks up where we left off, by looking to the past. 

If you think you’ve found a new idea in financial services, you probably just haven’t done enough research yet. Celebrity fintech, especially fintech built for underserved consumers, is no exception. 

In this Part 2 episode, Carlos and I explore three celebrity-backed fintech products from the 2010s era that failed in ways worth understanding for the present: The Kardashian Kard, Justin Bieber's BillMyParents prepaid card, and The Approved Card from Suze Orman.

Across all three, similar questions keep popping up: 

• What happens when a celebrity brand collides with the realities of financial services economics? 

• How far can a celebrity brand take a product if the product itself doesn’t make sense for consumers? 

• How much does product-market fit matter if the fee structure feels exploitative? 

• And what can MrBeast learn from the celebrities who tried this before?

Tune in for a tour through recent fintech history as we dust off a few forgotten celebrity card experiments from the sands of time, and wonder whether a celebrity brand can succeed in financial services without repeating the same mistakes.

This episode is brought to you by Plaid. 

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