Fintech One-On-One

Good financial habits should be formed before adulthood. Unfortunately, most schools still don't spend much time teaching this kind of thing. But the good news is that there are new tools out there today that make it easy for kids to not just learn good habits but to understand what it means to be financially healthy. And how you reach teenagers today is through the phone. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is CJ MacDonald, the CEO and Co-Founder of Step. Today, Step provides a bank account for teens but, as you will discover in this interview, their goal is so much more than that. As the parent of teenagers this episode is personal for me.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

While the media focuses on the unicorns and the massive funding rounds happening in fintech today, there are so many interesting early-stage companies that are often overlooked. The newsletter, This Week in Fintech, has one of the most extensive lists of fintech funding rounds, often reporting on companies that have raised less than a million dollars. Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Nik Milanovic, the founder of This Week in Fintech and the general partner of The Fintech Fund I. He has become one of the leading voices covering fintech and his meetups are bringing together fintech enthusiasts in cities all over the world. Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

It was another busy news week in fintech and we discussed it all on the LendIt Fintech Weekly News show, today with Todd Anderson, Andrew Dix, and me. Making news today was Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, FTX, Ramp, Amount, Linear Financial Technologies, Upgrade, Inc., Block, Afterpay, PayPal, TD and more.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

For digital assets like bitcoin to go truly mainstream they need to have onramps through banks. People trust banks with their money and if their own bank is offering crypto trading in a seamless way many more millions of people will join the crypto revolution. But for banks to be able to offer this they need sophisticated infrastructure, which is where our guest today comes in. Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Patrick Sells, the Chief Innovation Officer of NYDIG. They are building the technology to allow any bank, credit union or fintech to offer bitcoin to their customers and they are really starting to get some traction. Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

One of the many benefits that fintech has brought is the democratization of investing. What initially attracted me to fintech was the ability to invest in consumer loans through LendingClub, an asset class previously unavailable to individual investors. Another asset class that has been unavailable to regular investors is collectibles. Want to invest in a classic car, rare baseball cards, books, coins or wine? You typically had to be wealthy.   Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is George Leimer, the CEO of Rally. With Rally you can buy and sell shares in a wide range of collectible assets. With low minimums and no accredited investor requirements, they really are democratizing investing in a new way.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Making news this week were Walmart (along with Even and ONE Finance), Silvergate Bank, Diem Association, Apple, UBS, Wealthfront, Experian, Plaid, the SEC, LendingClub and more.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

The franchise industry is unique. While the franchisees are often small businesses run by entrepreneurs, the franchisors they work with can be large businesses. It is an unusual space to underwrite when it comes to small business loans, so it requires unique expertise to do well. Our next guest of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast is Denise Thomas, the CEO and Co-Founder of ApplePie Capital, they are specialists in franchise financing. We last had Denise on the show five years ago and I wanted to get her back on to see how the franchise industry has been doing and how her business has evolved. Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

The auto finance market is such a unique space. In some ways it has a lot in common with home finance, it is an asset-backed loan after all, but it also seems to be a far less mature market when it comes to fintech disruption. That is starting to change, thankfully, because there are likely tens of millions of people who are overpaying for their auto loans today. My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Kevin Bennett, the CEO of Caribou (formerly called MotoRefi). Caribou is tackling two problems at the same time. One around awareness of the very concept of auto refinancing and two, saving people money on their car payments as well as other car expenses. Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

This week on the News Show we discussed big news from SoFi, NYDIG, Ron Shevlin, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Crypto.com, Meta, Coinbase, Truist, Russia and more.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes

Embedded finance is one of those fintech terms that gets thrown around a lot. But the reason this trend has real traction is because there are huge benefits for the end-user when finance operates in this embedded fashion. One of the very earliest proponents of embedded finance was DriveWealth, having started in 2012. Our next guest on the Fintech One-on-One Podcast is Bob Cortright. He is the CEO and founder of DriveWealth, the platform for embedding brokerage infrastructure. Their most common use case today is helping any company enable fractional stock market trading in U.S. equities but the platform has potential far beyond that. Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes