Issue #108: Goldman Sachs Continues Its Retreat From Consumer Fintech, Stripe Re-enters Crypto Payments, And Walmart Pushes Further Into BNPL
👋 Hi all, I hope you’ve had a great week.
A big shout-out to our loyal subscribers and a hearty welcome to the new faces — we're ecstatic to have you here!
If you’re new to Fintech Radar, this is what you can expect from each issue:
A curated round-up of the most interesting and relevant news from the world of fintech. In each issue, I focus on what caught my eye from the previous week — so don’t expect a weekly smorgasbord of press releases and partnership announcements. The aim is to serve the meaty bits in a neat, nibble-worthy package. It's all about spotlighting the head-turners and giving you the nitty-gritty without the fluff.
Also, if you enjoy this issue, please share it with a friend. I’m sure they'll appreciate it!
As always, it’s been a busy week for fintech, so without further ado, let's delve into the major happenings from last week.
📣 The News Grab Bag
⤷ Goldman Sachs offloads Marcus robo-advisor customers to Betterment
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Goldman Sachs has sold its Marcus Invest offering to Betterment, marking its continued shift away from consumer banking. Betterment will take on an undisclosed number of Marcus Invest customers in late June as part of the deal.
Goldman's retreat from the consumer market includes offloading Marcus and seeking to exit its credit card deal with Apple. Despite this, Goldman remains committed to growing the Marcus Deposits platform, serving over three million customers with $100b in deposits.
🥡 Takeaway: You may recall when Goldman Sachs entered the world of fintech with its Marcus product. It was a success, and they quickly gained traction with their savings product in the US and UK. After just five years, Marcus had accumulated $100b in deposits. Along the way, they’d also beat out other banks to partner with Apple to offer a savings and card product and built a partnership with GM to be their credit card issuer.
By 2020, it seemed GS had successfully gone from Wall Street to the high street with their foray into fintech. But over the next two years, that quickly changed as the Street scrutinised the ZIRP era playbook GS had used, like offering sweetheart deals to partners like Apple and high-yield savings accounts.
Since then, they’ve divested from their Greensky acquisition, are rumoured to be looking to get out of their Apple Card deal and are now moving on from their robo-advisory business.
It turns out that building an unsustainable business always catches up with you, and eventually, the bill comes due. In many ways, the playbook GS ran was straight out of the 2020-era fintech consumer boom, but as many startups have pivoted to getting lean and profitable, GS has chosen to scuttle the business to go back to advisory work. It’ll be interesting to see how long before they fully pull the pin on the Marcus brand. Personally, I can’t see it lasting beyond this year.
⤷ Visa launches open banking with Tink in the US
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Visa is entering the open banking segment in the US through Tink, which it acquired for €1.8b back in March 2022. The service allows users to share financial data securely with trusted parties.
According to the article, the US launch includes data access agreements with major banks and fintechs. Users will be able to access financial data through a single console, including account confirmation, real-time balance checks, and transaction data from various US banks.
🥡 Takeaway: Despite the now-infamous failed acquisition of Plaid, Visa hasn’t given up on its aspirations to be a player in Open Banking. Now, almost three years after the acquisition of Tink, they’re launching their Open Banking product in the US.
In previous issues of FR, I’ve discussed why Open Banking for card schemes is less about a pure data play and more about positioning themselves in the PIS payments space. For example, like many others with roots in the EU Open Banking ecosystem, Tink has been developing its payment capabilities by partnering with the likes of Adyen on A2A payments.
With its expansion into the US, keep an eye on Tink developing its A2A payment functionality as it looks to build a book of business in this super hot payments segment.
⤷ Stripe Re-Enters Crypto Payments With USDC on Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Stripe announced that it plans to re-enter the cryptocurrency payments space by incorporating USDC stablecoins on the Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana blockchains.
Co-founder John Collison unveiled this move at their developer conference last week and noted it was designed to enhance customer flexibility and user experience. As the article notes, Stripe's strategic re-entry aligns with a trend we’ve seen as other payment platforms like Triple-A, based in Singapore, integrate stablecoins, such as PayPal's PYUSD.
🥡 Takeaway: Well, well, well, looks who’s come crawling back to crypto? After being one of the first movers in the pay-by-crypto space and an early backer of Stellar (remember that?), Stripe is back at it; this time, it’s focused on the stablecoins.
I assume part of the story here is that Stripe is now well and truly big enough to work with its banking partners (read as, tell them) to offer what has traditionally been a no-go zone for PSPs.
The tide on crypto payments has changed in recent years, and this feature could be one that gains more momentum with PSPs —especially as the market warms up again and demand rises from crypto degens.
Personally, I’m fascinated to see if this is something Stripe is committed to or just another fleeting flirtation with crypto.
⤷ Klarna strikes global payment deal with Uber
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Klarna has partnered with Uber globally, offering users immediate or deferred payment options for taxi and food delivery services in the US, Germany, and Sweden. The Pay Now feature enables instant full payments with a click through the Uber app.
🥡 Takeaway: At this point, reporting on BNPL players partnering with direct-to-consumer retailers is passé, as there seems to be a new partnership announced daily.
I still think it’s under-discussed that what was once a niche payment method is now ubiquitous, and all in under five years. Regardless of what you think about BNPL, it’s hard to deny its increasing popularity as a payment method in every market. At this point, nearly every retailer (and even rideshare platforms) is dropping it into their product.
It’s easy to pass this story off as “Uber added another payment method” to its app. However, I think it’s quite telling. Companies like Uber are hyper-sensitive when it comes to creating needless complexity in their apps — more payment methods aren’t necessarily a good thing. However, with BNPL at an all-time high in terms of usage, it seems they’ve decided it’s now a must-have as a payment method.
⤷ Walmart-backed fintech One introduces buy now, pay later as it prepares bigger push into lending
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Walmart-backed fintech startup One has launched buy now, pay later (BNPL) loans in over 4,600 U.S. stores, directly competing with Affirm. One aims to be a comprehensive financial super app, challenging traditional banks. The company, led by CEO Omer Ismail (formerly of Marcus), is trying to become a mobile one-stop shop for saving, spending, and borrowing.
🥡 Takeaway: Similar to my thoughts regarding Uber offering BNPL, this feels like a similar signal about how important it’s becoming as a payment method to brick-and-mortar retailers in the US.
My guess is Walmart is seeing BNPL's popularity through its partnership with Affirm for IRL shopping and wants to bring the payment opportunity a little closer to home via One, a company it’s an investor in.
Don’t forget Walmart is a super astute player in financial services. As the article notes, they’ve tried their hand at obtaining a banking license and have a constellation of financial services partnerships. In other words, if they’re moving to One for BNPL, there’s a reason and some strong data to support the move.

💸 Notable Funding Announcements
Last week was a busy one for fintech financing announcements, with 56 funding rounds completed and companies collectively securing $732m in investment.
⤷ ‘Send now, pay later’ startup Pomelo lands $35M Series A from secretive Vy Capital, Founders Fund
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Pomelo, a 'send now, pay later' startup merging international money transfer with credit, secured a $35m Series A funding round led by Vy Capital and Founders Fund. The company also revealed they’d expanded their warehouse facility by $75m.
Pomelo operates on a credit card-based remittance model, partnering with Mastercard for a "send now, pay later" service. The startup, founded in 2022, has added new payment options like GCash for Filipino users. With plans to enter Mexico next, Pomelo aims to utilise the fresh capital for product and market expansion.
🥡 Takeaway: Apologies, I promise I’m not trying to turn this into an issue of ‘BNPL Radar’. But having worked on remittance products this one caught my eye.
Specifically, the description of the product piqued my interest. Generally, remittance players stay clear of offering credit cards as a pay-in method, and if they do offer it, the fees attached are sky-high. This is partly due to the associated cost of providing it and the chargeback risk.
What is interesting to note about Pomelo is that they’re using a card rail on the disbursement side as well — likely reducing their payout cost when it hits the recipient. My guess is this makes up for the pay-in cost, and they’re also likely hoping to make their money on the lending side.
It’s a clever construct for a remittance offering but one that has a lot of moving parts to get right. They need to get everything from underwriting through to ensuring they choose the correct markets for the offering — which is a more acute challenge compared to a standard remittance product due to the fact that not every market that has a remittance need being card friendly.
It’s one well worth keeping an eye on because if they get it right and prove the model, I’m sure many more will cut and paste it into their offering.
⤷ A $50M investment in the future of Givebutter
🏃♂️ The Rundown: Givebutter, a nonprofit fundraising and CRM platform, announced last week that it had secured a $50m investment from Bessemer Venture Partners’ BVP Forge, with Ardent Venture Partners also participating.
The company offers tools like donation forms, campaigns, events, auctions, CRM, and more through a transparent fee model, serving over 35,000 nonprofits. The company has hit $1b in total donations on its platform and has hit profitability.
🥡 Takeaway: I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: vertical fintech is hot. In many ways, Givebutter is the quintessential example of why the vertical fintech model is such a powerful way to monetise customers. I’m sure they don’t think of themselves as a fintech, but with a pricing model that gives away the tools and charges for the transactions, it’s fair to say the fintech element matters to them — a lot.
As GiveButter shows, a platform that is all about generating revenue for its customers is incredibly well suited to just ditching the SaaS fees (i.e. reducing the friction to sign up) and focusing on taking a slice of the revenue they’re helping find its way into their customer’s coffers. In Givebutter’s case, this has translated into an implied lifetime revenue of ~$300m — not bad at all. In other words, hook them with the tools and take a slice of the revenue you generate.
🎧 Resources & Recommendations
⤷ Stripe Sessions 2024—The future of payments
Last week, ‘Stripe Sessions’ was held in SF. At the event, they made a slew of announcements (see above for the crypto one). Alongside the marketing, they also took time to chat with customers, VCs and others from startup land, which made for some interesting insights into what’s going on in payments.
Below is the session they held on “The future of payments”, which I thought was among the more interesting sessions they posted on their YouTube page.
Skip the announcements and jump 15 minutes in for the conversation with Alex Rampell, where he talks about Target’s Red card, and then go to minute 33, where Tom Aveston talks about Mindbody’s fintech journey.
⤷ Plaid's Path to Product-Market Fit
First Round Capital recently released an excellent series of videos on Product Market Fit as part of its upcoming PFM program.
The one linked below is an interview with Zach Perret, CEO of Plaid, on the company’s winding road to product market fit. It’s a great watch.
If you’re interested, the rest of the videos in the series can be found HERE.
❤️ Show Some Love For FR
📧 Feel free to reach out if you want to connect. I'm @alantsen on Twitter, or you can DM me directly by clicking the button below ↴
Ps. If you like what I'm doing with FR, please share it on your social disinformation network of choice. I'd also appreciate it if you forwarded this newsletter to a friend who might enjoy it.
🙏 What did you think of this week's issue of FR?
I love it! ◌ I Like It ◌ Not Bad ◌ I Don’t Like It ◌ It’s Awful