Re Amazon's acquisition in India. I agree with your take it's opportunistic and not geared for expansion in other regions. As we have seen with other hyper-scalers they have developed really neat payment capabilities on local payment rails and contained the products in India. I am guessing one major reason is because they have a completely separate tech stack just for India.
Re Ramp into Treasury. Very interesting to see how QUICKLY they have evolved from corporate expense cards into "Financial Operations Platform". I wonder if this is organic product growth or...trying to fill out their $7.6B valuation...
Re HSBC: LinkedIn was blowing up about the Zing shut down however I didn't see anything about the CEO shutting down its lucrative investment banking businesses in key markets when 2025+ is projected to be a year of deal-making. I am guessing the board's mandate to the new CEO is follow what Citi did under Jane F. - trim the global bank and exit biz where it can't be the top3...
Re HighNote: Nice series B raise and nearly a unicorn in EmFi: "Highnote hit $81 million in annualized gross revenue by the end of last year, although it is not yet profitable"..."141 employees"..."24+ customers"...
Two things I found interesting : (1) they started Issuing before Acquiring since the co-founders are both from Braintree; which didn't do any issuing. and (2) It was just last quarter when "Finix raises $75M to take on Stripe as a payment processor..." Ummnnn...what's with fintechs raising to take on Acquiring?
On Amazon, it’s fascinating how different their FS approach is compared to the centralised, standardised playbooks they employ elsewhere. Just imagine the significance this would have had if they had acquired a US lender. It’ll be intriguing to see how this plays out in high-growth fintech markets across Asia -suggests to me they could be thinking really differently about the region re FS.
Regarding Ramp, I sense a bit of “what next?” at play; however, it also serves as an excellent example of why having the right wedge is crucial—wallets to workflows in action.
Indeed, the Highnote raise caught my eye as well (obviously). Furthermore, I think there's a valuation uplift linked to surviving the BaaS purge of 2023/24. As a side note, it's actually a really impressive product with a competent team behind it. Which, as we've seen, isn't always the case in BaaS land.
Re Amazon's acquisition in India. I agree with your take it's opportunistic and not geared for expansion in other regions. As we have seen with other hyper-scalers they have developed really neat payment capabilities on local payment rails and contained the products in India. I am guessing one major reason is because they have a completely separate tech stack just for India.
Re Ramp into Treasury. Very interesting to see how QUICKLY they have evolved from corporate expense cards into "Financial Operations Platform". I wonder if this is organic product growth or...trying to fill out their $7.6B valuation...
Re HSBC: LinkedIn was blowing up about the Zing shut down however I didn't see anything about the CEO shutting down its lucrative investment banking businesses in key markets when 2025+ is projected to be a year of deal-making. I am guessing the board's mandate to the new CEO is follow what Citi did under Jane F. - trim the global bank and exit biz where it can't be the top3...
Re HighNote: Nice series B raise and nearly a unicorn in EmFi: "Highnote hit $81 million in annualized gross revenue by the end of last year, although it is not yet profitable"..."141 employees"..."24+ customers"...
Two things I found interesting : (1) they started Issuing before Acquiring since the co-founders are both from Braintree; which didn't do any issuing. and (2) It was just last quarter when "Finix raises $75M to take on Stripe as a payment processor..." Ummnnn...what's with fintechs raising to take on Acquiring?
I agree with so much here.
On Amazon, it’s fascinating how different their FS approach is compared to the centralised, standardised playbooks they employ elsewhere. Just imagine the significance this would have had if they had acquired a US lender. It’ll be intriguing to see how this plays out in high-growth fintech markets across Asia -suggests to me they could be thinking really differently about the region re FS.
Regarding Ramp, I sense a bit of “what next?” at play; however, it also serves as an excellent example of why having the right wedge is crucial—wallets to workflows in action.
Indeed, the Highnote raise caught my eye as well (obviously). Furthermore, I think there's a valuation uplift linked to surviving the BaaS purge of 2023/24. As a side note, it's actually a really impressive product with a competent team behind it. Which, as we've seen, isn't always the case in BaaS land.