For small business owners, banks still have a long way to go: just 7% view their bank as a true strategic partner, according to Grasshopper Bank’s recent survey.
A major problem, says Grasshopper's Danielle Kane, is that many banks still see small-business banking as a product category rather than an operating environment with distinct needs.
For fintechs seeking U.S. bank charters, the OCC is asking: Do the management, capital, risk, and compliance infrastructure hold up? And is the institution ready to operate as a bank, not just alongside one?
The OCC may be widening the path to a charter, but it’s also raising the bar for proving readiness.
Pomeroy delivers on all three priorities set six months ago: near-universal tokenization adoption, PayPal's first omnichannel government deal, and Australia/Europe fully unified onto one global platform.
His remit expands into Payment Services & Crypto, merging enterprise and small-business processing with crypto's 600M wallets.
BILL is embedding AP payments directly into major ERP and payroll platforms, turning fragmented SMB finance stacks into one seamless workflow with an 8M-business network behind it.
New AI agents are slashing manual work in tax form collection and reconciliation by 80%+, part of BILL's bigger bet on becoming the financial infrastructure layer for the "Fortune 5 Million."
Chime, Block, and Circle each used the quarter to make the case for where fintech’s next moat will be built.
Chime is finding a lending advantage in the direct-deposit relationship, Block is rebuilding around AI, and Circle is betting that the bigger opportunity lies in owning the infrastructure beneath stablecoins.
