Research: Changing consumer preferences are driving evolving SMB payment offerings

Member Exclusive, Opinion

The infrastructure paradox: The better you become, the harder customers are to keep

• Financial infrastructure is becoming part of the business itself, changing what customers are willing to outsource.
• Providers now have to grow with their customers and keep expanding their value as those customers begin to question how much of the stack they should continue to outsource.

Business of Fintech, Member Exclusive

Financial firms are building new businesses from the layers beneath their products

• Intuit is opening up its financial intelligence to AI agents, while SoFi is making its infrastructure programmable.
• Both firms are betting that the layers beneath their products can become businesses in their own right, creating value across new interfaces, businesses, and customer relationships.

Business of Fintech, Member Exclusive, Policies & Playbooks

The antitrust question is moving up the stack: What California’s new push and NVIDIA’s retreat mean for finance

• California lawmakers are weighing whether antitrust law needs to draw a clearer line between growing an ecosystem and using market power to shape it.
• Antitrust is now becoming a front-end strategy issue for financial services, not a back-end legal concern.

10-Q, Member Exclusive

Goldman Sachs built its talent pipeline around apprenticeship. AI is now testing what that means

• How does the apprenticeship model evolve when AI takes over the work that once taught the trade?
• AI can accelerate junior employees’ output while slowing the learning curve that once came from doing the work themselves.

5 questions, Banking, Member Exclusive, SMB Finance

‘Traditional banks have equated advising with cross-selling’: Grasshopper’s Danielle Kane on why just 7% of SMBs see banks as trusted advisors

• Only 7% of SMB owners see their banks as trusted advisors, exposing a gap between transactional services and the strategic support they need.
• Grasshopper’s Danielle Kane says the SMB-bank relationship needs to shift from more tools to proactive guidance that helps businesses navigate complexity and scale.