Uncle Sean's Update - 8/12/22

​Happy Friday!!!
 
WOW – what an exciting week!!!  There is so much to cover with a ton of partnering and acquisitions going on, so let’s get to it!  Here is the Uncle Sean Update for 8/12/22:
 

• Check out this cool article regarding Bank Born Products - featuring Brad Womack with FINTX, LLC, Marco Perez with BANCreach, and Mike Fernandez with Bankers Lender.  Some AWESOME things happening these days with Bankers Helping Bankers, FedFis, and IBAT.

 

• Seacoast National Bank announced a definitive agreement to acquire Professional Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: PFHD, bank sub is Professional Bank).
  • Seacoast has been busy as this is their third deal this year!  Apollo Bank on 3/29 and Drummond Community Bank on 5/4, but Professional Bank is the largest ($2.6B total assets) expanding Seacoast’s Florida footprint, especially in Miami.

 

• Jack Henry is acquiring Payrailz enhancing JKHY’s payments-as-a-service strategy including real-time P2P.

 

• FDIC to focus on CRE transaction testing for banks with significant exposures in the upcoming examination cycle as CRE loans are peaking at all-time highs “given the uncertain long-term impacts of changes in work and commerce in the wake of the pandemic, the effects of rising interest rates, inflationary pressures, and supply chain issues.”  Banking Dive has a good summary.
  • Meanwhile, the FDIC continues their consumer marketing blitz regarding The Importance of Deposit Insurance and Understanding Your Coverage amongst fintech bankruptcies (Voyager).

 

• Unit (fintech BaaS connector) partners with Thread Bank (fka Civis Bank) to expand Banking-as-a-Service ecosystem for both companies and accelerate onboarding / embedded finance offerings to “a matter of weeks” under a single platform.

 

• Check out the Open Platforms from the Core Processors making announcements this week:
  • Fourth Capital Bank ($446M total assets) selects Rocket Mortgage as their Mortgage LOS due to the newly announced partnership of Q2 and Rocket Mortgage as part of the Q2 open platform Innovation Studio / Partner Marketplace Program.
  • Timberland Bank ($1.9B total assets) selects Plinqit for financial wellness and savings tools thanks to Plinqit’s integration with Jack Henry’s Banno Digital Toolkit open platform.
  • Great Southern Bank in MO ($5.5B total assets) selects Fiserv DNA core processing in large part to the AppMarket from Fiserv to easily enable the integration of new offerings from fintechs.
  • Array announced they are integrating with Q2 open platform Innovation Studio / Partner Marketplace Program.

 

• Figure Pay (BaaS payments connector on blockchain rails) partners with Visa DPS to add issuing processing services to its “Banking in a Box” platform on the Provenance blockchain.

 

• “Buh-Bye” - Tornado Cash (Ethereum mixer) gets the death knell as the U.S. Treasury puts them on the OFAC sanctioned list for laundering over $7B since 2019 and affiliation with known North Korea hacking organizations (Lazarus Group).  Also this week, a Dutch government agency has arrested the suspected developer of Tornado Cash with more arrests not being ruled out.

 

• Movements in the C-Suite at Marqeta as Jason Gardner (Founder and CEO) plans to search for a new CEO to lead the company in its next phase of growth.  Once a new CEO is named, Gardner will transition to Executive Chairman.  Protocol has a good summary including:
  • Marqeta’s Chief Operating Officer, Vidya Peters is leaving the company.  Chief Product Officer, Simon Khalaf, will temporarily assume Vidya’s responsibilities.
  • Marqeta is also looking to hire a Chief Revenue Officer.

 

• Green Dot disclosed an Uber contract dispute (also here on pg 46 of the Green Dot 10Q) and is looking to fine tune some of their BaaS Sponsorship roles.  CEO, Dan Henry stated, “I don’t want to be out there opening up our [bank] charter for every Joe fintech that wants to do something in payments,” Henry said on the call with analysts. “We really want to be focused on partners that can be of scale, and partners that are focused on solving the problems that we’re focused on solving, which is really serving consumers and small businesses that aren’t very well served by traditional financial institutions for various litany of reasons.”
  • Meanwhile, Uber seems to be moving in a different direction as they announced a new Uber Pro Card Mastercard powered by Branch and Marqeta.

 

• Five Star Bank (premier lender and BaaS Sponsor Bank) partners with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to drive AI/ML insights in order to strengthen lending risk assessment and deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences using the TCS Customer Intelligence & Insights™ (CI&I) analytics platform.

 

• Guild Financial (investing and financial literacy app) connects with MX via the MXapi to help the military community build personal wealth.

 

• Notable FinTech funding for the week:
  • Forage (third-party payment processor for EBT) raised $22M in Series A funding round to make it easier for grocers to accept SNAP EBT (formerly known as “food stamps”) payments online – a $200B market representing approximately 42M Americans.
  • Truework (income and employment verification platform for lenders AND payroll providers / HR departments) raised $50M in Series C funding.
  • Finix (API-driven payments processing platform) raised $30M in capital
  • Founderpath (alt lending / recurring revenue financing) raised $145M in debt and equity.
  • Central Payments (BaaS subsidiary of Central Bank of Kansas City) raised $30M in capital.

 
 
Random Uncle Sean Stuff:

• Ahhhh – FRIDAY!!!!  We are grilling hamburgers this evening with some Ro-Tel and Velveeta cheese queso (goes great on hot dogs too)– WOOOHOOO!!!!!
• Hmmm…  Do you ever wonder if plants are secretly farming us, by giving us oxygen daily, until we all eventually decompose so they can consume us????  😝 LMAO!!!!
• Just in time for school 😲 - The CDC updated guidance to loosen Covid isolation protocols including “recommending that instead of quarantining if you were exposed to COVID-19, you wear a high-quality mask for 10 days and get tested on day 5” and reminding everyone to continue to “isolate if you are sick and suspect that you have COVID-19 but do not yet have test results.”  Here is the full CDC Press Release and another regarding operational guidance for Schools, Early Care, and Education Programs.
• Oh Sandy….  The ever so graceful Olivia Newton-John passed away at the age of 73 earlier this week.  Don’t tell Aunt Patty (wink, wink), but ONJ was definitely Uncle Sean’s first crush (yeah - me and about 2 billion other men on this planet).  So turn it up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oKPYe53h78!!!

 
 
Have a GREAT weekend, DON’T FORGET TO LAUGH, and please stay safe!!!
 
Uncle Sean
 
 
Sometimes known as Sean Mayo – contact me directly for scope and pricing of custom reports / analysis projects at smayo@fedfis.com | 214-604-6961 – or you can contact FedFis Sales Team at 512-960-0911 | info@fedfis.com #FedFisHasTheData FedFis
 
FedFis, LLC disclaimer – The views and opinions of Uncle Sean are of his own and may not necessarily represent the views, endorsements, and/or opinions of FedFis, LLC – we all know he’s a little bit different; but that’s why we love him.