Uncle Sean's Update - 9/5/25

Happy Friday!!!
 
Happy National Payroll Week with a HUGE thank you 🙏 to all payroll professionals because without payroll, EVERYTHING else is pointless!!! Here is the Uncle Sean Update for 9/5/25 (click here to subscribe):
 
A quick peek at some economic data as we look forward to the next FOMC meeting scheduled for Sept 17-18…  Keep in mind that a “soft landing” is representative of a long slow protracted process with the proverbial “last mile” taking the softest glide slope (kind of smells like we are there 😊):
 

• Jobs, jobs, jobs data may trump inflation (umm – no pun intended… okay, maybe 😊)…  The job market certainly appears to be “cooling” as expected, but many economists still see the numbers as pretty good historically speaking (particularly pre-covid).  Markets are signaling this is likely enough to warrant a rate cut.
  • The BLS August Jobs Report came in surprisingly light at +22,000 [(+75K expected, +79K for July (revised up by 6K - see revision history with June revised down -13K); Unemployment rate at 4.3% (4.3% expected, 4.2% July); Average hourly earnings were up 0.3% month-on-month (0.3% expected, 0.3% July); Average hourly earnings year-over-year came in at 3.7% (3.8% expected, and a slow-down from July 3.9%).

 

• Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Beige Book - August 2025 showed economic activity to be… well… beige 🤠.  With little or no change in economic activity, citing flat to declining consumer spending as wages were failing to keep up with rising prices (see jobs report above), and continued tariff uncertainty.

 
And back to the rest of the update… 😊
 

• 👏 Acceleron continues their growth trajectory and distribution strategy by announcing a new partnership integration with Aptys Solutions (digital payment platform serving over 5,500 FI’s – NICE!!!) with a fully automated and simplified end-to-end solution making international wires more efficient and profitable for community banks and credit unions. 🚀
  • Banks and credit unions on the Aptys PayLOGICS platform can now access international wires instantly.
  • No more manually keying into a separate correspondent system.
  • Acceleron’s SmartRoute™ delivers pricing transparency and drives down FX costs.

 

• Late last Friday, the NCUA liquidated Members First of Maryland Federal Credit Union (charter 24855; total assets $21.9M, 3,638 members) citing “…insolvency was imminent, and the credit union had no prospect for restoring viable operations.”  Aberdeen Proving Ground Federal Credit Union of Edgewood, Maryland (charter 2540; total assets $2.5B) immediately purchased some assets and assumed Members First of Maryland FCU’s share accounts.
  • Worth noting there hasn’t been a CU failure with total assets greater than $50M since 2018… 🤔

 

• A Pair of U.S. Bank (FDIC 6548; total assets $671B) announcements this week targeting small businesses:
  • U.S. Bank launched an all-In-one Cash Flow Management Platform for small businesses called U.S. Bank bill pay for business - a single intuitive accounts payable solution, integrated with business checking and online banking platform with the ability to easily sync with accounting software.
    • U.S. Bank collaborated with two fintech companies to bring this solution to life, integrating Fiserv’s CashFlow Central℠ solution, built in partnership with Melio, within the U.S. Bank online banking platform.
  • U.S. Bank also launched a new embedded payroll solution for small businesses powered by Gusto.

 

• More Fiserv headlines (NYSE: FI) as they acquire CardFree to enhance the capabilities of Clover® to “support small businesses as they grow into larger, multi-location merchants with complex technical needs.”

 

• Airwallex (business payments platform) to acquire OpenPay to boost its position against Stripe and create “the first truly global billing platform.”

 

• PeoplesBank (FDIC 90213; total assets $4.3B) completes their migration to cloud-native Nymbus Core. 
  • Interesting to note that the relationship between Nymbus and PeoplesBank began in 2020 when the bank selected Nymbus to power its direct digital bank, ZYNLO Bank.
    • 👀 Perhaps even more interesting to me is that the previous core processor for PeoplesBank had a ‘core strategic’ relationship - meaning it was the same bank tech vendor for core, online, and mobile.  Very difficult to break into from a third-party bank tech vendor perspective.  Enter ZYNLO as the Trojan Horse / land and expand strategy for Nymbus. 😉

 

• 👉 Is cash flow-based consumer underwriting now table stakes???  I’ll let you decide after seeing Nova Credit posting a series of high profile headlines this week:
  • First up is Socure and Nova Credit Partner to Expand Credit Access by bringing Nova Credit’s FCRA-compliant cash flow underwriting solution, Cash Atlas™, into Socure’s RiskOS™ platform, the industry’s most open and extensible risk decisioning solution.
  • Then PayPal selects Nova Credit to power U.S. cash flow underwriting across its growing portfolio of consumer credit products.
  • And finally, the bombshell announcement…  Nova Credit Solutions to be utilized by Chase to power its cash flow underwriting capabilities to enable Chase to serve more customers across the U.S. who have limited credit history or are underserved by traditional credit models. 💥

 

• equipifi joins the Jack Henry™ Fintech Integration Network integrating equipifi’s BNPL platform with SilverLake System through jXchange™ - enabling financial institutions using SilverLake System to quickly launch a state-of-the-art in-house BNPL program.

 

• Synctera teams up with LoanPro to enable FinTech companies, banks, and sponsor banks to launch innovative and flexible credit cards to suit their customer’s unique needs.

 

• MANTL (loan and deposit account opening) partners with Taktile (next-generation AI-driven credit underwriting and programmable decisioning platform) to transform credit decisions for community banks and credit unions.  “With the new integration, financial institutions can launch, test, and update credit policies that will be implemented in MANTL workflows in real time, without relying on engineering resources or third-party vendors.”  Nice!

 

• And the IPO market gets hot 🔥:
  • Figure is looking to raise $526M at a valuation of up to $4.13B.
  • Gemini targeting to raise approximately $317M at a $2.2B valuation.
  • Klarna is seeking to raise $1.27B in revived IPO.

 

• Some personnel moves:
  • Panacea Financial (direct digital bank division of Primis) promotes Brandon Finazzo to Chief Growth Officer.  Finazzo has served as Head of Practice Solutions for over four years.
  • Temenos CEO Jean-Pierre Brulard steps down with immediate effect.  Current Temenos CFO, Takis Spiliopoulos, has been appointed by the board as interim CEO while it searches for a permanent successor.

 

• Notable FinTech funding for the week:
  • Flex (HSA and FSA payment service provider) raised $15M in Series A funding round to enable health and wellness brands to accept HAS and FSA payments.
  • ModernFi (deposit network program for banks and credit unions) raised $30M in Series B funding to “accelerate adoption across financial institutions, expand its team, and deepen integrations with digital banking and core providers.”  Check out their:
    • National Bank InterDeposit Company (NBID), launched in 2025 in collaboration with participating banks, now includes banks representing more than 40 percent of the existing reciprocal deposit market.
    • ModernFi CUSO, the first-of-its-kind network for credit unions, launched in 2024, and has already grown to serve more than 75 leading credit unions in the country.
  • Lead Bank (BaaS sponsor bank; FDIC 8283; total assets $1.7B) raised $70M in Series B at a $1.47B valuation!!!
    • 👀 Look past the current $132M Tangible Book Value and focus on these performance metrics - YTD ROE of 13%, Yield on Loans of 15%, and NIM of 8.9% (source FedFis bank analyst platform; 6/30/25 call report) - WOWZA!!!! 🚀
  • And just in case you missed it….  Anthropic raised a gigantic $13B Series F round at a mind-numbing $183B valuation… 🤯
    • “Anthropic has seen rapid growth since the launch of Claude in March 2023. At the beginning of 2025, less than two years after launch, Anthropic’s run-rate revenue had grown to approximately $1 billion. By August 2025, just eight months later, our run-rate revenue reached over $5 billion—making Anthropic one of the fastest-growing technology companies in history.”

 
 
Random Uncle Sean stuff:

• The second peak hummingbird season (fall migration) is in full force here in East Texas!!!  Aunt Patty and I have two feeders out (each take about a cup of sugar water) and we are having to fill them both up about every two days right now.  It’s vey common to see three at a time at the feeder and sometimes up to five at a time jockeying for position.  They are so much fun to watch this time of year.  They are like little fighter pilots - love it!!! ❤️
• We made it – here are the Dad / Bad Jokes for the week:
  • People who think “talk is cheap” clearly haven’t spent much time with a lawyer… 🫤🙃
  • At my age, I’ve come to accept the fact that I may never be old enough to know better! 😅
  • “Criteria”, [krī-tîr′ē-ə], noun: Where sad people go to eat.. 🤠
  • And saving the best for last….
    • It takes a lot of balls to play golf the way I do… 🏌️‍♂️⛳😆

 
 
Have a GREAT weekend and please stay safe!
 
Uncle Sean
 
Sometimes known as Sean Mayo – contact me directly for scope and pricing of custom reports / analysis projects at [email protected] | 214-604-6961 – or you can contact FedFis Sales Team at 512-960-0911 | [email protected] #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.