As The Diff author and all-around genius Byrne Hobart emailed me in a reply to a Not Boring essay a couple years ago: “For any fintech product the question always comes down to: do they have a sustainable advantage in low CAC?” 

With the proliferation of banking APIs in the two years since, and the fierce competition in the financial services startu... See more

For a fintech startup to launch ten years ago, the only way was by partnering with incumbents, as it would have taken months if not years to create their own core banking, obtain their license to operate, build their payments services, comply with regulation.