Wave Hunting

Square & Stripe productized this in merchant payments first; before they came along, most small businesses would get access to funds 5 - 7 days after processing a credit card payment. Square and Stripe gave you your money within a day or 2.

Because of this hit, big banks began charging and raising overdraft fees. For a consumer who doesn’t keep a balance, overdrafts became so expensive that it simply didn’t make sense to keep an account with a bank that would charge those. This created two opportunities: 1. Products like Dave, Status, Bridget and Earnin have emerged to provide overdra... See more

...the slowness in the ACH system was a tax on the most vulnerable Americans - if you’re living paycheck to paycheck and something catastrophic happens, and you need to access to funds really quickly, you’re either paying a really high fee or its just not happening for you. And heaven help you if it’s the weekend.

This new way of winning distribution is quite different from the old way. Yes it’s also capital intensive, but you’re not buying real estate. You have low fixed costs, and variable costs that scale with usage (vs. real estate servicing that you pay regardless of use). And where branch-banking might have had winner-take-all dynamic regionally, there... See more