Ben Brown

$90,000 for the truck Then $5/month for the nav screen to work Truly some bullshit, @Ford

Just arrived in Vegas for my 10th @money2020… @immad and the team at @mercury win the award for first fintech ad of the week

People rag on McDonalds but Starbucks has the worst fast food in America. (Coffee is fine, food is consistently disappointing. It’s one of the biggest product-brand disconnects that I can think of.)

We don’t share pictures of our 15 month old on social media but, thanks to ChatGPT’s anime machine, please enjoy this gem.

Nothing reminds me like I’m back in America quite as much as seeing a $6 charge for luggage carts.

This is not OK. Why doesn’t anyone seem to care?

Heading back to the U.S. today after a great week with our @FlagshipAP team in Amsterdam (one of our four global offices). It was a pleasure to be in Amsterdam again (I lived there ten years ago) and see that it continues to offer a unique blend of history, creativity, and technology innovation. Many payments and fintech trends like the rise of embedded finance, experimentation with digital assets, cash to card conversion, and the (slow) digitization of B2B payments are true around the world, but each market has its own unique characteristics and forces of change. One big event for Europe is the proposed evolution of the Payment Services Directive with PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation, which will include many new requirements: • Combat and mitigate payment fraud by requiring merchants and acquirers to share a broader set of data with issuers to combat fraud (data that most issuers probably don’t have the infrastructure to ingest and use properly) and enhancing Strong Customer Authentication rules • Improve consumer rights, for example by allowing an 8 week “no questions asked” refund period on subscriptions • Further level the playing field between banks and non-banks by giving non-banks access to all EU payment systems • Improve the functioning of open banking by, for example, requiring banks to provide customers with a permission dashboard to see and manage which open banking permits they have granted • Improve the availability of cash in shops and via ATMs by allowing merchants to provide cash services without being regulated • Further harmonise the EU payment market and strengthen the enforcement of applicable laws by making many of the requirements of PSD2 law across the EU through the PSR PSD3 and the PSR are not yet finalized but once they are these requirements will likely dominate the attention of European banks and payments companies for the next couple of years. In the past, major regulatory events in the midst of technology shifts have created white space for disruptive competition: for example, post-financial crisis banking regulation in the early 2010s distracted major US banks and lenders from being able to innovate around the rise of smartphones for several years. Right now there are big technology shifts happening with generative AI, payments infrastructure (wallets, RTP, etc.), new cloud-based SaaS fintech tools, platformization, and digital assets. European payments companies (and multinational companies operating in Europe, as most do) should be strategic about how they allocate their investment of time and money between regulatory requirements and market-driven innovation. #payments #fintech P.s. to everyone in Amsterdam that I wasn’t able to see this time: I’ll be back soon!

My flight from Amsterdam to DC today apparently hinges on the ability of United to get someone living in western Greenland to go sit in the control tower of Sisimiut Airport while we fly overhead on a Sunday. This seems unlikely.

Evolve and Synapse collectively enabled 100+ fintech programs with 10M end-users. Much of that data has been breached. How to protect yourself? • Enable MFA • Unique passwords for each site/app • Use passkey login where possible • Lock credit files • Add fraud alert to credit file (side benefit: automatic removal from pre-screened offer mailing lists) • Use an app like Credit Karma to monitor for new accounts in your name And don’t panic: your payment accounts probably have zero fraud liability protection

Understatement.

In the last 50 years, every President with an approval rating lower than 45% at this point in their first term was a one term president. Biden's approval rating is now 38% (so was Trump last time, and he lost).

Incredible writing. Thank you, @jamalichaidani. “It’s a field hospital with no doctors and no war.” “I didn't expect to fall in love with SF, but it's like falling in love with someone who is in the throes of a deep addiction, and you know any relationship would be impossible.“ “The SF government took the pearl of America and turned it into a nightmare.”

Epic.

Every weekend should be a 3 day weekend.

Two fintech conferences in SF at the same time - love to see it!