Resources

External resources for fintech founders — newsletters, communities, regulators, tools.

Start here

Our primary content covers many of these topics directly:

Card products: How to launch a card product, Credit Card Economics Model
Bank partnerships: How to select a bank partner, 14 steps to closing a bank partner
Challenger banks: Guide to starting a challenger bank, Bank Account Economics Model
Lending: Term Loan Economics Model, Term Loan Unit Economics calculator
Compliance: BSA/AML Sample Policy, Credit Card Business Trunk
Going to market: Go to market guide

The external resources below complement those with material from other practitioners and vendors.

Compilations

Banks and Processors — community-maintained spreadsheet of sponsor banks and card processors

Foundational reading

Payments mechanics

A simple explanation of fees in the payment card industry — Richard Gendal Brown
Deciphering the payments stack — Stephen Cho
Transaction processing flow — GetFinal (archived)
Complete fintech dictionary — Moov
Best practices in bank-fintech partnerships — QED & BCG whitepaper

Cards

Ultimate guide to interchange revenues — Unit
Interchange in 1000 words — Matt Brown
Card issuing in 1000 words — Matt Brown
2017 payment card landscape — GetFinal (archived but historically useful)
Credit Card as a Service — Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 — Cokie Hasiotis and Matthew Goldman
Explainer on the Prepaid Rule for Fintechs — Lithic
Common problems with bank partners — Ayokunle Omojola (Aug 2021)

Payments and acquiring

Payment processor shopping — Trupti Natu
Modern Treasury Learn — explainers on payment rails (ACH, wire, RTP, FedNow)

Banking-as-a-Service and challenger banks

Vertical banks — Ayokunle Omojola (Mar 2020)
Permissionless issuing — Ayokunle Omojola (Feb 2020)
API routing layers — Ayokunle Omojola (May 2020)
Financial reconciliation — Ayokunle Omojola (Dec 2020)
Time to money — Ayokunle Omojola

Newsletters

Bits About Money — Patrick McKenzie on financial infrastructure
Net Interest — Marc Rubinstein on financial-sector economics
Fintech Business Weekly — Jason Mikula
Fintech TLDR — daily fintech newsletter
CardsFTW — Matthew Goldman on card products and infrastructure

Debt and lending

16 things to know about raising debt for startups — Andreessen Horowitz
Lessons in raising debt capital for lending company founders — Rohit Mittal
Calculating the true cost of a debt facility — Rohit Mittal
Differentiated and sustainable lending businesses — Ayokunle Omojola (Aug 2020)

Compliance

Policy Glossary — RizeFS
Basics of Financial Compliance — RizeFS
Fintech Guide to Building U.S. KYC/KYB Operations — Lithic
Fintech Guide to Building a Compliance Program — Lithic
The Complete Guide to Transaction Monitoring — Unit21

KYC, identity, and fraud

Mapping the Identity Verification Tech Stack — 9yards
KYC and AML: beyond the acronyms — Bits About Money
Fraud Glossary — RizeFS

X (formerly Twitter) threads

What teams are building in the customer support side of Banking as a Service? I’m struggling to find good examples.

It’s the main operational headache of building a neobank. And everyone needs the same things.

— Will White (@willwhite003), July 26, 2020

I spent the last month diving into “instant” ACH with four different players (Sardine, Astra, Orum and Plaid) and it’s fascinating how much of fintech is being built as I type this message. So damn bullish on this space.

— Aditi Shekar (@aditishekar), April 21, 2022

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking how to best advise and invest into fintech companies, and over time have come up with a few mental frameworks to assist myself. Here’s one of them:

— Aaron Frank (@arfrank), August 24, 2020