Welcome to Moving Money (Right). My name is Fawziyah, and I’ve been working in payments as a software engineer for almost 5 years. I’m a big nerd about the industry of money movement, and I want to bring the types of conversations I love having with my colleagues to anyone interested in the world of financial infrastructure + technology.
This week, the start-up Mercury received conditional approval by the OCC to become a bank. This news is part of an emerging trend of software companies no longer using a bank's license to meet regulatory demands and applying for their own charter.
Building a ledger is famously hard to get right. AML and transaction monitoring, to comply with fraud regulations, is tedious. Building your own rewards engine that manages transfers and balances for your customers is complicated.
The co-founder of Modern Treasury tweeted asking why we can't just give 16 digit card numbers to agents, because stablecoins are being touted as the more attractive option with the AI boom. Paul Graham responded that it would mean we'd have to pay card fees, and drag the networks into the future with us.