MrBeast Officializes Entry Into Banking with Acquisition of Teen Neobank Step & Its 7 Million Customers 🇺🇸
Gambling drives fintech wallet growth in Columbia 🇨🇴, Polymarket opens a grocery store in NYC 🇺🇸, Indian payment giant taps cricket superstar 🇮🇳, SoFi hits $1B revenue quarter 🇺🇸 & much more
🇺🇸 MrBeast Officializes Entry Into Banking with Acquisition of Teen Neobank Step & Its 7 Million Customers
Jimmy Donaldson (pictured above), better known as MrBeast, has officially entered the fintech arena with the acquisition of Step, a youth-focused banking app that has attracted over 7 million users and raised half a billion in funding. The deal follows his October trademark filing for MrBeast Financial.
“Nobody taught me about investing, building credit, or managing money when I was growing up. That’s exactly why we’re joining forces with Step,” MrBeast announced to his 450 million YouTube subscribers. “I want to give millions of young people the financial foundation I never had.” The acquisition gives Beast Industries immediate access to Step’s technology platform, in-house fintech team, and a proven banking infrastructure through its partnership with Evolve Bank & Trust.
Step, founded in 2018 by fintech veterans CJ MacDonald and Alexey Kalinichenko, offers a comprehensive money management platform for teens and young adults. The app includes a Step Visa Card, accounts for saving, spending, and investing, all without monthly fees. The company’s mission of providing financial literacy tools to the next generation aligns perfectly with MrBeast’s massive youth audience generating 5 billion monthly views.
Donaldson is no stranger to fintech investing. As previously featured in Fintech Growth Insider’s Top 40 Celebrity Fintech Investors, he has backed Current, a neobank for teens and young adults, and invested in crypto ventures including NFT platform Refinable, which was acquired by Artifact Labs, and crypto wallet company Bitski, acquired by Phantom.
What makes Step particularly attractive is its impressive roster of celebrity investors, which includes TikTok star Charli D’Amelio, Will Smith, The Chainsmokers, and NBA champion Stephen Curry.
Growth metric: 450 million YouTube subscribers
With over 450 million subscribers on YouTube alone, Mr Best’s operates the world’s largest YouTube channel, which allowed his media company to raise at a 5 billion dollars valuation.
Source: CNBC, TechCrunch & Fintech Growth Insider
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🇨🇴 Colombia’s Gelsa Group Uses Sports Betting Payouts to Drive Wallet Adoption
Colombian holding company Gelsa Group is using sports betting and lottery payouts as a growth lever to push adoption of its digital wallet, TodoPay.
TodoPay is a consumer digital wallet that lets users store money, receive payouts, transfer funds, and pay or withdraw cash through physical locations.
The hook is simple, with Colombian national lottery prizes below COP 499,999 (about US$115) now paid directly into TodoPay. Instead of collecting cash, users are nudged to keep funds inside the wallet for future transfers, payments, and bets.
This matters because more than 75% of transactions in Colombia are still conducted in cash. Betting outlets and lottery payouts become a practical on-ramp into digital payments.
Gelsa Group, led by general manager Mauricio Chaparro (pictured above), operates one of the largest betting and multi-service retail networks in Bogotá and Cundinamarca, with more than 2,500 owned outlets and 12,000 terminals across 116 municipalities.
Similar growth tactics have appeared in other markets. In the US, Robinhood expanded into event-based contracts, borrowing mechanics from sports-style betting to attract new users and boost engagement, even as its core business remains investing.
Growth metric: 75% cash transaction rate
More than three-quarters of Colombian transactions are still made in cash making lottery, making betting outlets and lottery payouts a practical on ramp into digital payments
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider and La República
🇺🇸 Polymarket Turns Free Groceries Into a Pop-up Marketing lay in New York
US-based Polymarket has staged a grocery-themed pop-up in New York City, using free food distribution as a high-visibility marketing tactic in the world’s largest regulated sports betting market.
Led by CEO Shayne Coplan, the prediction market platform is running what it calls New York’s first free grocery pop-up in Lower Manhattan from Feb 12 to 16, putting Polymarket directly in front of thousands of pedestrians in one of the most expensive city in the US.
While framed publicly around affordability and cost of living, the setup mirrors classic pop-up marketing designed to drive media coverage and public curiosity at scale. For context, the average cost per lead in financial services now costs over $650 per lead on average, according to 2026 benchmarks from marketing firm First Page Sage, with fintech leads typically running between $452 and $490.
The campaign follows a similar activation by rival Kalshi, which earlier covered up to US$50 worth of groceries for hundreds of shoppers in the East Village. Both companies timed their campaigns around local debate on food affordability.
The city sits at the centre of the US sports betting economy, with the state recording US$23.9 billion in legal sports betting handle between April 2024 and March 2025, according to the New York State Gaming Commission. Nationwide, annual sports betting volume is estimated at roughly US$220 billion.
Kalshi reported US$43.1 billion in trading volume in 2025, driven largely by sports-related contracts. Polymarket closed the year at US$33.4 billion.
Growth metric: $23.9 billion in legal sports betting in the state of New York
Legal sports betting in the state of New York amounted to 23.9 billion from April 2024 to march 2025
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider, Fox Business, Financial Content & The New York Times
🇮🇳 BharatPe Hires Cricket Superstar Rohit Sharma to Win India’s QR Payments Crowded Marketplace
Indian payments firm BharatPe has signed cricket superstar Rohit Sharma as its brand ambassador to boost visibility in the country’s crowded QR payments market.
BharatPe serves both consumers and merchants, offering QR code payments and digital transfers on one side, and point-of-sale acceptance infrastructure on the other.
The partnership is timed around the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. Rohit, who has 48 million Instagram followers and lead India to victory in the 2024 T20 World Cup, a tournament where the final match against the US drew over 260 million viewers, gives BharatPe a direct line to massive, engaged audiences.
Head of marketing Shilpi Kapoor said the company is using the tournament to push daily usage where during the campaign, consumers and merchants receive rewards if they complete six transactions a day.
“Today, an average frequent digital transactor in India does 10 to 12 transactions a day. India wants speed, convenience, scale, but at the same time wants minimal risk,” she told Storyboard18 in an interview.
For context, the 2026 Super Bowl LX halftime show featuring Bad Bunny had an average TV audience of 135 million viewers, according to Filmogaz.
Growth Metric: Rohit’s 48 million followers on Instagram
BharatPe is leveraging Rohit’s social media reach to amplify its campaign, adding to the millions of viewers watching the cricket matches to drive wider attention.
Source: Fintech Growth Insider, Filmogaz, mint & Storyboard18
🇺🇸 Falling Interest Rates Brought Borrowers to SoFi, Then the Platform Kept Them Spending
US-based SoFi just posted its first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter in Q4 2025, adding one million new customers along the way.
The company, which now serves 13.7 million customers, runs a broad consumer finance platform spanning personal loans, student loans, home loans, investing, credit cards, payments, and digital banking.
That all-in-one model lets it capture customers during major financial moments, then keep monetzing them across multiple products over time.
Falling interest rates also saw consumers flock to SoFi to refinance existing loans and shift high-interest credit card balances into cheaper personal loans. That triggered a surge in borrowing activity as SoFi record US$10.5 billion in loans during the quarter, up 46% year on year, across personal, student, and home lending.
SoFi’s revenue from investing, credit cards, and payments jumped 78% to roughly US$457 million, while overall fee-based revenue rose 53% from a year earlier.
The company, led by CEO Anthony Noto (pictured above), has also been leaning into sponsorships tied to music and sporting events aimed at younger consumers, a play to capture users early, before long-term financial habits are set, while cross-selling drives lifetime value once they’re inside the ecosystem.
Growth Metric: 1 million net new customers in Q4 2025
SoFi also reach $1 billion revenue quarter in the same period while over a million new customers signed on to the platform.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider, PYMNTS & Yahoo! Finance
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🇿🇦 GoTyme Rebrands Away From TymeBank as It Tries to Shed Bad Reviews And Unify Under One Brand
South Africa-based TymeBank has rebranded to GoTyme Bank as the group looks to wipe the slate clean and unify its identity across markets.
GoTyme operates as a digital-first, branchless bank backed by the Philippines’ Gokongwei Group and built on TymeBank’s operating model. It serves customers through a mobile app supported by physical kiosks in major retail chains.
The rebrand comes at a moment of reputational friction as TymeBank has been repeatedly criticised online for poor customer service and reliability issues, with a Trustpilot score sitting at just 1.9 out of 5.
Rather than trying to defend the old name, the group is choosing to move on. Rebranding to GoTyme (similar to the name of its Philippines counterpart) lets the bank put distance between itself and that baggage, simplify its messaging across both markets, and start fresh with a clearer promise around “simplicity, transparency, and trust,” said CEO Cheslyn Jacobs in a LinkedIn post.
The updated GoTyme app, rolled out in batches since January 2026, is part of that fresh start. Changes focus on cleaner design, better performance, and stronger security, with migration staged carefully to keep things stable for existing customers.
Since launching in South Africa in 2019, TymeBank has grown to 12 million customers, while GoTyme has reached 6.5 million in the Philippines, giving the group a combined base of 18.5 million users.
Its Singapore-based parent company, Tyme Group, had in 2024 received a $150 million investment from Brazilian digital bank Nubank.
Growth Metric : More than 150,000 new customers onboarded every month
Globally, GoTyme served more than 18.5 million customers across Phillipines and South Africa.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider, Reuters & Stuff.Co
🇺🇸 Fintech Ad of The Week: TurboTax Reminds How Drama-Free Filing Your Taxes Can Be
TurboTax used its Super Bowl ad spot this year to flip tax season stress on its head by hiring Adrien Brody, an actor best known for gut-wrenching roles like The Pianist, to make the joke that filing taxes with TurboTax is not painful. In the ad, Brody, whose brand is suffering on screen, says he cannot do happy and quit. While there were other fintech ads during the Super Bowl, like the Ramp one featuring The Office comedian Brian Baumgartner being “multiplied”, and Coinbase's retro karaoke ad featuring a Backstreet Boys song, this one was hands down my favorite.
Source: Fintech Growth Insider
Upcoming Fintech Events
🇨🇳 Consensus Hong Kong will take place from February 18 to 20, 2026, at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, with tickets priced between $399 and $799, with speakers such as Jordan Gray (CoFounder and CMO, PublicAI), Joelly Gloria (Business AI @ Meta), and Ming Wu (Co-founder/CTO, 0G)
🇬🇧 TradingTech Summit London will take place on February 26, 2026, at Hilton Canary Wharf, with tickets priced at £895, with speakers such as Nafisa Yusuf (Director and Head of International Market Structure, BlackRock), Stuart McDowell (UK Chief Information Officer, Societe Generale), and Monika Fernando (Head of Global FI Client Data Analytics and Head of FI eTrading Strategy EAP).
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🇺🇸 ICBA LIVE will take place from March 6 to 9, 2026, in San Diego, with speakers such as Rebeca Romero Rainey (President and CEO, Independent Community Bankers of America), Jack E. Hopkins (ICBA Chairman and President and CEO, CorTrust Bank), and Alice P. Frazier (ICBA Chairman elect and President and CEO, Potomac Bank).
🇺🇸 T3 Technology Conference will take place from March 9 to 12, 2026, in New Orleans, with speakers such as John O’Connell (Founder and CEO, The Oasis Group), Raj Madan (Chief Information Officer, AdvisorEngine), and Oleg Tishkevich (Chief Executive Officer, Invent).
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🇬🇧 CBC Summit Europe will take place on March 17, 2026, in London, with tickets priced between £906.43 and £1,246.53, with speakers such as Jason Allegrante (Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, Fireblocks), Ajay Amlani (President and CEO, Aware, Inc.), and Sabih Behzad (Head of Digital Assets and Currencies Transformation, Deutsche Bank).
🇬🇧 Insurtech Insights Europe will take place on March 18 to 19, 2026, in London, with tickets priced between £399 and £999. Speakers include Sirma Boshnakova (Board Member), Cécile Paillard (Group Chief Transformation Officer), and Pravina Ladva (Group Chief Digital and Technology Officer).
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🇺🇸 Fintech Americas will take place from March 24 to 26, 2026, in Miami, with tickets priced between $795 and $2,195, with speakers such as Cristina Junqueira (Co Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Nubank), Biswa Sengupta (Managing Director for Generative AI, JPMorgan Chase), and Rohit Patel (Director, Meta Superintelligence Labs, Meta).
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🇬🇧 PAY360 will take place from March 25 to 26, 2026, in London, with speakers such as Will Marwick (Chief Executive Officer, IFX Payments), Jas Narang (Chief Transformation and AI Officer, Santander), and Saira Khan (Head of Innovation and Partnerships, First Direct Bank).
🇺🇸 InsurTech NY Spring will take place from March 30 to 31, 2026, in New York City, with tickets priced between $657 and $1,017, with speakers such as Raj Kalahasthi (Chief Information Officer, The Baldwin Group), Patrick Gallic (Head of International AI Hub, Tokio Marine), and Greg Hendrick (Chief Executive Officer, Vantage Risk).
Who Am I?
Hi, my name is Julien Brault.
From 2017 to 2024, I was the CEO of Hardbacon, a fintech I co-founded, which reached 400,000 unique visitors at its peak.
A Google update ultimately sealed the company’s fate, and I started this newsletter to keep myself busy in the aftermath.
I then launched an another fintech affiliate site called MooseMoney, but I still find the time to publish this newsletter.
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