OpenAI Is Buying Its Way Into Financial Planning 🇺🇸
We're also covering TikTok's new debit card 🇬🇧, Wealthsimple integrating X Cashtags 🇨🇦, eToro launching an app store 🇬🇧 & Atlas's ultra premium pivot 🇺🇸
🇺🇸 OpenAI Is Buying Its Way Into Financial Planning
US-based AI company OpenAI has acquired personal finance startup Hiro Finance in what founder Ethan Bloch (pictured above) confirmed is an acqui-hire.
Hiro’s team joined OpenAI, its app shut down on April 20 and all user data will be deleted by May 13. The deal is OpenAI’s second fintech acqui-hire in six months, following the acquisition of Roi in October 2025.
Hiro offered AI-powered financial planning that let users model what-if scenarios around salary, debt, and monthly costs. ChatGPT already has more than 900 million users. If financial planning becomes a native capability inside the platform, OpenAI could become the largest top-of-funnel for personal finance decisions.
Growth metric: 900 million+ ChatGPT users
OpenAI’s 900 million active users could benefit from ChatGPT’s upcoming advanced financial planning abilities.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & TechCrunch
🇨🇦 Wealthsimple Is Using X to Turn Financial Conversations Into Trading Moments
Canada-based wealth management platform Wealthsimple has integrated with X’s newly launched Cashtag feature, making it the first Canadian broker to convert social media stock discussions directly into trades on its platform.
This means when a Canadian X user clicks on a Cashtag, which is a stock ticker symbol prefixed with a dollar sign symbol ($) inside any post, existing Wealthsimple customers are redirected straight to their trading app. Non-customers are taken to the sign-up page.
Rather than using social media to run ads, Wealthsimple has embedded its product directly into the moment of highest financial intent. Brett Huneycutt (pictured above), Wealthsimple’s co-founder and chief product officer, said Canadians have been discussing financial markets on X for years. “What’s been missing is the bridge between conversation and action,” he said as quoted by Betakit.
Wealthsimple serves more than three million Canadians and was valued at $10 billion following its Series E round in October 2025.
Growth metric: 3 million Wealthsimple users
Three million Wealthsimple users now are able to trade on the platform by clicking on the Cashtag stock ticker on Elon Musk’s social network X.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & BetaKit
🇬🇧 eToro Is Letting Developers Build Inside Its Platform
UK-based trading platform eToro has launched an App Store to its users. The marketplace launched with more than 20 apps already live, covering tools for trading, investing, and market analysis.
Builders who create apps on the platform gain direct distribution to eToro’s existing user base. Investors on the platform can discover, explore, and leverage community-built tools alongside eToro’s own features. CEO and founder Yoni Assia (pictured above) described it as a “new builders economy” in a LinkedIn post.
The model borrows directly from the app store playbook that Apple and Google used to scale their platforms. Rather than building every feature in-house, eToro is outsourcing product innovation to external builders while keeping the distribution, the data, and the user relationship on its own platform.
Growth metric: 20+ apps at launch
eToro launched its App Store with more than 20 third-party apps already live, spanning trading, investing, and market analysis tools for 40 million user base.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & Investing News Network
🇬🇧 TikTok and Visa Launch a Debit Card to Fix Cash Flow Problem For Creators
Content creator platform TikTok and Visa have launched a creator debit card in the UK, giving content creators faster access to earnings from TikTok.
By embedding a financial product directly into the platform where creators already earn, TikTok makes it significantly easier for creators to stick to their platform as their income, their card, and their audience are all in one place
Lucy Demery (pictured above), senior vice president and head of Visa Commercial Solutions Europe, said the launch is designed to give creators “faster access to income from TikTok Live, brand partnerships, and platform payouts, so they can spend, plan and reinvest in their business straight away,” she said as quoted by the Independent.
Growth metric: 49% of UK creators impacted by late payments
which directly impacted their ability to run their business while nearly 1 in 4 had turned down new opportunities due to cash flow issues
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & The Independent
🇺🇸 From Zombie Fintech to $420 Million: How Atlas Won by Going Ultra-Premium
US-based credit card startup Atlas managed to turned its business around by abandoning the mass market entirely and targeting ultra-high-net-worth customers.
Atlas charges $999 a year for an invite-only steel card that weighs four times more than a standard plastic card. Its core product is a text-based concierge service that books private jets, restaurant reservations, and hotels for its 2,000 members. Gross revenue is now running at more than $20 million annually, with 80% of customers retained after year one and 70% after year two.
Atlas proved that understanding what your highest-value customers actually care about and building exclusively around that creates a better product and a more defensible business.
A Point analyst discovered that 90% of card transactions came from just 15% of customers. CEO Patrick Mrozowski (pictured above) realized he had been spending money acquiring and serving a mass audience that was not driving his business. Rather than compete with American Express and JPMorgan on rewards and credits, he stripped the product back to what his most valuable customers actually wanted. “What they care about is access to the best restaurants. They care about service. They just care about things being frictionless and seamless,” Mrozowski said in an interview with Forbes.
The pivot that took it from Forbes’ list of 25 struggling zombie fintechs in 2023 to a $420 million valuation.
Growth metric: 90% of transactions from 15% of customers
A data analysis at Point found that 90% of card transactions came from just 15% of its customer base
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & Forbes
🇲🇽 In Mexico’s Underbanked Race, Plata Is Growing Its Loan Book Nearly Three Times Faster Than Nubank
Mexican neobank Plata is outpacing Brazilian Nubank’s growth in Mexico.
Plata’s loan portfolio surged roughly 170% in 2025 to nearly 10 billion pesos ($563 million), compared to Nubank’s 61% loan book expansion in Mexico over the same period, according to Mexican regulator data.
Plata offers Mexican consumers with little or no credit history access to a credit card via AI-powered credit scoring, plus a buy-now-pay-later service allowing installment payments over 24 months, with no annual fee and up to 15% cashback. More than 750,000 of Plata’s 3.5 million active credit card customers received their first-ever credit card through the platform.
Roughly 11% of Mexican adults owned a credit card while 50% of adults still uses cash for daily transactions, according to Nubank’s own 2024 research data. Plata was founded in 2023 and is currently led by Neri Tollardo (pictured above).
Plata began fully operating as a licensed bank in Mexico in March 2026, expanding beyond credit cards into deposits and debit services.
Growth metric: 170% loan portfolio growth in 2025
Plata’s loan portfolio grew more than 3 time over in 2025 to nearly 10 billion pesos ($563 million), compared to Nubank’s 61% loan book expansion in Mexico over the same period.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & Bloomberg
🇲🇽 Fintech Ad of The Week: How Banco Plata Launched Its Bank Without Mentioning a Single Feature
When Mexican fintech Banco Plata officially launched as a fully licensed bank in March 2026, it’s running a fifteen-second ad on Meta on built entirely around a single word: maravilloso (wonderful).
This branding exercize is deliberate as Banco Plata’s CEO Neri Tollardo has repeatedly said the bank’s promise is to redefine banking for Mexicans by making services stop being bureaucratic and frustrating, which fits with its slogan: it’s about people, not processes.
Source: Fintech Growth Insider
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.
Why share this?
Because my goal is to use my experience as an economic journalist, fintech entrepreneur and product manager to present the most essential fintech news from around the world through the eyes of an insider.
If you like what I do, feel free to share this newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn, X, Reddit, YouTube & TikTok.
If you would like me to accompany you on your fintech entrepreneurship journey and provide you with ongoing feedback, feel free to hire me as coach on MentorCruise.
If all you need is to pick my brain on specific topic in the field of fintech marketing, product or strategy, feel free to book a one hour consulting call with me instead.
P.S : Once you refer a new subscriber to the newsletter using your unique share link, you'll receive a personalized social media shout-out from me to promote your work or professional profile. Just write to me at jrbrault@icloud.com once your referral is confirmed on our leaderboard and include your social media account(s) URL(s) and who you are.