The Free Toaster

With Plaid Integration, ChatGPT is now a distribution channel for personal finance.

Thu, 21 May 2026 14:09:07 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Spinwheel.

ChatGPT is now a distribution channel for personal finance. OpenAI launched a feature that allows users to connect their bank accounts using Plaid. They also partnered with Intuit to integrate tools like Credit Karma’s approval odds. This means ChatGPT can review a user's actual spending data, determine their approval odds, and recommend personalized financial products.

We explore how this new setup impacts traditional search traffic and affiliate sites like NerdWallet, and how this changes the affiliate marketing landscape in the lending industry.

Plus, we drop details on our upcoming September event in San Francisco, the Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please forward this to 1 of your colleagues!

Toaster Exclusive Event

Learn more at: events.thefreetoaster.com

This event is Proudly Sponsored by Experian & MoneyLion

learn more at events.thefreetoaster.com

ChatGPT Is Now a Distribution Channel For Financial Products

OpenAI launched a personal finance experience inside ChatGPT.

Perplexity did a similar thing a month earlier.

This marks the early innings of consumer attention shifting away from Google and the traditional affiliate listing pages and into the LLMs (for financial products).

Source: https://openai.com/index/personal-finance-chatgpt/

What Actually Happened

200 million people already come to ChatGPT every month to ask financial questions.

Previously, ChatGPT was answering personal finance questions in the abstract. It would give high-level answers loaded with assumptions, or it forced the customers to answer a pile of detailed questions.

Now, with Plaid fully integrated into ChatGPT, it answers those questions based on the customer’s real financial data.

How it works (for users in the “Pro” tier):

Connect bank accounts through Plaid
ChatGPT gets read access to balances, transactions, investments, and liabilities
Users get a financial dashboard, the ability to ask freeform questions, and personalized product recommendations built on their financial profile

Perplexity built the same thing with Plaid, while also layering in investment-grade data from FactSet, Coinbase, Nasdaq, and S&P Global.

ChatGPT and Perplexity both seem to appreciate the power of answering personal finance questions for their customers in the specific, not just the abstract.

Intuit’s Role In All Of This

In November 2025, Intuit announced a new $100M+ multi-year contract designed to accelerate its AI-driven expert platform strategy. TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp now live directly inside the ChatGPT experience.

Intuit’s CEO Sasan Goodarzi said: “For us, it doesn’t matter whether a customer comes directly to using our platform or we are where they are within an app, in this case ChatGPT.”

From OpenAI’s perspective, one of the unique things Credit Karma brings to the table is their approval odds models. The ability to tell a user, based on their real credit profile, how likely they are to get approved for a given card, loan, or mortgage. That’s roughly 2 decades of data infrastructure across 130MM+ members.

Imagine this: A user asks about credit cards. ChatGPT reviews their spending (enabled through the Plaid link), identifies $8,000 in annual United flight spend, surfaces the United card, checks approval odds through Credit Karma, and prompts them to apply. No new tab. No search results page.

That’s product discovery, validation of an underwriting match, and (potentially) a conversion funnel. And this can happen in a few key strokes inside ChatGPT.

Who Should Feel Threatened?

Traditional content affiliates should be very worried.

Specifically, sites that rank for terms “best travel credit card 2025,” serve generic display ads, and collect referral fees when users click through and apply.

That static webpage listicle couldn’t possibly know you spent $8,000 on flying on United last year. ChatGPT does. And, going further, it can tell you how many incremental rewards you’ll earn by moving your spend and confirm that the issuer will approve you if you apply.

Sites like NerdWallet have great content. But, OpenAI already consumed that data. What sites like NerdWallet don’t have is approval odds models with the scale and fidelity of a giant like Credit Karma.

Consumers chase convenience and utility.

The utility of an adviser with the context of Plaid’s transaction data, the certainty layer of Credit Karma’s approval odds, and the intelligence of OpenAI’s best foundational models is hard to beat.

Game, set, match for the LLMs. RIP Google’s pile of blue links.

The New Competitive Landscape

Credit Karma’s position is strong.

They are in a position to be the largest-scale approval odds provider for the ChatGPT ecosystem. OpenAI has no incentive to replicate that in-house. Building credit bureau & lender relationships, selecting attributes, and predicting approval odds across dozens of lenders is two decades of infrastructure work.

Experian’s position is also very interesting.

While a smaller-scale consumer marketplace than Karma (at least for now), they’re a credit bureau, too. So while Karma has to worry (at least a little bit) about existential risk tied to their credit bureau relationships, Experian can control their destiny across the value-chain.

OpenAI will happily outsource the challenge of predicting approval odds, especially knowing the total market for affiliate marketing spend in consumer lending is in the ballpark of $6B per year. That’s peanuts for a giant like OpenAI.

There’s an opening for the banks, though.

Karma’s models aren’t perfect. Based on their relationship with lenders & the bureaus, they can assert with high confidence that you’ll be approved, but they don’t guarantee it with 100% certainty. (To their credit through, they’ve gone as far as to offer consumers up to $50 when they get declined on offers with the Credit Karma Guarantee badge).

If a lender like Wells Fargo or Capital One built a direct integration with OpenAI, they could in theory deliver 100% certainty, something the likes of Karma and Experian would have a very hard time replicating. (And, to be clear, we’re not saying that 100% certainty is easy for the banks, it’s just that they have an advantage over the affiliates).

That’s because the lender could run their underwriting model with their own decisioning data in the background.

The affiliate marketplaces and the lenders have slightly different credit bureau datasets and they pull the data from the bureaus at different points in time, and those nuances could make the difference between ChatGPT saying “your chances for getting this product are really, really great” and “I can 100% guarantee it.” That’s a subtle, but important difference in consumer lending.

As the LLM surface proves it ability to secure consumer attention and transaction flow to lending products, OpenAI will have to decide if they want their approval odds coming through affiliate marketplaces like Credit Karma or Experian, directly from the lenders, or some combination of the two.

If OpenAI builds an open interface where any lender can plug in their own underwriting signal, the approval odds layer becomes a infrastructure race between institutions. And OpenAI will arbitrate whose signal it trusts most.

I’m guessing that’s something the executives at Credit Karma, Experian, and the other organizations positioned to play this role (companies like Free Toaster sponsor Spinwheel) are thinking about.

What Distribution Channels Survive The LLM Disruption

Direct mail is off-line. The AI overloads won’t be controlling what envelopes land in your inbox anytime soon. This will continue to be a bread and butter channel.

Social is structurally separate. It’s entertainment and education oriented. People don’t go to TikTok to ask financial questions. The issue with social is that approval rates tend to be lower due to the lack of credit-bureau-based targeting at the top of the funnel.

Podcast, YouTube, out-of-home. Owned media channels will stay as powerful mediums to get brand messages across, but will be tough to crack as direct-response channels because they lack credit bureau data signal at the marketing stage.

Google-based search intent will be swallowed whole. That slice of attention maps almost perfectly onto what ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and the LLMs are now racing to capture.

Closing Thoughts

The LLMs are in the early days of constructing a personal finance super app.

The super app will accumulate context across your cards, deposit accounts, savings accounts, and use it to inform the answer to every question.

Further, because people will arm these super apps with personal context, financial goals, and lifestyle preferences, the super apps will do an amazing job delivering personalized, proactive advice that will create utility for the customer.

We have a classic data-led product flywheel.

ChatGPT gets smarter and more useful as you connect more data and context.

Smarter recommendations build more trust and more users. More trust and more users unlocks more data. At 200 million monthly active users, that product flywheel is already rolling down the hill.

Plaid unlocks the transaction layer. Credit Karma (and other data-forward marketplaces like Experian) could plug in the approval odds layer. Those are some of the foundational layers of a personal finance super app.

And more are coming, because we still need to solve for fraud, identity, and transaction processing at scale to make the most out of the LLM surface for personal finance.

The organizations that notice this, and can build a business owning a layer inside of the LLM surfaces, will have compounding advantages over time.

The ones waiting to see how it plays may be left fighting over the consumer attention that doesn’t migrate to the LLMs. Or, they’ll have a heck of a time elbowing their way in when they realize they’re late to the party.

The questions for every consumer lender and publisher right now: Do you have proprietary data, a differentiated model asset, or a product or service worth plugging into the personal finance super app? Or, do you have the ability to create this super app yourself?

It’s not a given that OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic will earn the trust of the consumer as the personal finance super app.

How many people will hand ChatGPT the user name and password to their bank accounts and/or their Credit Karma or Experian accounts?

That’s a big unknown right now.

But the answer to that question over the next 12-24 months could materially change the landscape of consumer lending marketplaces.

[OpenAI] [Perplexity]

News Pod #18 - NerdWallet’s Q1’26 Earnings: Why Is The Stock Down 30%

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, consider checking out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group
Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Other News We’re Reading

(SEO) Google Search as you know it is over (TechCrunch)

(SEO) Google Search is getting its biggest changes ever (The Verge)

(Agentic Commerce) Would you let robots spend your money? Google is betting on it (The Verge)

(BNPL) Affirm seeks bank apps to build its BNPL empire (American Banker)

(BNPL) Google Embeds Klarna BNPL Into Gemini AI Conversations (PYMNTS)

(Banks) Fintech firm Mercury hits $5.2 billion valuation after funding round, up 49% in 14 months (CNBC)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox.

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

P.S.: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. The Free Toaster will be organizing & hosting curated events this year, and we’d love to work with you as a sponsor.

NerdWallet's Q1 '26 Earnings: Why Is The Stock Down 30%?

Thu, 14 May 2026 12:03:45 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at New Market Growth.

Last week, NerdWallet announced earnings. The headlines all sounded great in the press release, but the stock is down ~30% since they shared earnings.

When we dug in, there was enough there for us to pause and wonder about the future of their business.

This week we’ll focus on what we learned from NerdWallet, and leave you with some additional news stories we think you should check out at the end.

Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster

Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please subscribe or forward this email to 1 of your colleagues!

Save the date!

We’re deep in planning mode for our inaugural
Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders
(September 23 & 24th in San Francisco)

For exclusive invites & updates about this event, please reply to this email with “SF Event” so we can keep you informed!

Breaking Down NerdWallet’s Earnings

NerdWallet (NASDAQ: NRDS) reported $222 million in Q1 2026 revenue on May 6, up 6% YoY. Non-GAAP operating income hit a Q1 record of $34 million.

The headlines were fine.

Source: NerdWallet Q1 ‘26 investor letter.

But the stock market’s reaction signals there could be reasons for concern here.

Source: Google search. The stock was trading at $11.20 on May 6th before NRDS reported earnings.

And the earnings call had at least 5 moments worth flagging.

One auto insurance carrier flinched and the full-year guidance changed.

CEO Tim Chen didn’t sugarcoat it: “We have a lot of concentration towards a few carriers currently and a few channels.”

A single large carrier pulled back in March. That alone was enough to ding Q1, is expected to hit Q2 harder, and force NerdWallet to lower the bottom of full-year NGOI guidance.

If one insurance partner can move the full-year P&L, maybe the recent gains they’d seen in insurance weren’t broad-based. Maybe one or two carriers were leaning in (read: had extra marketing budget NerdWallet happened to capture), and are now moving back to a more sustainable position.

From past earnings reports (we covered the previous one here), the data was showing their former flagship business - credit cards - has been on a steady decline since 2023.

The narrative was that insurance was rocket-shipping to save the day.

Now the question is whether insurance follows credit cards down once the carriers driving recent growth pull back.

SMB is down 15% and nobody on the call seemed to care.

SMB revenue dropped 15% YoY, to $25M. The reason given in prepared remarks was a single sentence: “Within our SMB vertical, we saw year-over-year declines driven by organic search headwinds.” Motley Fool

That was it. No turnaround plan. No timeline. No diagnosis of which SMB products are bleeding versus holding.

Then the Q&A opened up. Three analysts asked three questions, about vertical integration spend, NGOI guidance math, and LLM traffic. Zero on SMB.

Either the sell side has already written SMB off, or management has trained them not to ask. Neither is a good look for a category that, just a few quarters ago, was being talked about as a meaningful diversification story.

Worth noting: buried in the CFO’s prepared remarks was a note that the SMB decline was partially offset by growth in loan originations. That’s an interesting positive, small business loan demand showing up in the funnel, and not one analyst pulled the thread.

That gives you clues on where SMB sits in the priority stack right now.

“Organic search headwinds” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

That phrase shows up for both SMB and credit cards. It’s a polite way of saying Google and AI are eating our free traffic.

Tim’s LLM update, within the context of the insurance business: NerdWallet has dominant share of money-related queries inside LLMs, conversion is high, and it’s “a very small piece of our overall pie right now from a revenue perspective.”

Translation: the channel that’s growing isn’t material to the insurance business, yet. The old cash cow channel, SEO, is shrinking. That’s a scary reality for a business that depends on low cost, high-conversion traffic to thrive.

(For more on this dynamic, see our prior piece, The SEO Apocalypse Has Arrived.)

The margin beat had a Super Bowl-sized asterisk on it.

Q1 NGOI - at $34 million - looked great. Why? Per CFO Lauren StClair, the gain came from “lower other marketing expenses on lower brand spend, partially offset by higher performance marketing spend.”

In English: they didn’t run a Super Bowl ad this year, brand spend dropped, and they put more dollars into performance marketing.

Two takeaways:

The margin lift is partially a one-time comp benefit, not a structural improvement. Q2 NGOI is guided down from $34M to $6M–$14M.
A NerdWallet that buys more of its traffic each year is a NerdWallet that needs partners with elite conversion economics. Expect more pressure on bounty/CPA pricing, more A/B tests, and less patience for clunky application flows.

If your funnel is mid, we expect you’re going to feel the pressure. Best conversion rates will rise to the top, and the average/bad ones could effectively disappear.

“Vertical integration” sounded more defensive than offensive.

Morgan Stanley’s analyst directly asked Tim to walk through the ROI math on the new investments. The answer leaned on “our cost of capital is pretty high” and the idea that AI tools make it cheaper to build internally.

Building NerdWallet Insurance Experts, a branded agency routing calls to captive and independent agents, is a real pivot from their credit card content days.

NerdWallet is moving from lead-gen marketplace to operating their own customer-facing financial services business. That’s a different animal than referrals.

They’re entering it partly because the referral business is under pressure. Read into that what you want.

Furthermore, in a recent Morgan Stanley research report from May 7, 2026, analysts state their further conviction in the deteriorating business:

“We are more confident in our thesis that durable and profitable growth looks challenging for NerdWallet, with performance marketing intensity still elevated on both dollar ($122mm vs. $125mm in 4Q25) and percentage of revenue (54.9% vs. 55.5% in 4Q25) bases, which despite leverage on Other marketing in the quarter continues to suggest greater reliance on paid acquisition over time, which may continue to pressure incremental margins and ROIC.”

You partner with, or are considering partnering with NerdWallet. Now what?

NerdWallet still has the brand, the traffic, and the cash flow to be a top distribution partner, especially if you’re in deposits or personal loans (both growing). But this call had the texture of a company transitioning from a high-margin SEO business to a paid-traffic-and-services business. Both of which play outside of their historical competencies and could have a different margin profile.

Action items:

Ask your NerdWallet rep how your specific category (let’s say credit cards), is trending, at the top of the house. You need to know if the decline you’re seeing is you losing market share or you preserving or building share inside a declining category.
- Post publish edit: On May 14th we discovered, through a public filing on NerdWallet’s website (details here) that the credit card business declined 33% YoY from $38M in Q1 2025 to $25.5M in Q1 2026. They shared the last 7 quarters of revenue for Insurance, SMB, Loans and Emerging Verticals in that same report.
Audit your conversion funnel. In a performance-marketing-led NerdWallet, conversion is placement. Double down here. The last thing you want is for NerdWallet to conclude that your offer doesn’t work when the traffic source moves from free (SEO) to $20 per click from Google or Meta.
Diversify your affiliate mix, and work through what you’d do if a partner you currently count on for a good chunk of your volume were to create a shock in your lead flow.

At the highest level, we empathize with NerdWallet’s struggles.

We think their brand has an incredible amount of equity and trust in the category, and we’re rooting for them to get through this rough patch and back into sustainable, strategic growth in the lending category.

But, given the clues they dropped in this quarter’s earnings, we can’t help but be a bit worried about their future in a world where SEO continues to decline in importance.

Earnings

Affirm (Q3 FY2026, ended Mar 31) — Revenue $1.04B (+33% YoY); operating income $103M (9% margin); net income positive for first time as a public company. Earnings release · IR Page

Oportun (Q1 2026, ended Mar 31) — Revenue $229M (−3% YoY); net income $2.3M (vs. $10M prior year); adjusted EBITDA $29M. Earnings release · IR Page

Pagaya (Q1 2026, ended Mar 31) — Revenue $318M (+10% YoY); GAAP net income $25M (8% margin); adjusted EBITDA $94M (+18% YoY). Earnings release · IR Page

Sezzle (Q1 2026, ended Mar 31) — Revenue $135.5M (+29% YoY); net income $51.3M (+42% YoY, 38% margin); adjusted EBITDA $71.1M (52.5% margin). Earnings release · IR Page

Chime (Q1 2026, ended Mar 31) — Revenue $647M (+25% YoY); net income $53M (8% margin); adjusted EBITDA $119M (18% margin, +13pp YoY). Earnings release · IR Page

Dave (Q1 2026, ended Mar 31) — Revenue $158.4M (+47% YoY); net income $57.9M (+101% YoY); adjusted EBITDA $69.3M (+57% YoY, 44% margin). Earnings release · IR Page

Upstart (Q1 2026, ended Mar 31) — Revenue $308M (+44% YoY); net loss ($6.6M); adjusted EBITDA $40.5M (13% margin, down from 20% prior year). Earnings release · IR Page

Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

Another Fintech Bankruptcy: SMB Banking & Credit Card Startup Parker Files Chapter 7 Fintech Business Weekly | Jason Mikula

Pagaya Announces New Affiliate Partnership with Experian® to Expand Access to Personal Loans Business Wire

PayPal Plans Job Cuts as Fintech’s New CEO Pursues Turnaround Strategy Bloomberg.com

Brazil’s Mastercard Rival Elo Taps Bank of America, Other Banks for US IPO Bloomberg.com

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Note: If you’d like to sponsor or host an event in the consumer lending community in 2026, we’d like to hear from you. The Free Toaster will be organizing & hosting curated events this year, and we’d love to work with you as a sponsor.

SoFi’s Best Quarter Yet Disappoints Wall St.

Wed, 06 May 2026 22:57:03 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Bulldog Media Group.

SoFi delivered its tenth consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability with record revenues of $1.1 billion, but missed Wall Street’s expectations. Experian is looking toward the future of security with the launch of its "Agent Trust" framework to verify bot-initiated transactions, while Stripe is turning AI agents into a direct commerce channel by plugging its checkout into Google’s AI Mode and the Gemini app. Meanwhile, OneMain Financial opened the year strong with $226 million in net income. Barclays completed its acquisition of Best Egg to expand its U.S. consumer lending reach and Synchrony took over the MyLowe’s Pro Rewards American Express portfolio.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please subscribe or forward this email to 1 of your colleagues!

Save the date!

We’re cooking up The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders on September 23 & 24th in San Francisco!

PS: For exclusive invites & updates about this event, please reply to this email with “SF Event” so we can keep you informed!

SoFi’s Best Quarter Yet Disappoints Wall St.

SoFi posted record results in Q1 2026, with GAAP net revenue hitting $1.1 billion, up 43% year-over-year, yet Wall Street wasn’t impressed. The stock dropped 13% after the company maintained its full-year guidance, disappointing a market conditioned to expect beat-and-raise quarters. The core reason: the quarter was overshadowed by a meaningful slowdown in SoFi’s capital-light businesses, particularly the Loan Platform Business, which missed Morgan Stanley’s estimate by 25%. For a company that has built its premium valuation around fee-based, capital-light growth, that slowdown mattered more than the record originations.

Total loan originations hit a record $12.2 billion, up 68% year-over-year, with personal loans leading at $8.3 billion, student loans up 119% to $2.6 billion, and home loans up 137% to $1.2 billion. The LPB contributed $140.8 million to consolidated adjusted net revenue and added $3.6 billion in new commitments from three new partners. Personal loan net charge-offs came in at 3.03%, down 28 basis points year-over-year, with newer vintages tracking inside the 7-8% lifetime loss guide.

On the card side, SoFi reported 436,184 credit card holders, up 42% year-over-year, with interchange fee revenue growing 54%, driven by nearly $25 billion in annualized spend across SoFi Money and the credit card. The borrower profile stayed prime at a weighted average FICO of 745 and average income of $154k.

For the first time in several quarters, balance sheet lending rather than capital-light businesses drove the top-line beat. The Technology segment underperformed, posting $75 million against expectations of roughly $105 million. Higher operating expenses added further pressure, as SoFi accelerated marketing spend in the first half of the year. Both Bank of America and Morgan Stanley maintained Underperform ratings post-earnings, with Morgan Stanley cutting its price target to $16 and Bank of America lowering theirs to $17.

SoFi pushed back.

Management said the LPB demand continues to exceed what the company chooses to fulfill, pointing to broad-based buyer interest and all existing partners approaching renewal choosing to extend. The harder question is whether private credit is competing for the same institutional buyer pool.

SoFi says no.

Morgan Stanley is not fully convinced, cutting its 2026 LPB forecast by 20% while raising ex-platform origination estimates by 25%. The 2H guide now requires a significant acceleration to hit full-year targets, a ramp the company believes its heavier 1H marketing investment will support. Whether that plays out depends on the LPB returning to form and the Technology segment stabilizing after losing Chime as a customer. (SoFi)

TOASTER’S TAKE

The SoFi management team’s earnings call left a goldmine of intel for marketers in the lending niche.

Here’s some things that stood out to us:

Their unaided brand awareness rose to an all-time high of 10% up 300bps from a year ago. We knew SoFi’s brand investments were top notch, but now we have data to quantify just how well they’re doing on this front.
Lending distribution = Direct mail + affiliates
- Many of us have this deeply ingrained in our DNA, but it’s nice to have a leader like SoFi put it out there in the open. “The lending business has historically been one that relies on legacy channels such as direct mail, but is heavily influenced by affiliate partnerships.” -Anthony Noto, CEO
Checking/savings distribution = Digital
- “Our SoFi Money product is a broad-based digital strategy that we leverage to drive good marketing efficiencies.” -Anthony Noto, CEO
Credit card 0% APR Balance Transfer offers are working
- “We're starting to see people transition from balance transfers with zero APRs actually paying a full APR at a reasonable rate.” -Anthony Noto, CEO
Brokerage distribution = Affiliate + digital
- “And that, again, is really an affiliate and visual marketing channel acquisition product.” -Anthony Noto, CEO
Crypto distribution = Not sure, still developing a POV
- “Crypto is the new kid on the street, and we’re developing new opportunities for marketing there.” -Anthony Noto, CEO

SoFi just publicly confirmed that affiliates are core to lending, checking/savings, and brokerage. For Toaster readers (many of whom are specialists/operators in this channel), this should be no surprise, but it also shows that the channel isn’t going anywhere, even for players with SoFi’s scale and brand.

We’ll be breaking down the friction between SoFi’s record growth and the market’s skeptical reaction in-depth later this week on The Free Toaster News Pod. Be sure to tune in!

Reach the Borrowers Others Miss.

Bulldog Media Group specializes in connecting consumer lenders with less than perfect borrowers — a massive, underserved market that requires precision targeting to get right. With 25 years of financial services marketing experience, they deliver qualified leads through affiliate marketing, targeted email, and data-driven acquisition strategies built for this exact audience.

If you’re a lender looking to scale, these are your people.

Get Qualified Borrower Leads

Experian Launches Agent Trust to Verify AI-Driven Transactions

Experian launched Agent Trust™, an identity verification framework that links AI agents to verified human owners to facilitate agentic commerce. Experian currently prevents $15 to $19 billion in annual fraud losses and is applying that data infrastructure to verify bot-initiated transactions. The system uses Human-to-Agent Binding to create a secure link between a consumer’s device and their AI representative. A real-time Agent Trust Token signals identity, consent, and fraud risk to merchants during the checkout process. An Agent Registry also monitors bot behavior over time to identify misrepresentation or unauthorized actions. The technology integrates with existing payment standards from Visa, Cloudflare, and Skyfire. This platform-agnostic tool allows businesses to process automated purchases while maintaining a verified connection to a human payer. (Experian)

Stripe Powers Checkout Inside Google’s AI Mode and Gemini

Google is turning AI Mode and the Gemini app into a direct sales channel. Businesses can now list products inside AI-generated responses and complete transactions without the user leaving the interface. The infrastructure is Stripe‘s Agentic Commerce Suite, handling discovery, checkout, and payment inside the AI experience. Retailers like Best Buy, Kate Spade, and Coach are already live. Quince, Fanatics, and JD Sports are coming on the Google side.

Affiliate-driven comparison sites and SEO-optimized landing pages have always competed for the top of Google results. AI Mode removes the click entirely. A consumer asking about the best personal loan or travel card gets an answer, and increasingly a buy button, inside the response itself. Publishers and marketplaces that sit between the consumer and the product, NerdWallet, LendingTree, and similar players, lose the referral step if AI handles both the recommendation and the transaction.

Stripe has already integrated the same setup with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta. And now Google is playing ball, too. (Stripe, PYMNTS)

OneMain Financial Reports Strong Q1 2026 Results with $226M Net Income

OneMain Financial opened 2026 with solid top-line results. Total revenue reached $1.6 billion in Q1, up 6% year-over-year, driven by receivables growth. Managed receivables grew to $26.1 billion, also up 6% from a year ago. Consumer loan originations totaled $3.1 billion, up 3% year-over-year. The company reported net income of $226 million, or $1.93 diluted EPS, versus $1.78 in Q1 2025.

The credit card portfolio is the clearest growth story this quarter. Receivables hit $983 million, up from $676 million a year ago, with customer accounts now at 1.17 million. Revenue yield on credit cards was 33.9%, up 309 basis points year-over-year. Credit card net charge-offs improved sharply, falling 176 basis points year-over-year to 18.0%.

On the consumer loan side, the net charge-off rate was 8.0%, up 19 basis points year-over-year. The 30-plus delinquency rate for consumer loans stood at 5.22%, up 14 basis points year-over-year, though the company noted that the older “back book” loans, now just 5% of the portfolio, are driving an outsized 14% of 30-plus delinquent receivables. The front book, representing originations since August 2022 credit tightening, continues to perform in line with expectations. (OneMain Financial)

E048 - Q&A on Application Friction - Nick interviews Carlos

Nick Madrid interviews Carlos Caro live at the Fintech Summit in NYC on April 28th.

On the heels of a Curated Table Event on April 27th (sponsored by Spinwheel), Nick bumped into Carlos at the Fintech Summit and did a short Q&A on how lenders eliminate friction from their application flows.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, consider checking out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group
Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

Synchrony Becomes Exclusive Issuer for Lowe’s Commercial Co-Brand Card

Synchrony now issues the MyLowe’s Pro Rewards American Express Card, taking over the co-brand portfolio to centralize Lowe’s commercial credit offerings. This new card runs on the American Express network and allows Pro customers to earn rewards at non-Lowe’s locations. It replaces the previous store-only model with a version that carries no annual fee and integrates into the existing MyLowe’s Pro Rewards program. The shift allows Lowe’s to move its commercial credit products under a single issuer to provide simpler applications and flexible financing for business project needs. This transition aims to consolidate the Pro customer experience by linking hardware spending with general business expenses. (Synchrony)

Barclays Completes Acquisition of Best Egg Personal Lending Platform

Barclays completed its acquisition of Best Egg. The deal integrates a scaled origination engine into Barclays US Consumer Bank to expand its existing credit card and deposit operations. Barclays will manage the business while maintaining the Best Egg brand identity. The acquisition follows an initial announcement on October 28, 2025. This transaction shifts Barclays toward a capital-light lending model in the U.S. market. The bank expects the move to increase capital efficiency and diversify its consumer finance revenue. (Barclays)

Upcoming Toaster Events

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders (San Francisco | Sept 23–24)

Step away from the daily grind for a two-day, senior-level industry event in San Francisco. On day one, we’ll spend the day at the Exploratorium, a killer indoor/outdoor space where we’ll have a mix of keynotes, panels, structured networking, and great food & drink overlooking the water. On day two (optional, for anyone interested), we’ll head out to wine country so you can continue the conversations you initiated the day prior. Our goal is to make this Summit the ONE event per year you can’t miss if you’re a lender who’s serious about affiliate marketing.

B2B Fintech Founders Lunch: Using Content & Events to Scale (NYC | May 12)

Join us for a curated lunch and powerful conversation with 20 fellow founders and operators, exploring the most undervalued combination of personal brands and events. The hosts, our own Carlos Caro and Supriya Gupta, will candidly share a few lessons (and mistakes), where some of their best business relationships started and how they are thinking about content strategy this year. B2B fintech founders can learn more and register here.

PayPal Splits into Three Units and Makes Venmo a Standalone Division

PayPal is reorganizing into three business units and establishing Venmo as an independent division to accelerate growth for the payments platform. CEO Enrique Lores is leading this restructuring following his March appointment and the departure of former CEO Alex Chriss. The new structure separates Venmo from a consumer and merchant group and a payment services arm containing Braintree and crypto operations. Creating a standalone Venmo segment simplifies performance tracking and creates a path for a potential sale of the asset. This move follows reports that Stripe evaluated an acquisition of parts of PayPal. The company currently faces intensifying competition from large technology firms and fintech rivals. PayPal shares have slipped 12.7% this year after a 2026 profit forecast fell well short of analyst expectations. Management will disclose further details of the overhaul during next week's earnings call. (Reuters)

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Sources: Fiserv, Mastercard, Visa, Upbound Group (Brigit)

Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

(Credit) Nearly Half Of Americans Regret Financial Decisions Due To A Lack Of Understanding, Experian Research Finds (Experian)

(Travel/Rewards) Lyft And United Launch First-Ever Pay With Miles Option For U.S. Rideshare (Lyft)

(Economy) The U.S.-Iran War Is Coming For Your Credit Score And Mortgage Application (CNBC)

(Lending) Justice Federal Credit Union Selects Upstart To Expand Personal Lending (Business Wire)

(AI/Banking) Introducing AI Agents: Next Phase Of Citi Artificial Intelligence Journey (Citi)

(Security) Frontwave CU Discloses Data Breach Involving Member SSNs (CU Today)

(Tech Standards) PYMNTS: Google And Mastercard Contribute Agentic Commerce Standards To FIDO Alliance (FIDO Alliance)

(Crypto/Cards) Introducing MoonAgents Card (MoonPay)

(Cards) Royal Caribbean Debuts Two New Credit Cards: Are They Worth It? (One Mile at a Time)

(Banking/M&A) Mercury Receives OCC Conditional Approval To Establish Mercury Bank, N.A. (Business Wire)

(M&A) OppFi Announces Definitive Agreement To Acquire BNCCORP, Inc. And BNC National Bank And The Elimination Of Up-C Structure (OppFi)

(Fintech/Investment) Goldman Sachs Invests $50 Million In Kashable (American Banker)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/sofis-best-quarter-yet-disappoints

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

E048 - Q&A on Application Friction - Nick interviews Carlos

Carlos Caro — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:43:52 GMT

Nick Madrid interviews Carlos Caro live at the Fintech Summit in NYC on April 28th.

On the heels of a Curated Table Event on April 27th (sponsored by Spinwheel), Nick bumped into Carlos at the Fintech Summit and did a short Q&A on how lenders eliminate friction from their application flows.

******

To support The Free Toaster Podcast, please visit our sponsors:

Bulldog Media Group:

Bulldog Media Group is a leading performance marketing company that specializes in online customer acquisition for clients in the financial services industry. Since 2000, they have focused on financial services digital marketing as their core niche.

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Spinwheel:

Reduce friction in your lending application with just two fields—phone number and birthdate. Spinwheel’s APIs boost application rates by 20-30% while also providing real-time credit data and seamless payment processing. Want to see it in action? Connect with their Head of Growth for a demo!

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=may

Fintel Connect

Drive thousands of new accounts and billions in deposits with the only partner marketing solution built for fintech and banking – your all-in-one affiliate platform, partner network, agency, and marketing compliance engine.

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New Market Growth:

New Market Growth helps fintech consumer lenders generate explosive growth on affiliate marketing channels like Credit Karma, Experian Marketplace, LendingTree, and others.

Affiliate marketing involves marketing & credit risk expertise, and NMG's founders bring this with 21+ years of lending experience and 8+ years experience as executive affiliate operators.

If you'd like help planning or implementing your affiliate marketing strategy, email us at carlos@newmarketgrowth.com

News Pod #16 - OnePay, Credit One x Bright Money, and Aven's BTC Play

Carlos Caro — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:36:17 GMT

Carlos flies solo this week (Nick is wheels-up from NYC to SF after FinTech Week) to break down three stories from this week's newsletter: OnePay's no-deposit credit builder card, Credit One Bank's embedded integration with Bright Money, and Aven's new Bitcoin-backed Visa with credit limits up to $1M. He also opens up the floor on five format ideas for the September 23rd Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders event in San Francisco and wants your vote.

The Free Toaster publishes every Wednesday at thefreetoaster.com, curating the strongest stories at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology, so you can stay informed without slogging through ten newsletters and an off-topic LinkedIn feed.

******

To support The Free Toaster Podcast, please visit our sponsors:

Spinwheel:

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New Market Growth:

If you'd like help planning or implementing your affiliate marketing strategy, email us at carlos@newmarketgrowth.com

OnePay Launches (Credit) Builder Card

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 20:07:16 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Fintel Connect.

OnePay is bridging the credit gap for thin-file consumers with its new no-deposit, no-fee Builder Card. Meanwhile, LendingClub had a strong quarter where originations climbed 31%. Capital One’s net income hit $2.2B as the Discover acquisition takes full effect, while American Express continues to dominate the premium market with an 18% jump in membership fees. Additionally, Aven launched a Bitcoin-backed Visa Card and Cash App is capturing Gen Alpha with new accounts for kids as young as six.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please forward this email to 1 of your colleagues!

OnePay Launches Builder Card: No Deposit, No Credit Check, No Fees

The OnePay Credit Builder card enters a crowded space. With similar existing products from Chime, Current, Kikoff, Arro, Upgrade, and more! It runs on Mastercard rails, connects directly to the customer’s Cash account, and reports positive payment activity to all three major bureaus each month. Customers spend from their available balance, the app sets funds aside automatically, and payments run on autopilot. No revolving debt, no way to overspend.

The card is only available to existing Cash account holders, a choice that deepens the app’s value for users already in the ecosystem. OnePay doesn't need to underwrite it. The Builder Card spends from a balance the customer already holds, so there's no default risk to price for. It can serve the consumer that Chase and Capital One walked away from, and it costs OnePay almost nothing to do it. OnePay's distribution comes from Walmart, where 90% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a store.

The timing also lines up with a bigger distribution push. Three weeks ago, OnePay became a Workday Wellness partner, putting its financial tools inside employer HR and payroll systems. Workers switching direct deposit through Workday can now access banking, investing, and credit building in one app. For context on where the company stands: back in January, we shared that OnePay hit a $4B valuation, up from $2.5B in 2024. It has 3 million monthly active users and is built almost entirely on the Walmart partnership. The Workday deal suggests they are ready to grow beyond it. (OnePay)

Is Your Marketing ROI Falling Behind Other Banks and Credit Unions?

Cornerstone Advisors‘ latest report, commissioned by Fintel Connect, The Marketing ROI Gap in Banking uncovers a growing disconnect between where financial institutions invest and where they actually see results. Based on insights from 126 senior executives at large U.S. banks and credit unions, the data points to a persistent gap between spend, performance, and measurable ROI.

Inside the report, you’ll find:

ROI measurement is still broken: 20% of banking executives can’t reliably attribute marketing outcomes, and nearly 60% say their core or CRM limits ROI measurement.
Affiliate is a major missed opportunity: Only one-third of financial institutions use it, yet it ranks among the top channels for customer lead quality and remains one of the most underleveraged channels in the mix.
Budgets aren’t performance-driven: 60% of institutions still set marketing budgets based on last year’s spend rather than ROI.

Written for marketing, growth, lending, and finance leaders, this report highlights where performance is breaking down - and where smarter investment decisions can unlock stronger returns.

Rethinking your growth strategy?

Start Here

Credit One Bank and Bright Money Partner to Launch Embedded Credit Card Tools

Credit One Bank integrated its credit card products into the Bright Money app, granting more than 1 million users direct access to three Visa products. This partnership marks the bank's second fintech integration using its proprietary API, following a 2025 deal with MoneyLion. Users link bank accounts to the Bright Money’s Money Science algorithm to receive personalized offers for the Platinum Visa for Rebuilding Credit or two Platinum Rewards Visa options. All three cards provide 1% cash back on gas, groceries, and telecommunications. The system uses AI to analyze income and spending before facilitating the application process within the native app environment. This move targets digital-first consumers by bypassing traditional external application sites. (PR Newswire)

Aven Launches Bitcoin-Backed Visa Card With Up To $1M Credit Limit

Aven launched a Bitcoin-backed Visa card that provides a line of credit up to $1 million without requiring the sale of the underlying bitcoin asset. The Aven Bitcoin Visa Card functions as a secured loan where users deposit bitcoin with an OCC-regulated custodian to access liquidity for everyday purchases or major expenses. This structure allows long-term investors to avoid costly tax consequences associated with capital gains while maintaining their original BTC positions. The product features fixed-rate terms lasting up to 10 years and includes a 5-year interest-only payment period. Users receive unlimited 2% cash back on purchases and pay no annual fee for the account. A 1% fee applies to cash outs and the card carries risk of liquidation if market volatility impacts collateral value. Aven originally focused on home equity products and is now applying the secured lending model to digital assets. (Aven)

LendingClub’s $2.67B Originations and the Rebrand

LendingClub closed Q1 2026 ahead of guidance on every major metric and announced it is rebranding to Happen Bank this summer. Total net revenue reached $252.3M, up 16% year-over-year. Originations hit $2.67B, up 31% from $2.03B in Q1 2025, driven by product and marketing initiatives. Net interest income grew 18% to $176.2M, with net interest margin expanding to 6.28% from 5.97% a year ago. Deposit funding costs came down, with the average rate on interest-bearing deposits dropping to 3.60% from 3.91% in Q1 2025. The rebrand reflects a deliberate repositioning away from its marketplace lending roots toward a full-service digital bank, one that combines deposits, lending, and a capital-light marketplace model under a single consumer brand.

The credit story is where lending teams should pay close attention. LendingClub's personal loan book is priced at an average APR of around 15%, against the national credit card average of 22%, a 700 basis point gap that the company is actively using as a customer acquisition argument. Net charge-offs on loans held for investment dropped to $42.5M from $76.1M in Q1 2025, a 44% improvement. For credit and lending teams, their NIM expansion signals that LendingClub is growing volume while actually improving book quality, not trading one for the other.

The Happen Bank rebrand could also help with distribution. Moving from a lending-first identity to a full banking brand gives the company more surface area to cross-sell deposits, checking, and eventually home improvement loans into its existing base of 5 million members. (LendingClub)

News Pod #15 - OpenAI Acquires Hiro Finance

In the latest The Free Toaster News Pod, we deconstruct OpenAI’s power move into the financial sector with their acquisition of Hiro Finance. Building on our recent coverage, we look at how this integration could reshape consumer lending distribution. It’s a quick breakdown of what changes when a major AI player moves deeper into fintech infrastructure.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, consider checking out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group
Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

TransUnion Q1 2026: 14% Growth Fueled by U.S. Lending Surge

TransUnion reported $1,246 million in total revenue for Q1 2026, up 14% year-over-year (11% on an organic constant currency basis), beating its own guidance across revenue. U.S. Financial Services drove the quarter, growing 24% organically to $501 million. Within that, auto was up 11%, consumer lending up 21%, and card/banking up 5%. Full-year 2026 revenue guidance was raised to $5.10–$5.14 billion, primarily reflecting the completed acquisition of TransUnion de Mexico, with organic constant currency growth assumptions held steady at 8–9%.

The number that matters most for lending and fintech operators: U.S. Financial Services revenue grew 24% year-over-year to $501 million. That segment covers the credit data and analytics products lenders rely on for underwriting, marketing, and customer acquisition. Growth was broad-based across lending verticals, which signals that lenders are pulling more data, running more decisioning, and actively growing their books.

What makes these numbers hold up over time is the data underneath them. At its March Investor Day, TransUnion management noted that 95% of revenue comes from a proprietary data moat: 84% core credit, 11% alternative data. The Neustar acquisition added identity resolution data; the Argus acquisition brought over 450 billion credit card transactions. Management has been leaning into alternative data, including utility payments and rental furnishing tradelines, to supplement core credit files, deepen penetration, and build new products. (TransUnion)

Amex Reports 11% Revenue Increase and Record Card Member Spend

American Express posted a strong Q1 2026, with total revenues of $18.9 billion, up 11% year-over-year. Card member spend accelerated to 10% growth, the highest quarterly rate in three years. Net card fees hit $2.8 billion, up 18%, compounding at 17% annually since 2019. Net interest income grew 13% to $4.7 billion, driven by revolving balance growth. Despite revenue coming in at or above the high end of full-year guidance, management held its 2026 outlook at 9-10% revenue growth, citing a forthcoming drag from two commercial card partnership exits: Lowe’s moving to Synchrony and Amazon transitioning to U.S. Bank in Q3.

Net card fees growing at a 17% CAGR since 2019 reflects a durable premium card model still pulling in annual fee customers. 73% of all new accounts acquired globally were on annual fee products.

On the lending side, net interest income has grown 12% year-over-year for four consecutive quarters. The bigger strategic story is Amex’s push into agentic AI commerce. The company launched its Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) developer kit and introduced Amex Agent Purchase Protection, an industry-first commitment to cover registered agentic purchases by cardholders.

Amex also recently acquired Hypercard. Management was clear on the earnings call that this is a long-term play. The thesis centers on Amex’s closed-loop network: its ability to match declared purchase intent with actual transaction data gives it fraud detection and authorization capabilities that open networks cannot replicate. They noted this could ultimately produce stronger fraud protection than what exists today in both online and brick-and-mortar commerce, where purchase intent data is simply unavailable. (American Express)

Capital One Reports $2.2B Net Income Amid Discover Acquisition Gains

Capital One posted $15.2 billion in total net revenue for Q1 2026, up 52% year-over-year. The growth is largely attributable to the Discover acquisition closing in May 2025. Quarter-over-quarter, revenue fell 2%, driven by lower net interest income as the company carried higher average cash balances and saw lower average credit card loans. The credit card segment generated $11.4 billion in net revenue, up 59% year-over-year. Domestic card purchase volume reached $216.5 billion, up 40% year-over-year but down 8% from Q4 2025, consistent with seasonal patterns. Pre-provision earnings grew 8% quarter-over-quarter to $6.8 billion.

On the credit side, the trend is improving. The domestic card 30-plus day performing delinquency rate fell to 3.70%, down 55 basis points year-over-year. The domestic card net charge-off rate came in at 5.10%, down 109 basis points from Q1 2025. Morgan Stanley noted that Capital One management described the consumer as remaining robust, with unemployment improving and card purchase volumes accelerating, while delinquencies outperformed seasonal expectations. On expenses, Morgan Stanley flagged that adjusted non-interest expense came in about 3% better than forecast, with the adjusted efficiency ratio at 49.7% versus an estimated 50.6%. That said, marketing spend is expected to increase through the rest of 2026, as Q1 reflects both a seasonal low and a deliberate timing shift of some marketing investment into later quarters. (Capital One)

The Toaster team is on the ground in NYC for Fintech Week.

We kicked things off with a hosted dinner, The Free Toaster Presents: Eliminating Friction In Your Marketing Funnel, sponsored by Spinwheel. The room brought together operators and growth leaders across lending and fintech.

In the photo: Amanda Braslow, Carlos Caro, and Nick Madrid from The Free Toaster with attendees from the dinner.

Upcoming Toaster Events:

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Decision Makers (San Francisco | Sept 23–24)
Step away from the daily grind for a two-day, senior-level industry event in San Francisco. On day one, we’ll spend the day at the Exploratorium, a killer indoor/outdoor space where we’ll have a mix of keynotes, panels, structured networking, and great food & drink overlooking the water. On day two (optional, for anyone interested), we’ll head out to wine country so you can continue the conversations you initiated the day prior. Our goal is to make this Summit the ONE event per year you can’t miss if you’re a lender who’s serious about affiliate marketing.

Missed the Direct Mail Curated Table event on March 5th? Check out what I learned here.

Equifax Posts 14% Revenue Growth in Q1; Maintains Conservative 2026 Outlook

Equifax posted Q1 2026 revenue of $1.649 billion, up 14% year-over-year and $37 million above its February guidance midpoint. The beat was driven primarily by a strong U.S. mortgage market in January and February before rates rose following the Iran conflict. Equifax maintained its full-year 2026 constant currency revenue guidance of 10-12% growth, citing continued uncertainty around interest rates and mortgage activity, while raising its reported revenue guidance by $25 million for favorable FX impact.

USIS, the segment most directly relevant to consumer lenders, delivered 21% revenue growth in Q1. Within that, Diversified Markets, which covers financial institutions, auto, and consumer lending, grew only 3%, with core FI and core auto each up mid-single digits. Consumer Lending under Workforce Solutions Verification Services grew 14% year-over-year. Notably, Morgan Stanley flagged that volumes softened later in the quarter, not just in mortgage but also to a lesser extent in auto and card. On the credit scoring side, Equifax is actively pushing VantageScore 4.0 adoption at a $1 price point, with 240+ mortgage lenders currently testing it alongside paid FICO scores. A full conversion to VantageScore would reduce USIS mortgage scoring revenue by approximately $385 million, but increase Equifax’s adjusted EBITDA by roughly $35 million at current volumes. Morgan Stanley maintained its Overweight rating on the stock, noting that credit bureaus are starting from a muted base and should enter a multi-year upcycle trend, with the potential to grow revenue at low-double-digit to mid-teens rates. The firm also pushed back on AI disruption concerns, arguing that the bureaus’ data and regulatory moats should insulate them from competition. (Equifax)

Cash App Targets Gen Alpha With Parent-Managed Accounts for Kids 6-12

Cash App launched managed accounts for children aged 6 to 12 to capture the Gen Alpha demographic. The financial platform owned by Block provides mobile payments, debit cards, and investing services. Parents control these accounts through their own Cash App profile. Kids receive a debit card and earn 3.25% interest on savings balances. The service allows automated allowance transfers and P2P payments from up to five parent-approved contacts. Cash App currently has 5 million monthly active teen users. Users transition to a sponsored account with stock and Bitcoin trading capabilities at age 13. PwC data shows 89% of Gen Alpha teens already have their own smartphone, while 72% regularly spend on categories like food and drinks and over half purchase digital goods like apps and in-game items. (Cash App)

American Express Integrates Resy into Anthropic’s Claude for Real-Time Reservations

American Express integrated its Resy digital dining platform into Anthropic’s Claude AI to provide real-time table availability for U.S. restaurants. Resy operates software that manages reservations and connects restaurants to a network of diners. Users can now search for restaurants within Claude and receive prompts to connect to the Resy app. The integration displays restaurant recommendations based on chat context. It allows users to view venue pages, check available tables, and set Notify alerts. Claude then redirects users to Resy.com or the mobile app to finalize bookings. This partnership surfaces inventory to diners to help restaurants drive demand. (American Express)

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

(Auto) America’s Pandemic Car Bubble Is Now Trapping Buyers in Debt (WSJ)

(Lending) Affirm: Agentic Credit Rewrites the Rules of Consumer Lending (PYMNTS)

(Cards) AT&T and Citi Enhance the AT&T Points Plus Card (Citigroup)

(Payments) Uber and Block Expand Global Partnership to Transform Restaurant Operations and Launch Cash App Pay (Uber)

(Cards) Alaska Air Group and Bank of America Expand Long-Standing Credit Partnership (Bank of America)

(Lending) Total Expert Launches Customer IQ to Power Agentic Era in Mortgage Banking and Consumer Lending (Business Wire)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/onepay-launches-credit-builder-card

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

News Pod #15 - OpenAI Acquires Hiro Finance

Carlos Caro — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:32:56 GMT

Carlos and Nick expand on the headline story from this week’s Newsletter. And they speculate on what this might mean for consumer lending distribution platforms.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thefreetoaster/p/openai-doubles-down-hiro-finance?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

*****

To support The Free Toaster Podcast, please visit our sponsors:

Spinwheel:

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Fintel Connect

https://partner.fintelconnect.com/get-to-know-fintel-connect?utm_campaign=13897733-2025%20Partners&utm_source=The%20Free%20Toaster&utm_medium=podcast

New Market Growth:

If you'd like help planning or implementing your affiliate marketing strategy, email us at carlos@newmarketgrowth.com

OpenAI Doubles Down: Hiro Finance Marks Second Fintech Buy in Six Months

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:17:34 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Spinwheel.

OpenAI acquired Hiro Finance on April 13, its second fintech purchase following the 2025 acquisition of Roi. Meanwhile, LendingClub will rebrand to Happen Bank this summer. Mission Lane applied for a national bank charter with the OCC and FDIC to transition from its partner-bank model. FinWise Bancorp partnered with Vera, Inc. to launch an unsecured credit card program, while Synchrony launched a private label card for RH. Additionally, Ally and Bank of America reported their Q1 2026 earnings.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please forward this email to 1 of your colleagues!

OpenAI Doubles Down on Fintech with Hiro Finance and Roi Acquisitions

OpenAI acquired personal finance startup Hiro Finance on Monday, marking its second fintech purchase in six months following the October 2025 acquisition of Roi. Hiro Finance develops tools for complex financial modeling and what-if scenarios, helping users project the impact of debt and investments. Founder Ethan Bloch and his team will join OpenAI to work on specialized engineering projects, while Hiro Finance shuts down operations on April 20. This follows the deal for Roi, a startup that raised $3.6 million from Spark Capital and Gradient Ventures to build a portfolio tracking app with an AI-driven investment advisor. While Roi focused on retail investment personalization, Hiro Finance adds deeper capabilities in mathematical financial simulations. These acquisitions support OpenAI’s expansion into enterprise services through Codex Labs, which currently reports over 4 million weekly active users. OpenAI is also scaling its global reach through a partnership with Infosys to deploy AI tools across 60 countries. (American Banker) (TechCrunch) (Fintech Futures)

Toaster’s Take

Hiro and Roi were not acquired because OpenAI wanted a budgeting app. They were acquired because both teams had figured out something specific: how to take messy personal financial data and turn it into a clear, actionable output. That’s a hard problem. Hiring for it in-house is harder.

What’s worth watching is where that capability lands inside ChatGPT. Hiro wasn’t just a recommendation engine. It was built to model what happens after you make a decision. That’s a different product category than “here are your options.” It’s closer to execution than discovery.

Today’s distribution model for lending depends on a user seeing an offer, deciding to pursue it, and completing the process themselves. Every click in that chain is a potential drop-off point. If OpenAI builds a layer that collapses those steps, ChatGPT-native financial starts feeling way more convenient than 2026-era marketplaces.

Google tried this. It had the data, the reach, and the brand. It still couldn’t get users to trust it with their financial lives. OpenAI may be more advanced on the product side, but the trust problem doesn’t go away because the AI is smarter. It’s a separate barrier, and it’s real.

The question isn’t whether OpenAI can build a good financial product. It almost certainly can, if it put the right resources against it. The question is whether users will convey their trust. Recommending a loan is one thing. Applying for one on your behalf (at potentially dozens of lenders) is another conversation entirely.

For now, the pressure is low. Adoption will be gradual. But the benchmark for convenience is shifting. Platforms built around user-driven flows should be paying attention, because the standard for “low friction” is about to get redefined.

We will be digging into this story further later this week in The Free Toaster podcast.

LendingClub to Become Happen Bank, “a Digital Bank for People Going Places”

LendingClub will officially rebrand to Happen Bank in the summer of 2026. The company operates a digital marketplace bank that currently serves more than 5 million members and has facilitated over $100 billion in loans. CEO Scott Sanborn noted the name change follows a multi-year transition from an online lender to a diversified digital-first bank. The new identity targets the Motivated Middle, defined as high-FICO, above-average income consumers who actively manage their finances. While the visual branding will change, the bank will maintain its existing interest rates, loan terms, and account features. The shift includes a new website, mobile app, and marketing system designed to reflect action and progress. Management indicates the name change aligns with their expanded banking capabilities and a strategy to deliver long-term shareholder value. This rebrand marks the next phase of a business model that combines credit underwriting with a digital marketplace. (PR Newswire)

Mission Lane Credit Card Startup Applies For Bank Charter

Mission Lane applied for a national bank charter with the OCC and FDIC to transition from a fintech partner to a standalone special-purpose credit card bank. The Richmond-based company currently serves three million customers and targets a niche of 70 million credit-marginalized Americans underserved by traditional finance. As a CEBA institution, the proposed Mission Lane Bank will focus exclusively on credit card products and optional credit protection. The bank will not accept demand deposits, offer checking accounts, or engage in commercial lending. This filing moves the firm toward a de novo charter, following similar moves by Affirm, Upstart, and Mercury. Mission Lane currently relies on Transportation Alliance Bank to issue its cards. Obtaining this charter allows the company to operate under a federal regulatory framework rather than relying on third-party sponsor banks. (PYMNTS)

News Pod #14 - Wells Fargo Books 631,000 New Credit Card Accounts in Q1 2026 - How Did They Do It?

In the latest The Free Toaster News Pod, we deconstruct Wells Fargo’s massive 60% YOY surge in credit card bookings, totaling 631,000 new accounts for Q1 2026. Expanding on their recent newsletter coverage, we dig into the aggressive acquisition tactics fueling this volume and what it means for the rest of the industry. It’s a quick-hit breakdown of how the banking giant is suddenly dominating the customer acquisition race.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by sharing this edition with a colleague!

And, consider checking out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group
Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

FinWise Bancorp Partners with Vera, Inc. to Launch Unsecured Consumer Credit Card Program

FinWise Bancorp signed a BIN sponsorship agreement with Vera, Inc. to launch an unsecured consumer credit card program for prime and near-prime U.S. borrowers. FinWise Bancorp provides API-driven banking and payment infrastructure to fintech firms. Under this deal, FinWise Bank issues the cards while Vera, Inc. serves as the program manager and purchases the resulting receivables. The cards offer three reward modes with no annual fees and function through Vera, Inc.'s mobile application. The technical stack utilizes Zeta’s Tachyon cloud-native processing platform. Vera, Inc. is a 2025 startup led by former Capital One executives. This partnership expands FinWise Bancorp’s existing strategic program lending and payments business. (Global Newswire)

Synchrony Launches Integrated Credit Card Program for RH

Synchrony launched a new private label credit card for RH to provide promotional financing across the retailer's galleries, outlets, and e-commerce sites. RH operates as a luxury home furnishings curator with retail locations and hospitality experiences across North America and Europe. The card integrates with the RH Members Program to combine existing 30% member discounts with specific financing rates. Synchrony uses its PRISM decisioning system to evaluate 9,000 data attributes for each applicant. This system provides credit decisions within minutes during the customer checkout process. The partnership expands Synchrony's footprint in the home segment where it currently maintains contracts with over 50% of the Furniture Today Top 100 retailers. RH customers gain access to these financing options immediately through a digital prequalification process. (Synchrony)

Upcoming Toaster Events:

Eliminating Funnel Friction: A Private Dinner (NYC | April 27th)
Join us for an evening of high-level shop talk at a curated dinner in the heart of New York City. We’re skipping the slide decks and the “salesy” conference energy in favor of something more authentic. It’s just 15 growth leaders, a table of incredible food, and a raw discussion on the design tweaks and tech stacks actually moving the needle on conversions right now. Learn more about the event here.

Missed the Direct Mail Curated Table event on March 5th? Check out what I learned here.

CarParts.com Introduces the CarParts.com Mastercard®

CarParts.com launched the CarParts.com Mastercard through a partnership with Concora Credit and The Bank of Missouri. This technology-led e-commerce business sells over 1.5 million vehicle parts and accessories via its nationwide distribution network. The new credit program offers cardholders 3% cashback on CarParts.com purchases and 1% on other transactions. Customers can prequalify for the card without a credit score impact. This launch follows a product expansion that added 100,000 SKUs to the company catalog over the last year. The company also recently introduced the CarParts+ membership and specialized hubs for European and performance vehicles. CEO David Meniane stated the strategy focuses on building a driver-first experience to simplify vehicle maintenance. The company continues to manage several private-label brands including JC Whitney and Garage-Pro. (CarParts.com)

Sezzle Canada Launches Virtual Card, Expanding Buy Now, Pay Later Capabilities

Sezzle launched its Virtual Card in Canada to enable in-store "buy now, pay later" payments at point-of-sale terminals. The fintech company provides interest-free installment financing and currently reports 1.9 million user sign-ups and nearly 7 million total orders in the Canadian market. Sezzle integrated the card with Marqeta technology to allow eligible users to add the credential to Apple Pay and Google Wallet. This expansion targets more than 90% of Canadian retailers that accept contactless payments, including SoftMoc, JD Sports, and QE Home. Internal 2025 survey data showed 74% of users were more likely to shop in-store if Sezzle was an available payment option. The launch aims to increase transaction volume and basket sizes for brick-and-mortar merchants without requiring new hardware integrations. (Sezzle)

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Sources: Ally, Bank of America

Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

(Fraud) As AI-Driven Fraud Grows More Sophisticated, Advanced Digital Defense Becomes Essential (TransUnion)

(Banking) North Iowa Community Credit Union Launches Mahalo Digital Banking Platform (Business Wire)

(Payments) Adyen Expands Its Partnership With lastminute.com By Introducing Virtual Card Issuing For Supplier Payments (Adyen)

(Fintech) Slash, A Ramp Competitor Founded By Teenagers, Raises $100M At $1.4B Valuation (TechCrunch)

(Lending) 4Front Credit Union Selects Scienaptic AI’s LendSmart Auto To Power Deal-Level Vehicle Loan Pricing (Scienaptic AI)

(Payments) Galileo Enables SoFi To Send And Receive FedNow® Service Payments (Business Wire)

(Acquisition) American Express To Acquire Hyper, Adding To Its AI Expertise And Expense Management Capabilities (American Express)

(Cards) Wells Fargo Adds Wyndham Rewards As A Transfer Partner (Forbes)

(Fintech) Ramp Is Telling Investors It Is About To Hit $1.4 Billion In Revenue A Year, As The Company Prepares To Go Public (Business Insider)

(Marketing) Ally Achieves Historic 50/50 Sports Media Pledge One Year Ahead Of Schedule (Ally)

(Payments) Airwallex Is About To Take On Stripe And The Rest Of The Payments Industry — In The Physical World (TechCrunch)

(AI) Welcome To Vibe Ordering, ChatGPT Is Taking Your Order Now (PYMNTS)

(Cards) Lobster.cash Teams With Mastercard To Secure Agentic Card Transactions (PYMNTS)

(Payments) Venmo Continues Its Evolution From A Peer-To-Peer App Into A Money Movement App For The Next Generation (PayPal)

(Innovation) American Express Debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE)™ Developer Kit And Announces Industry-First Protection For Registered Agent Purchases (American Express)

(Cards) Private Credit Is On The Hunt For Credit-Card Debt (WSJ)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/openai-doubles-down-hiro-finance

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

What I Learned At The First Free Toaster Curated Table Event

Carlos Caro — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:14:49 GMT

We missed you at the first Curated Table event in New York City on March 5th sponsored by ICS Corporation (and its subsidiaries IM Group, LAMA, and Sayker Analytics).

Our guests - primarily senior marketing executives at consumer lenders - came together to discuss what’s working (and what’s not) in Direct Mail marketing in 2026.

First a few pictures so you have feel for the vibe 👇

The headline observation: mail still drives roughly 40% of new accounts for the lenders at my table. That’s typical for growth-stage fintech lenders I speak with, too.

Some other cool things I learned 💡

The 30% “oops, I lost it” stat. Of the consumers who intend to respond to a mail piece, roughly 30% no longer have the mail piece by the time they act. They remember the brand, Google it, and convert through paid search or “organic” — with limited connection back to the mailer that actually planted the idea. Make sure your attribution model considers this.

The holdout hack. Everyone at the table had basically given up on “perfect” statistical attribution for mail. Consensus: stop trying to build models on top of production data. Run a holdout instead. Mail one group, hold back a matched control, measure the lift. You end up with one clean incremental number you can actually defend in a budget meeting, instead of a complicated attribution model nobody trusts anyway. Our table had consensus that the word “attribution” was more closely associated with organizational politics than math or truth. That one hit home and I had never heard it framed that way.

The LTV by channel point. The teams that actually track lifetime value by acquisition channel consistently see direct mail customers outperform digital. I’m not sure if this is because direct mail reaches older customers and those customers are inherently more valuable, or if it’s because of something more subtle the channel is doing for lenders.

This one made me laugh. USPS has a discount for mailers who use AI in their creative process. A screenshot of the AI tool is sufficient proof. That is the bar. I don’t think they’ve fully thought through the enforcement mechanism.

On that note — the whole USPS discount menu is more generous than I realized. Most programs are worth up to ~5% each and many of them stack:

Tactile/sensory stuff (textured stocks, scented materials, die-cut edges)
QR codes and AR elements
Informed Delivery — the free program that emails recipients a preview of their mail. You can make your piece clickable in the preview at no cost.
Continuous Contact for remailing the same offer
Sustainability (1% year-round, basically free)
The Growth Incentive Program — up to 30% back on incremental postage for volume increases YoY
The AI screenshot one

A sophisticated mail shop will get you to 7%+ off postage with almost no administrative drag. If you’re not capturing this, that’s free money you’re walking past. Dennis Fish - and the team at ICS - can help you with this if you’re not sure how to operationalize it.

This observation alone would have made it worth the trip to NYC if I was an early stage lender building a mail program for the first time.

Off topic, but the AI conversation got pretty crazy after hours. I had a senior exec show me a Slack bot his team built that would have run circles around me in my peak analyst days. He let me ask it unstructured questions I thought it couldn’t handle and I was impressed by the responses. They even gave it a name and there’s an “executive version” of it very few have access to that taps into HR data like compensation, bonuses, and other sensitive data.

If you’d like to hear more about direct mail marketing insights from the March 5th event, I recently jammed on this with Dennis Fish and John Minalga on The Free Toaster Podcast.

Before we wrap today, I’d like to thank:

Amanda Braslow, our GM of Events - For executing an impressive inaugural Curated Table event for The Free Toaster
Dennis Fish and John Minalga - For trusting us to host the event as our sponsor!
All of our guests - For investing 3+ hours of their evening!

Going forward, Curated Table events will cover a range of marketing topics for lenders, like:

Reducing Friction in Marketing Funnels (April 27th in NYC!)
How Lenders Are Using AI in Their Marketing Workflows
How to Get Marketing and Risk to Play Nice in the Sandbox
What’s Working (and not Working) In Paid Social
Note Swapping on GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

If you’d like to attend a future event, here’s how to stay in the know:

Email Amanda (amanda@thefreetoaster.com) with subject line “Events” to get on our events list (we’ll inform this list before anyone else)
Follow me on LinkedIn

Stay tuned for a big event we have planned for September 23-24 in San Francisco - The Affiliate Marketing Summit for Decision Makers. I hope to see many of you there, if not sooner!

Thanks,

Carlos

PS: If you’re a B2B brand that would like to reach our network of consumer lending leaders, please email Amanda (amanda@thefreetoaster.com) with subject line “Sponsored Dinner” and we’ll setup time to chat.

News Pod #14 - Wells Fargo Books 631,000 New Credit Card Accounts in Q1 2026 - How Did They Do It?

Carlos Caro — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:59:47 GMT

Carlos and Nick try to make sense of Wells Fargo's 60% YOY increase in new credit card customer bookings.

They covered this story in Wednesday's Newsletter and they dig deeper into potential sources of their growth:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/wells-fargo-books-631000-new-credit

Sign up for The Free Toaster Newsletter (www.thefreetoaster.com) to get our curated news at the intersection of consumer lending & marketing, published every Wednesday.

And then come here on Fridays to get our hot takes on a select story (or two) from that edition.

The events they mentioned on the show:

Private Dinner - Eliminating Friction from Marketing Funnels:
https://luma.com/733al355

FTW: The Official New York Fintech Week Conference | April 28–30
https://luma.com/FTW_NYC26

*****

To support The Free Toaster Podcast, please visit our sponsors:

Spinwheel:

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=apr

Fintel Connect

https://partner.fintelconnect.com/get-to-know-fintel-connect?utm_campaign=13897733-2025%20Partners&utm_source=The%20Free%20Toaster&utm_medium=podcast

New Market Growth:

If you'd like help planning or implementing your affiliate marketing strategy, email us at carlos@newmarketgrowth.com

Wells Fargo Books 631,000 New Credit Card Accounts

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 23:22:31 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Bulldog Media Group.

Wells Fargo is reporting a massive surge in new credit card accounts, but there is a catch: purchase volume isn't keeping pace, and a reporting change for co-branded cards is muddying the waters. JPMorgan Chase and Citi are posting major profit jumps , JetBlue and Barclays are overhauling premium card benefits , and Atlas is pivoting to a $999 billionaire charge card after its previous debit startup collapsed.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please share our Newsletter or Podcast with 1 of your colleagues!

Wells Fargo Posts $5.3B Q1 Profit as Loan Growth Hits $1 Trillion Milestone

Wells Fargo posted $21.4 billion in revenue for Q1 2026, up 6% year-over-year, with net income of $5.3 billion. The loan book crossed $1 trillion in period-end balances, with commercial and industrial lending the primary growth driver, up 23% year-over-year. Consumer loans held relatively flat. Deposits were up 7%, and average deposit costs continued falling, down 15 basis points from the same period last year. Consumer loans grew modestly, up about 4% year-over-year, with auto originations more than doubling and credit card balances up 5%. Card fees climbed 9% on higher merchant processing and debit interchange income. Headcount fell 7%, which management tied to ongoing efficiency initiatives, while advertising and promotion spend jumped over 100% year-over-year.

The more interesting story for fintech operators is what’s happening in Consumer Banking. Wells opened 631,000 new credit card accounts in Q1 2026, nearly 60% more than the 396,000 opened in Q1 2025. Purchase volume also climbed, reaching $40.0 billion versus $36.7 billion a year prior. Both figures cover combined consumer and small business customer activity. Worth flagging: Wells revised its credit card metrics this quarter to exclude co-branded cards, with prior periods restated to match. That means the growth figure reflects proprietary card activity only, which is worth keeping in mind before reading too much into the year-over-year jump. (Wells Fargo)

Toaster’s Take

Account growth of that magnitude runs far above the typical 5-10% range for large issuers. That alone is worth a second look. But the bigger puzzle is what isn’t moving alongside it. Purchase volume grew modestly year-over-year. Balances don’t show a similar spike. Delinquencies are stable. The natural question: if these are high-quality acquisitions, why isn’t spend following?

A few possible explanations:

One is churn. The metric here is new accounts, not net new accounts. Wells could be adding aggressively on one end while losing or closing accounts on the other. Another is acquisition mix. If the funnel has shifted toward lower-spend or promotional-driven signups, you’d get exactly this pattern: strong account numbers, weak purchase volume. A third is portfolio reshuffling. Wells may be migrating customers from discontinued products into new ones, which counts as new accounts in the data without necessarily representing new customers.

The co-branded card exclusion adds another layer. Wells revised its credit card metrics this quarter to exclude co-branded cards, with prior periods restated to match. That change affects how the year-over-year growth reads, and it’s worth keeping in mind when interpreting the magnitude of the spike.

The new card launches don’t resolve the question either. Wells rolled out a Private Bank Visa Infinite and Autograph Premier this quarter, both targeting high-income and private banking clients through tight underwriting and limited distribution. These are relationship-deepening products, not intended for the mass-market. The audience is simply too small to generate 200,000-plus incremental accounts in a single quarter. And if premium cards were driving the growth, you’d expect higher spend per account. That’s not showing up in the numbers.

So the real question heading into Q2 is whether spend starts to move. If it does, this quarter looks like the early signal of a more deliberate push into card acquisition.

We’re digging into this further on the next episode of The Free Toaster News Pod later this week.

Reach the Borrowers Others Miss.

Get Qualified Borrower Leads

JPMorgan Reports Record Q1 2026: $16.5B Profit Amid Robust Growth

JPMorgan posted $16.5B in net income for Q1 2026, up 13% year-over-year, on managed revenue of $50.5B. Average loans grew 11% YoY, card sales volume jumped 9%, and the Card Services net charge-off rate held at 3.47%. Card Services & Auto revenue hit $7.8B, up 13%, driven by higher revolving balances. The Payments business brought in $5.1B, up 12%, on deposit growth and fee expansion. Active mobile customers grew 7% YoY, and the bank opened over 450,000 net new checking accounts in the quarter. CEO Jamie Dimon credited broad-based performance across the franchise, noting that "we continued to acquire new customers at a robust rate," but was measured on the macro outlook: "There is an increasingly complex set of risks, such as geopolitical tensions and wars, energy price volatility, trade uncertainty, large global fiscal deficits and elevated asset prices." (JPMorgan Chase & Co.)

Citi Q1 2026: Cards and Payments Fuel $5.8B Net Income Surge

Citigroup’s Q1 2026 numbers came in strong: $5.8B in net income, up 42% year-over-year, on $24.6B in revenue. The card business is the number to watch. U.S. Consumer Cards pulled in $4.8B in revenue and opened nearly 2.95 million new accounts in the quarter, while net credit losses dropped 11% YoY on improved performance across both general purpose and private label portfolios. Spend volume was up 5% and returns came in just under 20%. On the payments infrastructure side, Treasury and Trade Solutions hit $4.6B, up 17%, with commercial card spend up 8% and cross-border transaction value growing 12%. CEO Jane Fraser described it as “an exceptionally strong start,” noting that “U.S. Consumer Cards saw 4% revenue growth and returns of nearly 20%.” One deal worth flagging for anyone tracking co-brand distribution: the forward purchase commitment of the Barclays American Airlines card portfolio drove a meaningful portion of the ACL build this quarter, suggesting Citi is still actively expanding its co-brand footprint even as others pull back. (Citi)

News Pod #13 - Experian No Ding Decline, American + Citi CoBrand, and Cash App P2P News

In the latest episode of The Free Toaster, Carlos and Nick welcome Capital One veteran Amanda Braslow to break down Experian’s massive “no-ding” expansion into personal loans and why 40% of marketplace volume has already shifted to these rails. The crew dissects the Citi and American Airlines exclusive renewal as a high-stakes play for premium lounge dominance and reacts to Cash App bringing BNPL to P2P transfers.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by recommending us to one of your colleagues!

And, please check out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group
Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

JetBlue and Barclays Add Companion Passes and Status Accelerators to Premier Card

JetBlue and Barclays added several statement credits and status accelerators to the JetBlue Premier World Elite Mastercard while maintaining the $499 annual fee. Cardmembers now receive a 25-tile bonus annually. This deposit completes 50% of the requirements for Mosaic 1 status. The update introduces a tiered companion pass system where $15,000 in annual spend earns a credit up to $500. Spending $75,000 unlocks an additional credit worth up to $1,500. JetBlue also added a 15% redemption rebate on TrueBlue points for award flights and up to $300 in annual credits for TrueBlue Travel bookings. A new partnership with ClassPass provides up to 14 monthly credits for fitness and wellness services. These changes coincide with the airline's expansion of its BlueHouse lounge network. A second location opens at Boston Logan International Airport this summer following the recent opening at JFK. (JetBlue)

NFL and U.S. Bank Expand 20-Year Relationship with Official League Sponsorship

The NFL named U.S. Bank its official bank and wealth management sponsor in a new multi-year agreement. The bank becomes the presenting sponsor of the Super Bowl MVP Award starting with Super Bowl LXI. It also takes a top-tier sponsorship role for the NFL FLAG Championships. The partnership centers on U.S. Bank Financial Edge, a program providing financial education to players regarding cash flow and long-term wealth. Prospect Fernando Mendoza will advise the bank on tailoring these services for athletes navigating NIL contracts. Both organizations will launch a joint corporate social responsibility initiative in the coming months. This deal formalizes a relationship between the two entities that has lasted over 20 years. (US Bank)

Upcoming Toaster Events:

CardCon, April 21-23, 2026 - Amanda, Toaster’s GM of Events, will be at CardCon in Phoenix, Arizona, before heading to The Fintech Summit on April 28, 2026, as part of the action-packed Fintech Week NYC. Whether you are looking to talk shop, explore new partnerships, or simply catch up over coffee, we invite you to connect with us during these events. Contact amanda@thefreetoaster.com

Eliminating Funnel Friction, Private Dinner, April 27th in NYC - We’re hosting a curated dinner in New York City. Our objective is simple: facilitate a high-level exchange on what’s actually working to eliminate friction in your marketing funnel. No presentations. No conference booth vibes. Just 15 marketers, great food, and candid discussion on smart design and better tech to convert your customers. Learn more about the event here.

Bummed about missing CardCon this year? Join Jason Steele, founder of CardCon, and a select group of credit card marketing leaders to talk industry trends at an executive luncheon in NYC on May 6th. If interested, reach out at: jasondsteele@gmail.com.

loanDepot Integrates Figure Underwriting to Launch 5x5 HomeLoan Product

loanDepot and Figure Technology Solutions launched the 5x5 HomeLoan, a digital product offering mortgage approvals in five minutes and funding within five to seven days. loanDepot is a national retail lender that has funded $577 billion to consumers and operates a sales force of 1,800 licensed loan officers. The company integrated Figure’s blockchain-based underwriting engine into its mello technology platform to automate credit decisions. This partnership allows loanDepot to offer purchase, refinance, and equity lines ranging from $25,000 to $750,000 across all 50 states. The product eliminates appraisal fees, standard title costs, and standard closing costs for borrowers. Management expects the integration to reduce the cost to produce loans and increase market share. The loans feature fixed or variable rates with no prepayment penalties. (loanDepot)

Atlas Raises $40M to Pivot From Failed Debit Startup to $420M Billionaire Charge Card

Atlas closed a $40 million Series C funding round at a $420 million valuation led by Elad Gil and Verified Capital. The company operates a high-end charge card with a $999 annual fee and a text-based concierge service for travel and dining. This pivot follows the collapse of the founder's previous startup, Point, which lost its entire customer base after Column ended their banking partnership in 2022. Internal data showed 15% of users drove 90% of transaction volume, prompting the shift from mass-market debit cards to ultrawealthy spenders. Atlas now reports a gross revenue run-rate exceeding $20 million with approximately 2,000 customers. The business model relies on annual fees, 2% interchange fees, and commissions from hotel and airline bookings. Lead Bank currently provides the underlying banking infrastructure. The company competes with the American Express Centurion and JPMorgan Reserve cards by focusing on high-touch service rather than traditional reward points. Current investors include Eric Schmidt, Marathon, and 01 Advisors. (Forbes)

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

(Credit Card) Fed Data Signals Consumers Pulling Back on Credit Card Spending (PYMNTS)

(Lending) loanDepot Partners with Figure to Offer Express Path Loan Products to loanDepot Customers (loanDepot)

(Lending) Pagaya Issues AAA-rated $600 Million Personal Loan ABS Transaction (Pagaya)

(Lending) DuPage Credit Union Selects Upstart For Personal Lending (Upstart)

(Personal Finance) Computer Is Now Your Personal CFO (Perplexity AI)

(Credit) VantageScore Launches RiskRatio™ For Credit Benchmarking (VantageScore)

(AI/Shopping) Visa Opens The Door To AI-Driven Shopping For Businesses Worldwide (Visa)

(Credit) ClearScore Launches New Technical Standard For Agentic Credit Broking (FinTech Futures)

(Banking) Nymbus Launches Industry-Leading, Secure MCP Server For AI-Driven Core Banking Actions (Nymbus)

(Payments) New Loop Partners With Mastercard To Enable Seamless Payments For A Reusable Takeaway Packaging Return System (Mastercard)

(Fintech) Payments Fintech Pepper Pay Declares Bankruptcy (American Banker)

(AI/Banking) Ask, And AIR Makes It Happen (Revolut)

(Credit/AI) Moody’s Brings Credit And Compliance Workflows Directly Into Anthropic’s Claude (Moody’s)

(Payments) PayPal Embeds Payment Links Into Canva Designs (PYMNTS)

(Banking) Citigroup Says AI Helps Speed Account Openings And Systems Upgrades (Reuters)

(BNPL) Velera Wants Consumers To Turn To Credit Unions For BNPL (Velera)

(Financial Health) A Billion Connected: How We’re Empowering Even More People On The Road To Financial Health (Mastercard)

(Payments) Ahold Delhaize USA Introduces Pay By Bank Partnership With Fiserv To Expand Digital Payment Options For Online Grocery Orders (GlobeNewswire)

(Lending) Experian’s First-Of-Its-Kind Self‑Service Digital Onboarding Platform Helps Small Lenders Pull Credit Reports Quickly And Efficiently (Experian)

(Lending) Braviant Holdings Closes Two Revolving Asset-Backed Credit Facilities And A Forward Flow Facility (PR Newswire)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/wells-fargo-books-631000-new-credit

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

E047 - Eliminating Friction in the Lending Funnel, with Rachael Olson, Former Head Of Product Strategy at Discover

Carlos Caro — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:27:24 GMT

Rachael Olson spent years running product strategy on Discover's $6 billion personal loan business, and she joins the show to walk through a real lender's application from marketplace click all the way to the hard pull, screen by screen.

Using a hypothetical billion-dollar lender for round numbers, Rachael shows why the highest-leverage work isn't always at the top of the funnel. A 3% lift in soft-pull submit is worth $50M. Another 3% at hard-pull submit adds $80M. That's $130M+ of upside before anyone touches the credit box.

The teardown gets specific. Forced email verification before any offer is shown. Rent-or-own and vehicle questions that the soft pull will answer anyway. A long pre-soft-pull confirmation page surfacing stale data the borrower doesn't remember entering, including education and net worth. After the offer, a wall of tooltips, footnotes, and filters that could induce decision paralysis. And the origination fee: a $16,900 loan that funds at $14,872, is disclosed towards the end of the process and came as a surprise.

Carlos and Rachael also dig into why mobile starters finish on desktop, why "more data is always better" breaks down once you account for the customers you scare off, and how to actually A/B test your way through changes that touch credit, compliance, and engineering at once.

*****
Want to meet Rachel and Carlos in New York?

If you'd like to discuss eliminating friction in application funnels with your peers, The Free Toaster in hosting a private dinner in New York City on April 27th to facilitate that discussion. And we'll be there!

Register for the event here:
https://luma.com/733al355

*****
Find Rachel Olson on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-olson-7b13525/

Find Carlos Caro on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-carlos-caro/

News Pod #13 - Experian No Ding Decline, American + Citi CoBrand, and Cash App P2P News

Carlos Caro — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:10:35 GMT

Carlos and Nick welcome Amanda Braslow to the show as the newest partner in the business and GM of events. Amanda brings fifteen years from Capital One, most of it in the co-brand trenches. Her first big project putting together the Free Toaster Affiliate Marketing Summit on September 23rd in San Francisco at the Exploratorium.

Three stories this week.

First, Experian extended its no-ding decline feature from credit cards into personal loans. Rakesh at Experian gave us an exclusive data point: over 40 percent of cards and loans acquired through the marketplace now come through no-ding, even though the partner roster seems to be still filling in. Carlos's take for fintech lenders is simple. Get on the phone with Experian and Credit Karma, understand how no-ding and the Karma Guarantee actually work, and get enabled.

Second, Citi and American Airlines are deepening their nearly forty-year co-brand partnership, with Citi branding going up at Admirals Club entrances in Chicago, Dallas, LA, and Miami. Amanda reads this as much more than a logo refresh. American ran a real RFP, dropped Barclays as a second issuer, and Citi almost certainly paid up to lock in solo status and plant a flag for Strada Elite in the premium lounge wars.

Third, Cash App rolled out buy now, pay later on peer-to-peer transfers. Send $25 or more in the last 30 days and you can convert it to a six-week installment plan at a 7.5 percent fee. Nick flags the distribution implications of 59 million monthly transacting users getting BNPL rails, and the group riffs on where this goes next. Amanda's prediction: DraftKings in your inbox offering to finance your next bet. Carlos notes the WSOP is now taking up to $10,000 in buy-ins on credit cards with no fee. Someone is going to get hurt at the end of this, and card issuers should be watching the gambling MCCs closely.

*****

To support The Free Toaster Podcast, please visit our sponsors:

A word from our sponsor, Fintel Connect

https://partner.fintelconnect.com/get-to-know-fintel-connect?utm_campaign=13897733-2025%20Partners&utm_source=The%20Free%20Toaster&utm_medium=podcast

A word from our sponsor, Bulldog Media Group:

Bulldog Media Group is a leading performance marketing company that specializes in online customer acquisition for clients in the financial services industry. Since 2000, they have focused on financial services digital marketing as their core niche.

https://www.bulldogmediagroup.com/

A word from our sponsor, Spinwheel:

https://spinwheel.io/partner/?utm_source=freetoaster&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=apr

A word from our sponsor, New Market Growth:

If you'd like help planning or implementing your affiliate marketing strategy, email us at carlos@newmarketgrowth.com

Experian Expands “No Ding Decline” Feature to Personal Loans

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 20:02:43 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Fintel Connect.

Experian is making it safer to shop for credit by expanding its “No Ding Decline” feature to personal loans. Also, mortgage costs are feeling the heat as FICO implements a huge 1,500% hike on tri-merge fees. We’re also breaking down Cash App’s move into P2P installment plans, the CFPB’s shift in antidiscrimination enforcement , and American Express replacing Visa as the official payments partner of the NFL.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please share our Newsletter or Podcast with 1 of your colleagues!

Experian Expands “No Ding Decline” Feature to Personal Loans

Experian has officially extended its No Ding Decline (NDD) feature to personal loans, allowing users to explore financing options in the Experian Marketplace without the risk of a hard credit inquiry upon rejection. This expansion follows a significant 16% increase in personal loan usage recorded by the company in 2025, a trend mirrored by the fact that 38% of U.S. consumers now hold at least one personal loan.

By using artificial intelligence, the tool pre-aligns applicant profiles with specific lender criteria before a formal application is ever submitted. This expansion builds on the success of the NDD program for credit cards, which has already seen significant adoption.

Speaking exclusively to the Free Toaster team, Experian confirmed the program’s explosive growth.

“With NDD, more than 40% of all cards and loans acquired through our Marketplace are now coming through the NDD program,” said Rakesh Patel, Executive Vice President of Experian Marketplace.

In addition to the loan update, Experian is further diversifying its reach by integrating its Insurance Marketplace into ChatGPT. According to Patel, these strategic moves reflect a broader commitment to “meeting consumers where they are” and reducing the friction of financial discovery. (Experian)

Webinar Alert - ROI for Financial Marketers: What to Measure (and What Not to Chase) in 2026

Join leaders from Fintel Connect, Vested, and Axos Bank for an interactive discussion on how financial marketers should be measuring ROI in 2026 and which metrics are no longer worth chasing. As AI reshapes discovery and performance becomes harder to prove, understanding what truly drives growth has never been more critical.

You’ll Learn

Which metrics actually define ROI—and which ones to move away from
How AI-driven discovery is impacting visibility, trust, and performance
Smarter ways to measure partner and publisher contribution beyond last-click
How to connect marketing efforts to real revenue (qualified volume, funding rates, blended CAC)
Practical frameworks for reporting performance that stand up to executive scrutiny

Whether you're a CMO, Head of Growth, or affiliate marketer in financial services, this webinar will show you how to measure marketing ROI more clearly in 2026.

Reserve Your Spot Now

FICO Hikes Tri-Merge Fees 1,500% as CHLA Reports $540 Average Credit Cost Per Loan

FICO increased its base tri-merge credit report fee from $1.80 in 2022 to $30 for 2026. This 1,500% price hike contributed to total mortgage credit costs rising to an average of $540 per loan. The Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA) reported these findings in a Tuesday update to its 2024 White Paper. Lenders currently lack alternatives because they must use approved scoring models to sell loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The CHLA is requesting that regulators accelerate the approval of competing models such as VantageScore to reduce costs. Current rules often require lenders to pull multiple reports per borrower, which compounds price increases for first-time homebuyers. Rob Zimmer, CHLA’s Director of External Affairs, stated the organization wants to fix a monopoly that will "continue to extract more and more resources from homebuyers." (HousingWire)

Cash App Launches Pay-Over-Time Feature for Peer-to-Peer Transfers

Cash App now allows its 59 million monthly users to convert peer-to-peer transfers of $25 or more into installment plans. This feature enables users to recoup the cost of a past transfer into their balance in exchange for a flat upfront fee. Users repay the balance through weekly installments rather than revolving interest. The product applies to transactions made within the previous 30 days. This expansion follows the previous launch of pay-over-time features for debit card purchases. Eligibility for the installment feature depends on individual customer assessments and state-level regulations. (Cash App)

CFPB Finalizes Rule to Narrow Lending Antidiscrimination Requirements

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is finalizing a regulation to narrow antidiscrimination requirements for lenders by eliminating the disparate impact standard. The CFPB will now focus solely on explicitly discriminatory conduct rather than policies that result in unintentional discriminatory impacts on women and minorities. This move implements a year-old executive order from the Trump administration aimed at reducing compliance burdens and legal liabilities for banks. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is currently reviewing a final version of the rule that contains no material change from the proposal issued in November. Industry groups support the change for reducing regulatory burdens while consumer advocates claim the rule contradicts the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The timing for the formal adoption of the rule remains unconfirmed. (Reuters)

Affiliate Marketing For Deposit Accounts - With Alana Levine, CRO at Fintel Connect

In the latest episode of The Free Toaster, Carlos joins Alana Levine (Fintel Connect) to dive into the high-stakes world of deposit affiliate marketing. Discover why deposit unit economics humble even the most seasoned lenders, how younger consumers became the stickiest depositors, and how to scale to billion-dollar quarters without triggering a regulatory inquiry.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by recommending us to one of your colleagues!

And, please check out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
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Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

American Express Replaces Visa as Official NFL Payments Partner

American Express signed a multi-year deal to become the official payments partner of the NFL starting with the 2026 season. The financial services firm replaces Visa, which ended its thirty-year sponsorship this month. American Express cardholders gain early access to tickets for the 2026 game in Melbourne and benefits at the Super Bowl and NFL Draft. The company’s sports marketing portfolio now includes more than 50 global leagues and teams. American Express will also launch an NFL Extra Points credit card later this year issued by Comenity Capital Bank. This partnership follows existing team-specific deals with the Atlanta Falcons, New York Giants, New York Jets, and Miami Dolphins. Elizabeth Rutledge, Chief Marketing Officer, stated the partnership is a "natural extension" of the company's existing sports portfolio. (Reuters)

American Airlines and Citi Expand Partnership to Admirals Club Lounges

American Airlines and Citi are expanding their 40-year co-branded credit card partnership to include direct branding and integration across the Admirals Club lounge network. American Airlines operates a global air carrier service with 6,000 daily flights and utilizes the Citi-issued AAdvantage portfolio as its exclusive U.S. card program. Starting in April 2026, Citi branding will appear at lounge entrances in ORD, DFW, LAX, and MIA, with a full network rollout scheduled through 2026. The move links Citi card membership tiers directly to lounge access, specifically for Executive World Elite Mastercard, Globe Mastercard, and Strata Elite holders. American Airlines recently updated its lounge amenities through substantial vendor contracts with Lavazza and Champagne Bollinger. Access remains available via annual membership, oneWorld status, or $79 one-day passes. This expansion focuses on the integration of the card rewards program into physical airport infrastructure. (American Airlines)

Perplexity Appeals Court Ban on AI Shopping Agent Accessing Amazon

Perplexity asked a federal appeals court to overturn an injunction barring its Comet AI agent from accessing Amazon. The AI-powered search engine functions as a shopping assistant that automates product discovery and purchases for users. Amazon recently won a court order claiming the tool accessed password-protected accounts without authorization and ignored cease-and-desist warnings. Perplexity argues that Comet acts as a browser for the user and claims the retailer produced no evidence of actual harm like lost sales or decreased traffic. Amazon generated $68.6 billion in advertising revenue in 2025 and claims automated agents bypass the sponsored listings that drive this income. While Amazon has blocked competitors like OpenAI, its own assistant, Rufus, generated $12 billion in incremental sales last year. Walmart and Target are currently testing integrations with third-party AI tools rather than implementing bans. Recent data from PYMNTS Intelligence shows 70% of consumers are open to using AI agents for retail transactions. (PYMNTS) (Court Listener)

Royal Caribbean Group and Bank of America Launch First Tri-Branded Cruise Credit Cards

Royal Caribbean Group and Bank of America launched the Royal ONE and Royal ONE Plus credit cards to enable reward sharing across Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and Silversea. The company operates 69 ships and 3 private destinations, with plans to expand to 8 private locations by 2028 and enter river cruising in 2027. The Royal ONE card has no annual fee and offers 3X points on cruise purchases and 2X points on gas and groceries. The Royal ONE Plus card carries a $99 annual fee and increases cruise rewards to 4X points while adding 2X points on airfare and hotels. Cardholders receive travel perks including priority boarding and a $120 TSA PreCheck credit for the Plus tier. The program introduces a redemption system for onboard credits, shore excursions, and Wi-Fi packages. This tri-branded partnership replaces previous brand-specific loyalty silos with a unified rewards ecosystem. The launch follows the recent implementation of a status match program across the three cruise lines. (Bank of America)

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

(CFPB Supervision) CFPB Supervision Reset: What Banks and Non-Banks Need to Know (Apple Podcast)

(AI) Visa and Mastercard Deploy Agentic AI for Disputes and Global Payments (American Banker)

(Banking) Small Businesses Can Soon Enjoy New Rewards With the Prime Business and Amazon Business Credit Cards (U.S. Bank)

(Cards) Small Businesses Can Soon Enjoy New Rewards With the Prime Business and Amazon Business Credit Cards (Mastercard)

(Lending) QuickFi Enables Air-Tow Trailers National Digital Captive Finance Program (PR Newswire)

(Fintech) UiPath Launches Agentic Solutions to Strengthen Financial Crime Compliance and Accelerate Lending (UiPath)

(Mortgage) U.S. Bank Enhances Consumer Mortgage Experience for New Homebuilding in Partnership With Built (U.S. Bank)

(Credit) TransUnion Introduces TruIQ Credit Strategy Studio to Transform How Lenders Build and Launch Prescreen Marketing Campaigns (TransUnion)

(Payments) Visa Unveils New Services to Modernize Dispute Resolution Process (Visa)

(Banking) Fintech Monzo Shutting Down US Operations to Focus on UK, Europe (Bloomberg)

(Lending) Octane Partners With Suzuki to Expand Financing to Prime Customers (PR Newswire)

(Retail) SurgePays Launches Stored Value and Loyalty Platform Across Retail Network (Issuer Direct)

(AI) Nearly 80% of Americans Use AI Tools but Most Still Want Humans Making Financial Decisions, TD Survey Finds (TD Bank)

(Social Media) TikTok and Meta Eye a Bigger Role in Financial Services (PYMNTS)

(Banking) America’s #1 Choice for Banking Expands Its Lead With the Launch of Chime Prime (Chime)

(Credit Unions) 72% of Gen Z Feels Financial Strain and Credit Unions See an Opening (PYMNTS)

(Credit) Average Delinquency Rates at Top Credit Card Issuers Were Stable in February (S&P Global)

(Credit) New Study Reveals Deepening Financial Divide Between Americans With High and Low Credit Scores (Business Wire)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/experian-expands-no-ding-decline

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

E046 - Affiliate Marketing For Deposit Accounts - With Alana Levine, CRO at Fintel Connect

Carlos Caro — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:54:23 GMT

Deposits aren't loans. That sounds obvious, but the implications for affiliate marketing are anything but.

Alana Levine joins Carlos Caro to break down how affiliate marketing works on the deposit side of the house: different unit economics, different optimization cadence, different failure modes, and a compliance environment that will humble anyone coming over from lending.

Topics include how CP1K pricing works and why CPAs for high yield savings have more than doubled in the past year, what the application funnel looks like for best-in-class deposit products versus regional banks still figuring it out, why younger consumers are stickier depositors than boomers (counterintuitive but true), how Fintel runs daily budget pacing to hit billion-dollar quarterly deposit targets, and what a fintech needs to have figured out before touching affiliate at all.

Alana also shares her take on the publisher landscape, the emerging LLM visibility play that's changing sponsored content strategy, and why a one-basis-point rate discrepancy on a publisher page can end up in a regulatory inquiry.

If you work in lending and have always wondered how the other side operates — this one's for you.

Contact Alana at: alana@fintelconnect.com

*****

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SoFi Adds $3.6B in Commitments to Loan Platform Business

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:05:44 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Spinwheel.

SoFi adds $3.6 billion in new commitments to its loan platform business, reinforcing its shift toward a capital-light model. Meanwhile, Beast Industries’ acquisition of Step is under fire, with Senator Elizabeth Warren issuing a deadline to address concerns over youth safety and crypto expansion. We’re also looking at a new Fed study linking mobile sports betting to a spike in credit delinquencies, FICO’s latest report on falling U.S. credit scores, and Klarna doubling its credit facility to $2 billion to fuel American growth.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

— Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
— Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please share our Newsletter or Podcast with 1 of your colleagues!

SoFi Secures $3.6 Billion in Loan Platform Partnerships

Not every borrower who comes to SoFi gets a SoFi loan. Some fall outside the credit box, meaning they don’t meet SoFi’s own underwriting criteria. That’s where the Loan Platform Business comes in. Instead of a dead end, those borrowers get routed to partners through referrals or the Lantern marketplace. SoFi still earns fee income and retains the servicing relationship. The marketing spend converts regardless of whether SoFi holds the loan.

That context matters for understanding why three new LPB agreements totaling over $3.6 billion in personal loan commitments is a bigger deal than the headline number suggests. A global bank takes $1 billion, a financial services and insurance group $600 million over 12 months, and a top-five global private asset manager up to $2 billion over two years. This follows a year where the LPB pulled in over $10 billion in total commitments.

SoFi spends heavily on brand, stadium naming rights, national TV, celebrity partnerships. That spend drives significant borrower demand. The LPB is what ensures none of that demand goes to waste. SoFi originates on behalf of third parties, collects fees, and retains servicing rights without carrying the credit risk. CEO Anthony Noto framed it plainly: “By connecting strong borrower demand with institutional capital, we’re building a capital-light, fee-based business that complements our overall lending business while leveraging our existing technology platform capabilities in underwriting, pricing, marketing and servicing.”

The LPB sits inside SoFi’s Financial Services segment and is a core driver of that segment’s growth, scaling from $303 million in Q1 2025 to $456 million by Q4. In FY2025, the Loan Platform Business accounted for more than 75% of Financial Services noninterest income, making it the segment’s dominant revenue driver by a wide margin.

Three institutional partners in a single announcement reflects growing demand from asset managers for exposure to consumer credit. SoFi’s adjusted net revenue hit $3.61 billion in FY2025, up 35% year over year, with fee-based revenue growing 53%. For fintech operators building in the lending space, the model is worth studying. Serve more customers, hold less risk, keep the relationship. That’s the playbook SoFi is running. (SoFi)

We’re going deeper into the entire SoFi Lending Business, including their LPB in an upcoming issue, breaking down how the model works, what it means for personal lending distribution, and what other fintechs can learn from it. Stay tuned.

Senator Warren Questions Beast Industries Acquisition of Step Over Youth Safety and Crypto Expansion

Images from American Banker and Step

Beast Industries faces a formal inquiry from the Senate Banking Committee following its acquisition of Step, a financial app serving 7 million users aged 13 to 18. Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a deadline of April 3 for the company to address concerns regarding insider trading allegations involving a Beast Industries employee and the platform's planned expansion into cryptocurrency exchange services. Step currently uses Evolve Bank and Trust to provide FDIC insurance and credit cards, though Evolve recently settled a class action lawsuit for $11.9 million over a data breach. The acquisition gives Beast Industries access to a user base where 39% of the channel's 471 million subscribers are minors. Beast Industries recently accepted a $200 million investment from Bitmine to integrate decentralized finance into the platform. Warren specifically questioned the lack of a general counsel and formal misconduct reporting at the media company. Beast Industries stated it is currently examining all marketing and compliance to meet regulatory requirements. (American Banker)

The Free Toaster previously covered this acquisition in a past issue and revisited it in a recent podcast episode, breaking down Step’s stalled growth, the economics behind teen neobanks, and the risk of pushing young users toward gambling-adjacent products under monetization pressure.

New York Fed Study Links Sports Betting Legalization to Rising Credit Delinquencies

Chart developed by Bloomberg based on data from New York Fed.

Under-40 credit card delinquencies rose 7.9% in states following sports betting legalization, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The New York Fed found that auto loan delinquencies in the same age group increased by 5.6%. While only 3.1% of the population actively bets on sports after legalization, the financial impact is significant enough to lower median credit scores by 1 point across entire counties. Data suggests that for the specific group of individuals who take up gambling, delinquencies jump by approximately 10 percentage points. Younger bettors under 40 see a 26 percentage point spike in late payments. These findings align with separate data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel showing legalization increases bankruptcy likelihood by 10%. The authors wrote that sports betting can have dramatic implications for household financial stability as access expands through mobile apps and prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. (Bloomberg) (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Upgrade’s Launch of Boost Money with John Doppke, VP of Product at Upgrade

In the latest episode of The Free Toaster, Carlos and Nick sit down with John Doppke (VP of Product at Upgrade) to unpack the launch of Boost Money. Discover the strategy behind this "four-in-one" financial account and how cash-flow underwriting is powering a new era of interest-free advances.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by recommending us to one of your colleagues!

And, please check out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group
Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

FICO Report: Average U.S. Credit Score Falls to 714 as Student Loan and Mortgage Delinquencies Rise

FICO reported the average U.S. credit score fell to 714 in its Spring ’26 Credit Insights report. This 2-point annual decline follows the resumption of student loan payments and a rise in mortgage delinquencies. FICO provides the analytics used by 90% of top U.S. lenders to assess consumer risk. A record 48.1% of consumers now hold scores of 750 or higher. Conversely, 24% of consumers reported skipping or making less than minimum payments over the last 12 months. Gen Z led all age groups in new credit activity with 25% opening at least one new card. Interest rates influenced 77% of consumers in their timing of credit applications. Survey data shows 67% of adults incorrectly believe personal income directly impacts their score. (FICO)

Splitit Expands Card-Linked Installments to Field Sales via Splitit Go

Splitit launched Splitit Go to capture a share of the $4.6 trillion annual U.S. services market where transactions occur face-to-face. This mobile solution allows contractors, medical providers, and automotive shops to offer installment plans via smartphone or tablet. Splitit functions as a card-linked installment platform that uses a customer's existing credit line rather than issuing new loans. Merchants generate payment plans through a QR code, text, or email during in-person consultations. The system requires no new credit applications or third-party underwriting for the consumer. It integrates into existing CRMs and field service platforms through a single API. This launch moves the company's embedded payment technology from e-commerce into physical environments like showrooms and service counters. (Splitit)

Klarna Doubles Elliott Investment Management Facility to $2B to Fuel $17B in US Loan Growth

Klarna doubled its credit facility with Elliott Investment Management to $2 billion to support up to $17 billion in US loan originations over the next three years. The digital bank sells newly originated receivables to Elliott funds on a rolling basis to maintain off-balance-sheet funding. This expansion follows a period where Klarna reported that US financing volume grew significantly in Q4 2025. Under the three-year agreement, Klarna retains all underwriting and servicing responsibilities for its 118 million active users. The company currently processes 3.4 million transactions daily across retailers like Uber, H&M, and Nike. This deal provides the capital required to meet American consumer demand for financing alternatives. (Klarna)

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Other News We’re Reading

(Lending) Allied Solutions and Loquat Partner to Deliver Omnichannel Digital Onboarding and Lending (Allied Solutions)

(Lending) Harborstone Credit Union Selects Upstart for Personal Lending (Upstart)

(Cards) American Express Unveils New Graphite™ Business Cash Unlimited Card, Rewarding Business Owners With Unlimited 2% Cash Back (American Express)

(Lending) Wolters Kluwer and FairPlay AI Announce Strategic Partnership to Deliver AI-Driven Fair Lending Optimization Capabilities (Wolters Kluwer)

(Payments) Mastercard Explores Sale of Payments Unit It Bought From Nets in 2019, FT Reports (Reuters)

(Lending) Luana Savings Bank Adopts nCino for Digital Lending (IBS Intelligence)

(Fintech) Plaid Expands Into Media With Acquisition of This Week in Fintech (Fintech News Switzerland)

(Payments) Cardlay Launches U.S. Embedded Spend Platform, Enabling Incumbents to Compete With Turnkey Commercial Spend Platforms (Business Wire)

(Payments) 200 Million More Friends on Venmo – Send Money to PayPal Users Around the World (PayPal)

(Banking) VIDEO: UBS Bank USA National Charter Approval (UBS)

(Lending) Square Expands Access to Capital, Financing More Sellers With Innovative, Tech-Powered Underwriting (Square)

(Marketing) SurgePays Launches Managed Marketing Services Platform Across Nationwide Retail Network (GlobeNewswire)

(Payments) A New Era of Platform Payouts: Branch Is Now Stripe’s Embedded Digital Wallet for Worker Payouts (Branch)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/sofi-adds-36b-in-commitments-to-loan

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

News Pod #12 - Upgrade's Launch of Boost Money with John Doppke, VP of Product at Upgrade

Carlos Caro — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:51:33 GMT

Carlos and Nick sit down with John Doppke, VP at Upgrade, to unpack Boost Money — a four-in-one financial account combining a checking account, secured credit-building card, high-yield savings, and interest-free cash advances.

John explains the product's free and premium ($9.99/month) tiers, the rationale behind launching Boost Money as a standalone brand with its own app and microsite, and how cash flow underwriting powers the Boost Cash advance product.

The conversation also covers the regulatory complexity of structuring cash advances as loans, the surprisingly broad income profile of Boost Money's target customer, and John's experience building alongside founder Renaud Laplanche from Lending Club to Upgrade.

*****

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Klarna Card Adds 270,000 Cardholders Monthly 🤯

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:42:32 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Bulldog Media Group.

Klarna reached 5 million active card users after adding 1.9 million in Q4 2025 alone. While the card now accounts for 15% of total transactions, LendingTree reports BNPL delinquencies hit 41% as grocery usage climbed to 25% of borrowers. Upgrade launched Boost Money with a 10% APY and interest-free cash advances to undercut the 24% average credit card APR. Meanwhile, Visa and Mastercard swipe fees reached a record $198.25 billion in 2025 as Upstart secured a $1 billion loan purchase agreement with Eltura Capital and Aperture Investors.

Lots to break down. Let’s get toasting!

— Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
— Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media

PS: To support us, please share our Newsletter or Podcast with 1 of your colleagues!

Klarna Card Pacing 270,000 New Cardholders Per Month

Klarna reached 5 million active Klarna Card customers globally, representing a substantial user base expansion from 800,000 in 2021. The global digital bank and payments provider offers a card that draws from a user’s own funds for everyday spending with the option to spread costs for specific purchases. Recent data shows a rapid acceleration in adoption with 1.9 million new users joining in Q4 2025 alone.

The Klarna membership program reinforces this growth by bundling travel insurance and airport lounge access without requiring debt or minimum spending thresholds. This model separates rewards from revolving credit balances. Chief Marketing Officer David Sandström stated, “They’re voting with their wallets and looking for the control and flexibility in a single card.”

The card is now active in 16 countries and serves as a primary entry point for the Klarna suite of banking services. In the US market, 25% of transaction volume now occurs at physical in-store locations rather than online. Data from the German market indicates high engagement, with cardholders averaging 100 more annual purchases than non-card users.(Klarna)

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Upgrade Launches Boost Money Offering 10% APY and Interest-Free Cash Advances

Upgrade launched Boost Money, a mobile banking product featuring a 10% APY on savings balances up to $1,000 for subscribers. The service provides interest-free cash advances up to $500 with a 0% APR and repayment terms up to 34 days.

Users can access a free tier including a credit-builder card or pay a $9.99 monthly subscription for the premium interest rate. Upgrade reports all payment activity to TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. The Boost Money Spend account has no overdraft or maintenance fees and includes early paycheck access.

Premium membership includes identity theft protection and travel insurance. Since 2017, Upgrade has delivered $45 billion in credit to 7.5 million customers. The product launch targets the gap between current inflation rates and the 24% average APR typically charged for credit card cash advances. (Upgrade)

Merchants Payments Coalition Reports Record $198.25 Billion in Swipe Fees as Congress Weighs Reform

Merchants Payments Coalition reports that credit and debit card swipe fees reached a record $198.25 billion in 2025. This 5.9% annual increase represents an 80% jump since the pandemic for the group representing retailers and gas stations. Visa and Mastercard centrally set rates for over 80% of the market, with their credit card fees alone totaling $118.8 billion. The average swipe fee for these brands rose to 2.36% per transaction, up from 2.02% in 2010. Congress is currently weighing the Credit Card Competition Act to mandate that banks with over $100 billion in assets enable unaffiliated networks like Star or NYCE. This bipartisan legislation seeks to end the practice of restricting processing to the two dominant networks. Projections suggest the shift could save merchants and consumers over $17 billion annually. Current fees add an estimated $1,200 in yearly costs for the average family. (Merchants Payments Coalition)

Are Credit Card Balances At A Record High Or Flat Over The Last 10 Years?

In the latest episode of The Free Toaster, Carlos and Nick sit down with Kelvin Chen (Consumer Bankers Association) to discuss the “record high” narrative. Discover what average card balances look like when you control for new cardholders and inflation.

Catch us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or your favorite player.

Please support our Newsletter by recommending us to one of your colleagues!

And, please check out our sponsors:

Need an affiliate marketing platform/network? Chat with Fintel Connect
Need to improve application page conversions? Chat with Spinwheel
Need help with performance marketing? Chat with Bulldog Media Group
Need to grow in big marketplaces like Credit Karma? Chat with New Market Growth
Need to hire top-tier talent in fintech or lending? Chat with CTB1

LendingTree Survey: BNPL Delinquencies Hit 41% as Grocery Usage Climbs

LendingTree reports that 41% of buy now, pay later users missed a payment in the past year, marking a significant increase from 34% in the previous period. The survey data reveals that 25% of borrowers now use these loans to purchase groceries, a sharp rise from 14% just one year ago. While one-third of users rely on these installments as a bridge to their next paycheck, 62% incorrectly believe that on-time payments will improve their credit scores. PayPal, Klarna, and Affirm remain the most utilized platforms in a market where 88% of users who requested a late fee waiver were successful. (LendingTree)

Upstart Secures $1B Loan Purchase Agreement with Eltura Capital and Aperture Investors

Upstart secured a $1 billion forward-flow agreement with Eltura Capital Management and Aperture Investors to purchase consumer loans over the next 12 months. The AI-powered lending marketplace connects consumers to more than 100 banks and credit unions to provide personal loans, automotive financing, and home equity lines of credit. The deal represents the first substantial arrangement of this scale between Upstart and this specific investor group. Upstart currently automates more than 90% of its loan originations without human intervention. Aperture Investors brings a portfolio of approximately $5.8 billion in assets under management to the partnership. This commitment aims to provide a robust and diverse funding ecosystem for the platform's credit products. The arrangement builds on an existing relationship to source and service consumer debt through Upstart’s cloud applications. (Upstart)

Looking for a new role?

The Free Toaster Jobs Edition tracks where fintech teams are actually investing across marketing, product, data, credit, risk, and partnerships.

Other News We’re Reading

(BNPL) 56% Of Gen Z Struggle To Track When Installment Payments Are Due (PYMNTS)

(Travel) Capital One Launches Capital One Travel App (Capital One)

(Lending) Algebrik AI Announces Strategic Bureau Integration With TransUnion To Power Smarter, More Inclusive Lending (PR Newswire)

(BNPL) Equipifi And CUSG Announce Strategic Partnership To Bring BNPL Capabilities To Credit Unions Nationwide (PR Newswire)

(Cards) Academy Sports + Outdoors And Bread Financial® Launch New myAcademy® Rewards Credit Card And Enhanced Loyalty Program (Bread Financial)

(Banking) Austin Telco Federal Credit Union Partners With MANTL To Modernize Retail Account Opening Across All Banking Channels (PR Newswire)

(AI) Meet Mastercard’s New Generative AI Model (Mastercard)

(Payments) Globant And Adyen Establish Global Partnership To Accelerate Merchant Payment Integrations And Time To Revenue (Globant)

(Payments) EWS Pairs With Citi To Offer Paze (Payments Dive)

(Banking) MoCaFi Files For Bankruptcy (Banking Dive)

(Payments) Introducing The Machine Payments Protocol (Stripe)

(Commerce) Visa Launches ‘Agentic Ready’ Programme To Advance Agentic Commerce In Europe (Visa)

(Rewards) Citi ThankYou Devalues Hotel Points Transfers (Choice Privileges & I Prefer) (One Mile at a Time)

(Wealth) JPMorganChase Partners With Sports Legends To Help Athletes Master Their Money (JPMorganChase)

Spot something worth sharing with your team? Drop this week’s edition in their inbox:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/klarna-card-adds-270000-cardholders

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

E045 - Rakesh Patel, EVP of the Experian Marketplace

Carlos Caro — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:39:55 GMT

Carlos Caro chats with Rakesh Patel, the Executive Vice President of the Experian Marketplace. For those of you not familiar with the Experian Marketplace, it got started in 2017 and it's quitely become one of the largest consumer marketplaces in the world for credit cards, personal loans, and auto insurance.

In today's episode we'll cover:

-Experian's vision to become a financial co-pilot for consumers

-The scale of the marketplace

-The Experian Activate targeting platform

-How Experian innovates with lending partners

-Rakesh's advice for lenders looking to scale

*****

To support The Free Toaster Podcast, please visit our sponsors:

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E044 - Direct Mail in Consumer Lending With Dennis Fish and John Minalga of the ICS Corporation

Carlos Caro — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:00:18 GMT

Carlos sits down with Dennis Fish and John Minalga of the ICS Corporation following a roundtable dinner with 16 consumer lending executives in New York City to talk about one of the most misunderstood channels in financial services: direct mail.

We discussed:

Busting the "Direct Mail is Dead" Myth Direct mail accounts for roughly 40% of new accounts for many lenders. Dennis pushes back on the idea that FinTech companies should default to digital-only and shares a story from a lending conference that proves the point perfectly.

Cutting Through The Clutter John argues that direct mail offers something digital can't: uncontested attention. A physical pre-approval offer carries implicit credibility and builds trust. That trust is fragile though. One misleading offer or buried fee and it's gone.

Attribution DM chronically gets underfunded because digital teams harvest leads that direct mail planted. John's fix: design clean holdout tests (mailed vs. not mailed) to measure true incrementality rather than chasing perfect last-touch attribution. Dennis adds that the best marketers measure channel mix holistically. Rising waters raise all ships.

USPS Discount Programs Worth Knowing Dennis breaks down postage discounts available in 2026 that most mailers aren't fully utilizing, including tactile/sensory enhancements, QR code integration, Informed Delivery, sustainability, and growth incentive programs. Stacked together, mailers can recover around 7% of postage costs, with growth incentives returning up to 30% of increased spend.

Find Dennis and John on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisfish/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnminalga/

The Free Toaster

With Plaid Integration, ChatGPT is now a distribution channel for personal finance.

Hey Toaster Readers,

Toaster Exclusive Event

Learn more at: events.thefreetoaster.com

ChatGPT Is Now a Distribution Channel For Financial Products

What Actually Happened

Intuit’s Role In All Of This

Who Should Feel Threatened?

The New Competitive Landscape

What Distribution Channels Survive The LLM Disruption

Closing Thoughts

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News Pod #18 - NerdWallet’s Q1’26 Earnings: Why Is The Stock Down 30%

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Other News We’re Reading

NerdWallet's Q1 '26 Earnings: Why Is The Stock Down 30%?

Hey Toaster Readers,

Save the date!

Breaking Down NerdWallet’s Earnings

One auto insurance carrier flinched and the full-year guidance changed.

SMB is down 15% and nobody on the call seemed to care.

“Organic search headwinds” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

The margin beat had a Super Bowl-sized asterisk on it.

“Vertical integration” sounded more defensive than offensive.

You partner with, or are considering partnering with NerdWallet. Now what?

Action items:

At the highest level, we empathize with NerdWallet’s struggles.

Sponsored by New Market Growth

Earnings

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SoFi’s Best Quarter Yet Disappoints Wall St.

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SoFi’s Best Quarter Yet Disappoints Wall St.

TOASTER’S TAKE

Sponsored by Bulldog Media Group

Reach the Borrowers Others Miss.

Experian Launches Agent Trust to Verify AI-Driven Transactions

Stripe Powers Checkout Inside Google’s AI Mode and Gemini

OneMain Financial Reports Strong Q1 2026 Results with $226M Net Income

E048 - Q&A on Application Friction - Nick interviews Carlos

Synchrony Becomes Exclusive Issuer for Lowe’s Commercial Co-Brand Card

Barclays Completes Acquisition of Best Egg Personal Lending Platform

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PayPal Splits into Three Units and Makes Venmo a Standalone Division

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Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

E048 - Q&A on Application Friction - Nick interviews Carlos

News Pod #16 - OnePay, Credit One x Bright Money, and Aven's BTC Play

OnePay Launches (Credit) Builder Card

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OnePay Launches Builder Card: No Deposit, No Credit Check, No Fees

Sponsored by Fintel Connect

Is Your Marketing ROI Falling Behind Other Banks and Credit Unions?

Credit One Bank and Bright Money Partner to Launch Embedded Credit Card Tools

Aven Launches Bitcoin-Backed Visa Card With Up To $1M Credit Limit

LendingClub’s $2.67B Originations and the Rebrand

News Pod #15 - OpenAI Acquires Hiro Finance

TransUnion Q1 2026: 14% Growth Fueled by U.S. Lending Surge

Amex Reports 11% Revenue Increase and Record Card Member Spend

Capital One Reports $2.2B Net Income Amid Discover Acquisition Gains

The Toaster team is on the ground in NYC for Fintech Week.

Upcoming Toaster Events:

Equifax Posts 14% Revenue Growth in Q1; Maintains Conservative 2026 Outlook

Cash App Targets Gen Alpha With Parent-Managed Accounts for Kids 6-12

American Express Integrates Resy into Anthropic’s Claude for Real-Time Reservations

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Other News We’re Reading and Listening to

News Pod #15 - OpenAI Acquires Hiro Finance

OpenAI Doubles Down: Hiro Finance Marks Second Fintech Buy in Six Months

Hey Toaster Readers,

OpenAI Doubles Down on Fintech with Hiro Finance and Roi Acquisitions

Toaster’s Take

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LendingClub to Become Happen Bank, “a Digital Bank for People Going Places”

Mission Lane Credit Card Startup Applies For Bank Charter

News Pod #14 - Wells Fargo Books 631,000 New Credit Card Accounts in Q1 2026 - How Did They Do It?

FinWise Bancorp Partners with Vera, Inc. to Launch Unsecured Consumer Credit Card Program

Synchrony Launches Integrated Credit Card Program for RH

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