The Free Toaster

Happen Bank Is Running Chime in Reverse Playbook — Here's the Bet

Toaster Media — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:26:00 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by New Market Growth.

With the slow news cycle and the July 4th holiday, we decided to reflect a bit more on one story that recently dropped. We think it was easy to skip but there there is something deeper at play that others might appreciate.

Last Tuesday, LendingClub officially ceased to exist and rebranded to Happen Bank. We covered the initial announcement in April, but the dust has settled and we wanted to dig into the strategy underneath. This is one of the clearest examples we have seen of a lender picking a specific customer segment, the “Motivated Middle,” and engineering every product and reward around them. If you market lending or deposit products, you will want to spend five minutes unpacking how Happen ties its rewards directly to profitable customer behaviors.

Let’s get toasting!

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LendingClub Became Happen. The Real Story Is Who It’s Chasing.

Nasdaq

Last Tuesday, Scott Sanborn rang the Nasdaq opening bell and LendingClub officially ceased to exist. The company now trades as Happen, Inc. under the ticker HAPN, having completed both a full rebrand to Happen Bank and a stock listing switch from the NYSE to Nasdaq. [American Banker]

We covered the announcement when it dropped in April. So why come back to it now that the paint is dry? Because to us, there’s a more interesting story layered under the rebrand.

This is one of the cleanest examples we’ve seen of a lender picking a customer segment first and then engineering every product, reward, and dollar of funding around that one person. If you market lending or deposit products for a living, this is worth 5 minutes unpacking.

First, what Happened to Lending Club?

Quick scale check: Happen reports 5M+ lifetime members and $100B+ in lifetime originations (sourced from their 2025 10-K).

For readers who know LendingClub as “the P2P lending pioneer”: that company hasn’t existed for years. Happen is a nationally chartered digital bank running a marketplace bank model with two revenue engines.

The first engine is the balance sheet. Deposits fund loans held for investment, generating net interest income. The second engine is the marketplace. Happen originates loans and sells them to investors, collecting origination fees, servicing fees, and gains on sale capital-light fee income.

The loan book is overwhelmingly consumer: unsecured personal loans (debt consolidation is the core franchise), auto refinance, point-of-sale financing, and a newly launched home improvement vertical. A small commercial book focuses primarily on active SBA lending, while existing commercial real estate loans and equipment leases have ceased origination and are being retained to maturity.

In Q1 2026, originations were split roughly down the middle, 52% sold to marketplace investors and 48% retained, which matters for the strategy below. Both engines get stronger when the same borrower gets cheaper to fund and safer to underwrite.

Q1 26 Earnings Presentation

Happen focusing on the “Motivated Middle”

Happen’s own words: it’s a bank built for “high-FICO, high-income, digitally savvy consumers actively managing their financial lives.” Not the underbanked. Not private-banking clients.

Prime borrowers who still actively use credit.

Nov 2025 Investor Day Deck

Look around the industry and you see why this lane was open.

Chime and Dave built their businesses on low-to-moderate-income consumers — overdraft protection, early wage access, interchange-funded economics. SoFi staked out high earners with student loan refi, wealth management, and premium lifestyle branding. Chase, Citi, and BofA sit on trillions in near-zero-cost deposits but don’t always succeed in securing the consumer’s lending business.

The middle, the person with a 740 FICO who carries a $25K consolidation loan and a real savings balance, was nobody’s primary target. Happen is planting a flag there.

The sequencing question (Chime in reverse)

Chime did the hardest thing in consumer banking first: winning the direct deposit relationship, then expanding into credit. Happen is running the opposite play, and it’s the same one SoFi, Capital One, and Amex ran before it. Lend first, because that’s where the money is (and, frankly, because a lending license is far easier to get than a bank charter). Then use the loan relationship to earn your way into deposits and checking.

Loan-first is the more logical sequence for profitability.

But it leaves Happen with a real challenge: it doesn’t own the primary banking relationship yet, and the deposit market is brutally crowded. Which distribution channels it picks to close that gap is the thing to watch over the next few quarters.

But first, a quick note from our sponsor:

New Market Growth

New Market Growth helps lenders build and scale affiliate marketing programs on channels like Credit Karma, Experian Marketplace, Lending Tree, Bankrate, Credible, and many more. NMG clients spend $50-$100MM per year in affiliate channels, and the founding team (one of whom is Free Toaster co-founder Carlos Caro), have advised in excess of 50 lenders over the course of their corporate and agency careers.

If you’re a Free Toaster Reader at a lender that spends over $500K per month in affiliate marketing, we’re offering a free, 90-minute audit of your affiliate marketing program. After research we’ll conduct on our side, we’ll book time to share the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities we observe in your program.

Outside eyes could help unlock the growth you’re looking for in H2 2026.

Email carlos@newmarketgrowth.com with subject line “90-minute audit” and we’ll contact you to get the preliminary information we need to get to work.

The flywheel: rewards that pay for behaviors, not balances

This is where the strategy gets concrete. Happen’s two deposit products are engineered so that every reward dollar buys a behavior that improves Happen’s own bottom line.

LevelUp Savings (launched August 2024) pays a higher APY (currently 4% APY) to members who deposit at least $250/month, rewarding the growth behavior instead of the raw balance. It’s built 80K+ accounts and $3.5B in deposits, and savings customers visit 30% more often than the prior product’s.

[LevelUp Savings] built 80K+ accounts and $3.5B in deposits, and savings customers visit 30% more often than the prior product’s.

happen.com

LevelUp Checking (launched June 2025) pays 2% cash back on on-time personal loan payments made from the account, plus 1% back on gas, grocery, and pharmacy debit purchases. It simultaneously pulls low-cost deposits in, moves loan servicing inside Happen’s ecosystem, and pays the borrower to do the exact thing that keeps charge-offs down. Since launch, account openings are running 6x the prior checking product, and 60% of accounts come from existing members. The cross-sell is seemingly working.

Q1 2026 Earnings Presentation

Now the number that left us scratching our heads a bit.

Happen discloses that 70% of LevelUp Savings holders, representing ~95% of balances, hit the $250 monthly threshold. Do the basic math they invite: 95% of $3.5B spread across 70% of 80K accounts works out to an average balance near $59K among threshold-meeting savers. (The disclosed account and balance figures are as of March 31, 2026)

That’s not a mass market audience.

That’s an affluent saver earning 4.00% APY, which raises a question Happen hasn’t answered: why is that customer with $59K in savings taking out a $20–30K personal loan? Either the savers and the borrowers are different pockets of the member base, or the “prime borrower who still borrows” is wealthier than the debt-consolidation stereotype suggests.

TOASTER’S TAKE

The rewards program is designed thoughtfully for the audience (and the P&L). Every Happen incentive pays for a behavior tied to a P&L line (deposit cost, on-time payment, balance growth).

The deposit business doesn’t reduce CAC, it raises the CAC you can afford. When 60% of new checking accounts come from existing borrowers, the lifetime value of a new loan customer goes up. That lets you bid more for media and buy growth on the margin. At scale, the Fortune 500 banks of the world happily push CAC up as long as the marginal customer is profitable. The question for Happen: is that what the next two quarters of marketing spend will show?

The metrics we want to understand this better: checking account volumes (they gave us savings, why not checking?), cross-hold rates, and blended CAC. Until then, we have a number of questions: How many of those affluent savers came from the loan base versus straight rate-shopping on 4.00% APY? Does the flywheel actually convert borrowers into primary banking relationships, or just into high-yield deposits?

Happen’s bet?

That the most overlooked customer in consumer finance is the prime saver who still borrows — and that you win them by paying them to behave in ways that improve your deposit base, your loss curves, and your cross-sell rates all at once.

Only time will tell and the proof will show up in the CAC and cross-sell numbers.

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.

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.

What happens when consumers delegate financial decisions to agents?

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 22:13:41 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Fintel Connect.

The news cycle was light this week so we dropped an exclusive editorial on why personal finance algorithms are about to make traditional landing page optimization completely obsolete. The punchline? Consumers are going to stop choosing their own loans and let AI agents handle decisions for them. Is your lending brand optimized to pitch a machine reader instead of a human brain?

Plus, home equity card startup Trovy just locked down a cool $25M and SoFi rolled out new AI tools to be your financial coach and to automate retail investing.

There’s a lot to unpack. 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!

Mark Your Calendars For September 23rd!

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders

Proudly Sponsored by Experian & Engine by Gen

Interest in our inaugural edition of The Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders is heating up 🔥. Thank you!

So far, we have senior leaders from the following organizations registered: Experian, Engine by Gen, Credit Karma, Bankrate, LendingTree, Credible, QuinStreet, Bulldog Media Group, Lending Club, SoFi, Pagaya, One Main Financial, Perpay, Happy Money, Atlanticus, LendingPoint, SuperMoney, Debbie, Portola, PrismData, FICO, and more.

Learn more about the event here!

If you’re a senior leader that buys or sells affiliate media, this is the one event this year you won’t want to miss.

The room is capped at 150 guests and early-bird pricing is active, so consider registering today!

What happens when consumers delegate financial decisions to agents?

Last month, we tracked how ChatGPT is becoming the new distribution channel for personal finance, with Plaid unlocking transactions and Credit Karma plugging in approval odds. We felt a shift like this required an editorial to unpack the ripple effects it’s creating.

The biggest change in personal finance isn’t the AI technology itself. It’s the fact that consumers are going to hand the keys over to AI, letting algorithms choose their loans based on pure data, goals, and constraints. The psychological game of human persuasion is out. The new job is convincing a rational, data-loaded machine to pick you as the best option.

The lending funnel isn’t dying, but your buyer is changing completely as more consumers trust agents to act on their behalf.

Will consumers actually hand over their bank data to a machine? History says yes. Mint hit 20 million users at its peak just by putting spreadsheets in the cloud. When people see value, they share. The question is who’ll be there to earn the trust when agents are eventually adopted by the average consumer.

If you keep optimizing for human emotion, you’re tuning a radio nobody is listening to. Read the full editorial to learn how to set up your brand for the machine era.

Hint: the key is building trust with the consumer before they prompt the agent.

[How Lenders Win When AI Calls the Shots]

Home equity credit card startup Trovy closes $25m raise

Trovy closed a $15 million Series A funding round, bringing its total capital to $25 million and boosting growth for the financial technology platform that replaces expensive consumer debt with home equity-backed financing. Left Lane Capital led the investment, while existing seed investors Kleiner Perkins, DCM Ventures, and Camber Creek also jumped back into the mix. The startup aims to address a "record" pile of US household debt by helping homeowners tap into their existing equity instead of paying high interest rates. By operating as a licensed lender, Trovy bypasses traditional bank partnerships to give consumers direct ownership of their borrowing experience. Their home equity-backed credit card runs on the Mastercard network via Cross River Bank, and the team plans to launch a flexible loan product called 1Loan this summer. They are also building a comprehensive homeowner hub to manage everything from maintenance reminders to insurance policies. [Fintech Global]

SoFi Launches AI Tools to Coach Your Finances and Automate Your Investments

SoFi, the everything app for digital financial services, recently rolled out new AI tools to help users get a better grip on their money. The company launched SoFi Coach, a chat-based assistant that gives you personalized advice on budgeting, saving, and tackling debt. Users securely connect their accounts from more than "12,000" financial institutions to receive real-time answers about their spending habits and payoff options. During early testing, the tool helped users take "tens of thousands" of financial actions, and "nearly 70%" of engaged testers took meaningful steps to improve their finances. Beyond basic budgeting, SoFi also introduced Composer by SoFi to help retail investors build and automate rules-based trading strategies. You just describe your investment idea in plain English or browse "over 2,000" community-built options, and the platform turns it into a fully functioning plan in minutes. Instead of drowning in spreadsheets or paying a pricey advisor, you can let these straightforward assistants do the heavy lifting for your financial future. [SoFi Coach] [SoFi Composer]

What’s up with banking’s marketing ROI gap?

Banks, credit unions, and lenders are under pressure to acquire more customers, grow funded volume, and prove marketing’s impact. But when attribution is unclear, it becomes harder to know which channels are driving real growth and which ones are simply getting the credit.

If your marketing channels are struggling to perform against a changing market, it’s time to revisit how you measure success. Join Carlos, along with a panel of industry experts on July 13th at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST to decode the marketing ROI gap in banking. Carlos, alongside leaders from Fintel Connect, Peak Bank, and Pagaya, will debate which channels are actually driving funded growth, why lead quality matters more than volume, and how to make smarter budget decisions.

When: July 13, 2026 | 10AM PST/ 1PM EST
Where: Register here.

News Pod #23 - Pagaya Sues Klarna for (Allegedly) Stealing Its Underwriting Model

Pagaya filed a lawsuit against Klarna for (allegedly) stealing is underwriting. Carlos & Nick discuss the implications for fintech marketers that share their underwriting policies with affiliate marketing platforms.

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.

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

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

How Lenders Win When AI Calls the Shots

Carlos Caro — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 22:11:45 GMT

Last month I wrote that ChatGPT became a distribution channel for personal finance. Plaid unlocked the transaction layer, Credit Karma plugged in approval odds, and the personal finance super app started snowballing.

This aftermath of this development is less about the event itself and more about what you do with your distribution program because of it.

Here is the one idea every lending CMO needs to reorganize around. Consumers are about to delegate the decision to AI (the machine). They will arm an LLM with their transaction data, their goals, and their constraints. Then they will trust it to pick.

The old job was convincing a person to choose you: a psychological one. The new job is convincing a machine, loaded with context, to select you as the best among several reasonable options.

That one shift changes everything downstream. The game gets rational. It stops being emotional.

Your funnel survives. Your audience changes.

Good news first: the lending funnel does not disappear. Awareness, consideration, application, approval, funding: all of it still applies. However, who (or what) you are speaking to at every stage changes completely.

When an agent shops on a consumer’s behalf, it’s weighing the same things your funnel always measured. It just calls them something else, and evaluates the same questions with different logic.

How relevant is this product to this specific person? That is your click through rate.
How much information does the lender ask for, and how much do I already have? That is your application rate.
How likely is this person to actually get approved? That is your approval rate.

Your scorecard is intact. You’re simply optimizing it against a machine reader instead of a human one. Lenders who internalize that early will get a head start.

Changing dynamics in distribution channels

Here is how I see the major channels and capabilities moving.

The three “up” rows are where the real work happens.

Application page optimization is fading out. The friction tradeoff will replace it.

For two decades, the application page was sacred ground. You A/B tested button colors, trust badges, and form lengths to squeeze out conversion. When an autonomous software agent handles the form submission process, that front-end design work loses its utility.

What replaces it is harder and more valuable.

The new lever is friction management.

Specifically, how few incremental questions you ask, and how much agent supplied data you are willing to accept. A lender who says “I will take the Plaid verified income the agent already has” beats a lender who re-asks for a pay stub or W2. Less friction, higher application rate.

But there’s real tension here.

Lower friction can mean lower quality fraud and risk decisions. Accepting data you did not collect yourself is a fraud and credit risk call, not a simple UX tweak. The winning lenders are the ones who find the optimal friction point: easy enough to convert, but rigorous enough to keep fraud and bad credit out.

That tradeoff lives at the intersection of marketing, underwriting, data science, and fraud. If you already have a sharp cross functional team managing a channel like Credit Karma, that is the team. The LLM channel might just demand more of that same coordination.

The new top of funnel job is to plant the branded prompt.

This is where the emotional work of connecting to the human happens. Not on a landing page, but before the prompt itself is typed.

Picture the winning prompt.

A consumer opens their LLM assistant and says “here is my transaction data, here is what I want to accomplish, tell me what Chase has for me, then compare it to the rest of the market (unsaid: because I bank with Chase and I trust them)”

If your brand is not in that query, you are already a step behind. The agent might still surface you. But you did not earn the invitation from the human.

So a key job-to-be-done for your brand marketing is to get the consumer to invoke you by name when they put the LLM to work. You do that the only way you ever could. By being genuinely useful. Educate, entertain, inspire, and be trustworthy enough to be memorable.

There is no shortcut into the prompt.

Feed the super app. Do not try to become it.

Most lenders will wonder if they should build the super app themselves. I don’t think they should.

I would not trust a financial products super app built by a Fortune 500 bank brand. Neither would you. We would read it as self-serving, a storefront dressed up as an advisor. The trust goes to the independent brand that charges me a subscription and promises objective, data-based recommendations for my specific situation.

I think the winning LLM surface in financial services is subscription funded, not ad funded. The moment recommendations are paid for by advertisers, consumers will assume the payout shaped the answer. A surface that consumers pay for is a space they can trust.

So the lender’s job is not to win the surface.

It is to be the offer the surface picks. Feed the super app your real terms, your certainty, your machine readable offer, and your brand.

The machine is going to do the rest.

A key assumption

This whole thing depends on consumers handing an LLM the keys to their bank and bureau accounts.

I’m betting they will.

Consumers already gave their accounts to Mint a decade ago and to Monarch today. Mint had 20 million registered users at its peak, built on nothing but a spreadsheet in the cloud and a promise to make sense of your money. When people see value in sharing data, they share it.

The open question is which brand earns the finance-specific trust. Maybe it’s ChatGPT or Claude.

Maybe a purpose built finance assistant has to emerge first. The timing depends entirely how long it takes the provider to earn the trust.

I’m guessing we’ll start to see really kick-ass apps like this (with 5M+ consumer scale), in the next two years.

The one move to make this quarter

If you do one thing, start building your brand.

Too many fintech-lender CMOs are addicted to arbitrage. Spend a dollar on paid search, paid social, or an affiliate placement. Make two back. That muscle is going to atrophy, because the LLM is built to be immune to it.

Think about what LLMs do well: processing a mountain of information to make an objective, data-based decision.

Media arbitrage does the opposite.

It interrupts the consumer to put your thing in front of them and hopes proximity and clever copy sways the choice. LLMs are engineered to ignore exactly that.

Attention is getting harder to buy.

The assets that earn it are a brand the consumer already trusts and an offer that genuinely wins on merits. Both take years or decades to build.

Closing thoughts

No channel is safe forever.

Direct mail held up for five decades, and it’s at risk in a world where AI makes product recommendations frictionless and accurate.

I’m not telling you to kill anything today. What I am saying is to expect legacy channels to deteriorate slowly as humans start figuring out helpful LLMs will be in the context of shopping for financial products.

The lenders who win will stop trying to convince the human, and shift their energy toward winning the agent the human sends in their place.

The marketing funnel is the same, but your (new) buyer is a machine (or a human with a strong bias for doing what the machine says). And the only durable advantage is being the best real answer to the question the consumer actually asked.

That’s where the game is going now.

News Pod #23 - Pagaya Sues Klarna for (Allegedly) Stealing Its Underwriting Model

Carlos Caro — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:46:34 GMT

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/pagaya-sues-klarna-for-allegedly

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Pagaya Sues Klarna for (Allegedly) Stealing Its Underwriting Model

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:33:58 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Spinwheel.

Pagaya just sued Klarna for allegedly stealing its AI underwriting model, building a competing one with four years of proprietary data, then dropping Pagaya the moment it no longer needed them. Partnership teams, take notes.

Also this week: Visa hooks into OpenAI, Experian moves loan shopping into ChatGPT, Klarna launches a high-yield savings account, and Visa and Mastercard take aim at Circle’s stablecoin dominance.

There’s a lot to unpack. 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!

Mark Your Calendars For September 23rd!

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders

Proudly Sponsored by Experian & Engine by Gen

Interest in our inaugural edition of The Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders is heating up 🔥. Thank you!

So far, we have senior leaders from the following organizations registered: Experian, Engine by Gen, Credit Karma, Bankrate, LendingTree, Credible, QuinStreet, Bulldog Media Group, Lending Club, SoFi, Pagaya, One Main Financial, Perpay, Happy Money, Atlanticus, LendingPoint and FICO.

Learn more about the event here!

If you’re a senior leader that buys or sells affiliate media, this is the one event this year you won’t want to miss.

The room is capped at 150 guests and early-bird pricing is active, so consider registering today!

Pagaya Sues Klarna Over Alleged Trade Secret Misappropriation

On IPO day, September 10, 2025, a reporter asked Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski directly: when assessing loan risk, you’re doing that yourself? Not outsourcing it?

“Nope,” he said.

According to a lawsuit filed in Delaware federal court, that was false. And page 5 of the complaint shows exactly where Pagaya intends to prove it.

Pagaya Technologies, the AI underwriting firm that powered Klarna’s subprime point-of-sale lending since 2022, filed suit on May 13, 2026 alleging trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract. The core claim: Klarna used Pagaya’s proprietary ML credit model and the years of real borrower performance data it generated to build competing underwriting capabilities internally, then terminated the partnership once it no longer needed Pagaya.

The market Klarna wanted access to is not small. Per TransUnion data cited in the complaint, 128 million Americans used BNPL in 2025, up from 86.5 million the year before. The majority are subprime or deep subprime, exactly the segment Klarna could not profitably underwrite before Pagaya.

Before the partnership, the complaint states plainly, Klarna lacked the technical capability to underwrite this borrower segment. Pagaya invested over $100 million developing the model. By May 2025, it had launched a $1B+ securitization program with Klarna as the sole originator. By March 2026, Klarna had quietly signed a deal with a new financing partner and pulled the plug, reportedly while still telling Pagaya and WebBank the existing deals were “good to move forward.”

What Pagaya is actually fighting to protect breaks into three categories, laid out clearly on page 16 of the complaint.

The model itself, the data it generated across four years of live lending decisions, and the operational and structural knowledge required to package subprime POS loans into rated ABS deals. That third category is the one people underestimate. Getting investment-grade ratings from Kroll on a subprime consumer ABS requires having actually done it. Pagaya had. Klarna, allegedly, learned how by watching.

The ending was abrupt. Page 37 shows how fast it moved.

On March 25, 2026, Klarna notified Pagaya it was terminating the license and commitment agreements on 180 days’ notice and would not enter any new financing arrangements. No transaction-specific explanation. Klarna had already signed with another counterparty before making the call.

A few things worth thinking through for partnership and lending teams:

The complaint calls Klarna’s alleged conduct “unlawful distillation,” a concept borrowed from AI/ML, where using model outputs to train a competing model exceeds the scope of a limited license. Expect this framing to show up in future fintech data-sharing agreements.
The fintech that signs the merchant deal isn’t always the one doing the underwriting. Klarna owned the Walmart relationship. Pagaya owned the credit intelligence.
Klarna’s IPO filings described its underwriting as proprietary. That disclosure question isn’t part of this lawsuit, but it won’t stay invisible.
Pagaya is asking for injunctive relief that could force Klarna to stop using any model built with Pagaya’s data. If granted, that hits Klarna’s U.S. lending business directly.

Early days here. Klarna called the suit “without merit” and says termination was contractually permitted. No answer filed yet, and discovery hasn’t started. The internal communications around model training are where this gets interesting. [Court filing] [Banking Dive]

Visa Partners with OpenAI to Power the Next Generation of AI Commerce

Visa plugged its payment network directly into OpenAI. The partnership, announced at the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco, gives OpenAI access to Visa’s global network, tokenization infrastructure, and real-time fraud monitoring to support agent-initiated purchases. Transactions run within user-defined spending limits and merchant category controls, using tokenized credentials with real-time authorization. Visa is building the checkout layer for a world where consumers stop browsing and start delegating purchases to AI agents.

The more pressing question is what happens to affiliate marketing, paid search, and comparison sites if AI agents become the primary way consumers discover and buy financial products. Visa’s Chief Product Officer said AI will transform commerce more profoundly than the internet or mobile ever did. Card issuers and lenders have spent years optimizing for Google and Credit Karma. The next distribution problem may be getting your product surfaced, compared, and recommended by an AI agent before a human ever sees it. [VISA]

Klarna Launches High-Yield Savings Account, Turning Everyday Spend Into Everyday Savings

Klarna just launched a high-yield savings account in the U.S. The product is FDIC-insured through WebBank, carries no minimum deposit, no monthly fees, and opens at 3.28% APY. Klarna already holds over $12.3 billion in deposits across eleven European markets, so the U.S. launch is a proven model in a new geography, not a product experiment.

The savings account is the third piece of a product suite we’ve been watching come together in real time. In March, we covered Klarna‘s card hitting 5 million active users globally, pacing at roughly 270,000 new cardholders a month. Around the same time, Klarna reported scaling past $17 billion in U.S. volume. Now comes savings. BNPL built the top of the funnel. The card deepened the daily relationship. Deposits take it further, giving Klarna a reason to be in the app on days when nothing is being purchased. Together with the Klarna Card and Klarna Balance, the savings account is designed to create one place to manage the full picture of everyday financial life. That’s the full-stack consumer finance playbook, and Klarna is executing it faster than most competitors expected. [Klarna]

Visa, Mastercard $38B Swipe Fee Settlement Wins US Judge’s Approval

A federal judge granted preliminary approval to Visa and Mastercard‘s $38 billion settlement with merchants on June 9, resolving a case grinding through courts since 2005. The deal cuts swipe fees by 0.1 percentage points for five years and caps standard consumer rates at 1.25% for eight years. Swipe fees totaled nearly $119 billion in 2025 alone, so even modest rate adjustments move serious money across the ecosystem.

The headline number isn’t the $38 billion. It’s the “Honor All Cards” rule dying. Merchants can now decline premium rewards cards at checkout while still accepting standard credit and debit. That’s a direct hit on the interchange economics that fund co-brand programs, cashback offers, and acquisition campaigns. Issuers built entire customer acquisition machines on the assumption that rewards cards would always get accepted. That assumption just got a lot less certain. The Electronic Payments Coalition, which includes Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, and Citibank, backed the settlement, but the National Retail Federation remains opposed and plans further challenges. A fairness hearing still needs to happen before Judge Cogan grants permanent approval, so the uncertainty hanging over interchange economics isn’t going away anytime soon. [Reuters]

News Pod #22 – JD Power Sues Chime, Plus the Big Questions Facing Affiliate Marketing

In the latest The Free Toaster News Pod, we break down JD Power’s lawsuit against Chime over its “America’s #1 choice for banking” campaign and what the case could mean for fintech marketing claims, brand partnerships, and customer trust.

Carlos and Nick also preview the upcoming Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders, discussing the future of search, AI-native brands, human signal in a world flooded with content, lender unit economics, cross-channel attribution, and whether AI strengthens or replaces the partnership function.

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

Why Visa And Mastercard Are Building The Stablecoin That Could Sink Circle

Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are reportedly building a shared stablecoin platform to take on Circle and Tether, which together control roughly 80% of the $325 billion stablecoin market. The moves have been telegraphed for over a year. Stripe paid $1.1 billion for stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge. Mastercard spent up to $1.8 billion acquiring BVNK. Visa is already settling across nine blockchains at a $7 billion annualized rate. These aren’t exploratory bets. They’re the pieces of an issuance stack being assembled in real time.

The threat to Circle isn’t technical. Circle already solved the engineering. The problem is distribution, and that’s the one thing Visa and Mastercard have spent six decades perfecting. Visa runs more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs across 50+ countries. Mastercard has direct bank and merchant relationships at a scale Circle‘s IPO couldn’t buy. The GENIUS Act (the federal stablecoin regulatory framework enacted in 2025) makes this worse for Circle: once a compliant dollar token becomes a commodity any licensed issuer can mint, the contest shifts entirely to who can place it in front of the most merchants and consumers. That’s not a race Circle is equipped to win. [Forbes]

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News Pod #22 - JD Power Sues Chime + A Preview of Our Sept 23rd Event In SF

Carlos Caro — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 22:27:11 GMT

JD Power sued Chime in the Southern District of New York over its "America's #1 choice for banking" campaign, alleging breach of contract, trademark infringement, and false advertising. Carlos and Nick discuss, expanding on the coverage in this week’s Edition of The Free Toaster Newsletter.

Carlos & Nick discuss the Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders, September 23, sponsored by Experian and Engine by Gen. We talk about the open questions shaping the day: the future of search, who's native to AI, the important of human signal in a content flood, lender unit economics and the new bank formation wave, cross-channel attribution, and whether AI improves or replaces the partnership role.

The Affiliate Marketing Summit For Lenders

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Learn more: events.thefreetoaster.com

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J.D. Power Sues Chime Over Marketing

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:16:28 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

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

J.D. Power is suing Chime over its recent marketing campaign, arguing that the data does not support the bank's advertising claims. Citi stopped accepting applications for its Custom Cash Card. We are also tracking new ways to borrow, with Experian launching a loan shopping tool directly inside ChatGPT and Pagaya expanding its point-of-sale loans alongside Upgrade. Plus, we look at how the CFPB worked with Bilt to make sure consumers were refunded for fees caused by a recent bank transition.

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

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J.D. Power Sues Chime Over Marketing Campaign

J.D. Power sued Chime on June 2 in federal court in New York over Chime’s “America’s #1 Choice for Banking” campaign and the line backing it up: “#1 ranking based on J.D. Power survey.” The complaint covers breach of contract, trademark infringement, and false advertising.

The whole fight is about whether the data says what the ad says. Chime says the claim is supported by publicly available J.D. Power data showing it had more new checking account openings than any other listed institution. J.D. Power says that study just tracks new account openings by category, not overall preference or who’s anyone’s primary bank, and that Chime led only in checking, with about half of those openings being secondary accounts. Chime is fighting it, calling the complaint selective and incomplete and saying it’ll defend vigorously, pointing to other accolades like Time’s #1 banking brand.

A few things worth chewing on if you do fintech marketing:

One strong category metric isn’t a market-wide superiority claim. The space between “most new checking accounts” and “America’s #1 Choice for Banking” is basically the lawsuit.
There’s a difference between public data and licensed-for-advertising data. J.D. Power runs a paid licensing program and says Chime’s deal was internal-use-only. That contract question is the sleeper issue here.
Can a footnote save a headline? J.D. Power argues the disclosure contradicted the claim rather than qualifying it.
Claims travel. The same line showed up on the homepage, in paid social, in SEC earnings materials, and in a trademark filing. Each surface is its own exposure.
How will courts assess willfulness? Chime allegedly kept going after a cease-and-desist, and that could unlock bigger damages. (And at time of publication, Chime hasn’t changed their website).

Early days; Chime hasn’t formally answered yet and nothing’s been tested. But it’s a good one to watch for how hard ratings firms will push back on “#1” claims built on their numbers. [ American Banker][US District Court, Southern District of New York]

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.

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Experian Brings Personal Loan Shopping to ChatGPT with New AI-Powered Experience

Experian launched a new personal loan shopping application inside OpenAI's ChatGPT platform, combining conversational tech with its marketplace data to streamline how consumers explore borrowing options through the credit reporting and financial services giant. Instead of forcing users to hop across multiple websites, this tool lets people chat their way to finding a loan. The application pulls criteria from a network of partners to simplify debt consolidation or major purchases. Lending partners like Avant expect the setup to connect users with personalized options in a far more accessible way. To lock down specific rates, users can hop from the chat window over to Experian’s main site to view pre-qualified offers without hurting their credit score. This rollout expands the firm's push to deploy financial tools at "scale", adding to an AI roster that already includes integrations on Snapchat. [Experian]

Pagaya Builds on Multi-Year Partnership with Upgrade to Expand Point-of-Sale Loans

Pagaya is teaming up once again with Upgrade. This expanded partnership is notable given the fact that the duo moves beyond basic personal loans and tackles the buy now, pay later world. Upgrade plans to plug Pagaya’s AI credit decisioning brains right into Flex Pay, its point of sale payment solution. This setup lets the companies offer flexible monthly payments to a "broader" range of shoppers right when they hit the checkout button. They plan to kick things off in the travel sector, a space where Flex Pay already partners with "thousands" of top brands. By using real time underwriting, Pagaya gives Upgrade the power to greenlight more customers quickly and responsibly. Both teams clearly want to help people make thoughtful purchases without stressing over upfront costs. [Business Wire]

Citi Surprises Cardholders by Halting Custom Cash Credit Card

Citi just surprised cash-back fans by halting new applications for its popular Custom Cash Card. For nearly five years, this card automatically helped users with up to 5% cash back on their highest monthly spending category, capping the premium perk at a $500 limit. Instead of releasing a formal public announcement, the bank simply replaced the card's product page with a brief redirection notice. Internal rumors leaked right before the shutdown, but the sudden move still caught eager applicants completely off guard. While existing cardholders can keep using their benefits for now, Citi currently funnels new shoppers toward its alternative Double Cash card. This unexpected shift leaves people wondering if the financial heavyweight plans to force product transfers down the road. [The Street]

In Case You Missed It (Weekly News Pod)

We've been writing about Cash Flow Underwriting lately. On this News Pod, we expand on what we wrote in last week’s in newsletter: Did ChatGPT Just Fix The Cash Flow Underwriting Distribution Problem?

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

The CFPB Works To Ensure Bilt Consumers Are Made Whole

The CFPB stepped in to make sure users of Bilt avoided financial headaches during the company's recent bank transition. A bumpy handoff to a new banking partner triggered technical glitches and annoying fees for a "limited" number of accounts. Instead of launching a slow, multi-year investigation, the watchdog group worked directly with corporate leadership to clean up the mess efficiently. Bilt proactively offered to cover any surprise overdraft or late fees tied to the digital shakeup. Recent documentation indicates that the fintech firm successfully resolved the technical bugs and got its platform back on track. The team expects to return cash to more than 500 newly identified consumers following the agency's push. Government officials will continue monitoring the cleanup until the company delivers full financial redress to every single impacted user. [CFPB]

Looking for a new role?

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Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

News Pod #21 - Cash Flow Underwriting Distribution - Carlos and Nick Continue The Convo...

Carlos Caro — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:03:44 GMT

We've been writing about Cash Flow Underwriting lately. This week we continue the conversation.

We expand on what we wrote this week in The Free Toaster Newsletter:
https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/will-llms-solve-distribution-for

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Did ChatGPT Just Fix The Cash Flow Underwriting Distribution Problem?

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:59:08 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by New Market Growth.

The way people find and use credit is changing fast, and AI is driving the shift. This week, we look at how large language models are becoming the ultimate distribution channel for cash flow underwriting by turning apps like ChatGPT into personal finance super apps.

We also dive into two new industry reports. Marqeta reveals that consumers are building their own custom portfolio of credit products, while a study from BCG and FT Partners shows fintech hitting a major revenue resurgence driven by real profitability. Plus, we look at Sezzle’s latest super app expansion, including a new Pay-in-5 option that is boosting order values.

There’s a lot of data to unpack. 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

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Will LLMs Solve Distribution For The Cash Flow Lenders?

(read the full version in our latest editorial here)

We Were Wrong About Cash Flow Underwriting’s Distribution Problem

A year and a half ago, I (Carlos) wrote a piece called Where’s The Consumer Demand For Cash Flow Underwriting (CFU)?

Cash flow underwriting has always had one problem: nobody can sell it. The moment a consumer hits “give us your bank login,” they bail. Application rates tank, throughput drops, and the affiliate marketplaces route volume to bureau-only lenders instead.

I used to think that was a dead end. I don’t anymore.

Second-look is quietly working. Lenders are using CFU not as a primary decision, but as a second chance. Customer gets declined on bureau data. Instead of killing the lead, you offer: share your bank data and we might approve you. The person who just got told “no” is the most motivated to say yes. You monetize dead leads, your approval rate climbs, you pay higher affiliate bounties, and the flywheel spins.

But the real unlock is the LLM.

As we wrote in a recent Free Toaster edition, 200 million people already come to ChatGPT every month to ask financial questions. With Plaid now fully integrated, those questions aren’t abstract anymore — they’re grounded in real transaction data. Perplexity built the same thing. Credit Karma is plugging approval odds directly into the ChatGPT experience.

Think about what that means: a user asks about credit cards. ChatGPT reviews their actual spending via Plaid, identifies $8,000 in annual United flight spend, surfaces the United card, checks approval odds through Credit Karma, and prompts them to apply. Product discovery, underwriting match, and conversion funnel — all inside a chat window.

That’s the distribution channel CFU has been waiting for. Not a lender begging you to log into your bank. An AI you’ve already handed your financial life to, pointing you toward better rates and smarter products. The data plumbing for cash flow underwriting is getting laid down by consumers themselves (voluntarily) because the more context they give the model, the better it serves them.

We called it the personal finance super app. The flywheel is already rolling: more data makes smarter recommendations, smarter recommendations build more trust, more trust unlocks more data. At 200 million MAUs, that flywheel has serious momentum.

The open question isn’t whether CFU gets mass distribution anymore. It’s who owns the consumer relationship when it does — ChatGPT, your bank’s AI layer, Credit Karma’s approval odds infrastructure, or someone we haven’t met yet.

But the path from “I’m asking my AI about groceries” to “I’m taking out a better loan” is shorter than most people think. The natural next move after understanding your money is optimizing it. And optimizing it is exactly what lenders sell.

[Check out our full-length editorial here]

Marqeta’s State of Credit: Credit Is Now a Portfolio Consumers Assemble Themselves — and Most Issuers Aren’t Built For It

Marqeta dropped its 2026 State of Credit Report, a survey of 4,000 consumers and 1,000 SMBs across the US and UK, and the through-line is one every growth and product lead should internalize: customers no longer “have” a credit product, they assemble a portfolio of them and switch by transaction. 85% of consumers weigh multiple factors before picking a payment method, 59% used both debit and credit in the last 90 days, and 79% of BNPL users keep using BNPL even when they have a card. BNPL isn’t cannibalizing cards, it’s a parallel rail people toggle into on purpose.

Here’s the why for operators. The report quantifies the single most under-exploited leak in the funnel, the decline. 63% of denied card applicants were never offered an alternative product, yet 60% would have taken a credit-builder, and 76% of denied credit card applicants surveyed would undergo a credit check to upgrade to revolving credit when their profile is ready.

That’s a population you already paid CAC to acquire and then showed the door. The strategic answer Marqeta is selling, “flexible credentials” (one card that flips between debit, credit, and BNPL) plus co-brand-debit-with-BNPL, is really a retention-and-graduation play: keep the relationship through the credit transition instead of re-acquiring the customer later at full price. 48% of 18 to 44s want flexible credentials, rising to 71% among multi-card holders, and the demand skews toward people most comfortable with non-bank providers, which is exactly where a Marqeta-powered issuer wants the wind blowing. [Business Wire] [Marqeta]

The caveat: this is research from a company that profits if you believe it, and it’s a press release, not a filing. But the declined-applicant numbers are the kind of thing you can validate against your own data this week.

Sezzle Expands the Super App: New Rewards Currency, Pay-in-5, and AI Across the Stack

Sezzle pushed its super-app strategy further: the Earn tab now carries a new rewards currency (Sezzle Points, earned via cashback, surveys, and receipts, redeemable for gift cards) alongside AI-powered shopping. The distribution data point worth stealing is Pay-in-5, a no-cost five-installment option where April average order values ran 44% higher than Pay-in-4, a direct lever on basket size and merchant economics, not just a UX tweak. Sezzle is running Klarna’s playbook, converting a one-and-done BNPL checkout into a recurring engagement surface . [GlobeNewswire]

Fintech Resurgence. The Next Cycle Belongs to Operators Who Own Distribution and the Balance Sheet

BCG and FT Partners put out their Global Fintech Report 2026, “From Recovery to Resurgence,” and it’s a must-read. The top line: sector revenue hit $504B in 2025, up 22% year over year, growing roughly three times faster than incumbent financial institutions. The bigger shift is quality of growth. Among the 85 largest public fintechs, 74% are now profitable, and average EBITDA margins climbed 400bps to 20%. The “growth at all costs” era is closed. Capital is being priced on durable unit economics, not GMV.

Here is the why for operators, and it runs across distribution, underwriting, and the balance sheet.

First, distribution is being rewired by AI.

The report calls out the move from search to answers, generative engines and AI overviews intercepting intent before a user ever reaches a comparison page, plus agentic commerce where AI assistants execute checkout. For any lender that buys leads or ranks for “best personal loan,” this is the affiliate funnel eroding in real time. The defensible play is owning the customer relationship and the re-engagement loop, not renting clicks.

Second, the bank-charter wave.

Charter applications and approvals jumped more than fivefold, with names like Revolut, Nubank, and crypto-native players pursuing charters and banking licenses. Owning the charter means owning deposits, cheaper funding, and the ability to keep lending economics in house instead of renting a sponsor bank. That is a direct lever on loan margins.

Third, neobanks are graduating into credit.

The scaled digital banks are pushing past deposits and interchange into lending, where the real net interest margin lives, which puts them on a collision course with incumbent card issuers on exactly the underwriting and acquisition terrain this audience operates in. M&A is consolidating the winners, deal volume rose to 659 transactions, with scaled fintechs like Capital One buying their way into capability and reach.

The strategic takeaway is consistent across the report: revenue resurgence is real, but the operators who compound through the next cycle are the ones who control distribution as AI eats search and who control the capital and the charter behind their loans. [BCG + FT Partners]

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.

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

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

Will LLMs Solve Distribution For The Cash Flow Lenders?

Carlos Caro — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:33:27 GMT

A year and a half ago, I wrote a piece called Where’s The Consumer Demand For Cash Flow Underwriting (CFU)?

The thesis was simple. The B2B CFU providers were buzzy and raising big money. But I couldn’t find a single cash-flow-based lender who was actually killing it. And the reason came down to one word: distribution.

https://www.novacredit.com/corporate-blog/nova-credit-raises-usd35m-series-d-to-accelerate-cash-flow-underwriting

Selling a CFU loan product was high friction. The second a consumer hit “please give us your bank login,” they bailed. That kills your application rate. A lower application rate kills your throughput. And lower throughput means the affiliate marketplaces favor the traditional, credit-bureau-only lenders every time they have a choice.

I still think all of that was true then. And honestly, most of it is still true today.

But I’m starting to change my mind about where this goes long-term. So let me tell you what shifted.

First, two things I should have hit harder

When I wrote the original piece, I framed CFU mostly as a primary underwriting decision. New customer comes in, you run them on cash flow, you approve or decline.

Talking to folks much closer to the chief risk officer seat than I am, I’ve since learned the two use cases that are actually working today aren’t that at all. And one of them is extremely relevant to affiliate marketing.

1. Second look

Customer comes through your funnel. You decision them on traditional credit bureau data. You decline.

Instead of letting that lead die, you say: “We can’t approve you on your bureau alone. But if you can show us your cash flow looks healthy, we might be able to.”

Some of those declines will go through Plaid. And some of those will then get approved.

Here’s why this matters for anyone running an affiliate program. You just did three things at once:

You monetized leads that were dead weight before.
You drove up your net approval rate, which lets you pay higher bounties to your publisher partners on the same lead pool.
You improved your funnel enough that you can climb the rankings, win better placement, and pull more volume and higher quality customers.

That’s the flywheel. And second look spins it without forcing every consumer through the friction upfront. You only ask for the bank login from the people you’ve already told “no” the traditional way.

2. Customer management

This one is less relevant to affiliates, but worth naming. Once you’ve already booked the customer, friction stops being mission critical. You’ve got them.

So now you can use cash flow data for things like credit line increases and repricing in the consumer’s favor. Picture someone in their online banking app checking their balance, asking for a CLI. In that moment you say, “To get you the best terms, I’d love to see what’s going on in your account.” They link Plaid. You see something positive. You give them the increase.

Neither of these was floating top of mind when I wrote the original piece, but they’re great practical examples of how lenders are using cash flow data today.

The three things I said had to change

At the end of that article, I said we didn’t have a good answer for how to get CFU into consumers’ hands at scale, but that the answer would include three things:

Distribution channels that can use cash flow data at the marketing stage to identify who qualifies
Reducing the application friction in consumer-permissioned access to checking accounts
Educating consumers on the value and safety of sharing their cash flow data

Let me go one by one, because all three have moved.

1. Distribution: enter the LLM

This is the big one, and it’s the thing that prompted me to write today’s piece.

Back then, the only channel I could point to that used cash flow data at the marketing stage was MoneyLion. That was basically it.

Now look at what’s happening with partnerships like ChatGPT and Plaid. You can connect your Plaid to the LLM and start asking it anything. How much did I spend on groceries last month? How does that compare to last year? How much am I saving? Where is my money actually going?

Source: OpenAI

This is everything Mint.com tried to do, except it’s not a clunky dashboard. It’s personalized, contextual, and conversational. And I think it all moves to voice. I’ll fire up Claude and ask, “How much did I spend on gas two years ago, and what do I think I’ll spend this year given my driving has changed?” and get a sharp answer in seconds.

That reframes the entire distribution question. It used to be: can your bank convince you to link Plaid? Can Credit Karma? Now the LLMs have a genuinely compelling reason for the consumer to link their accounts, because the more context you give the model, the better it serves you.

This is what Nick and I have been calling the personal finance super app. The data plumbing for cash flow is getting laid down by consumers themselves, voluntarily, because they want better answers about their own money.

2. Friction: Plaid is starting to remember you

The second thing has moved too. Plaid is rolling out what’s effectively a returning-user shortcut. If you’ve linked through Plaid before, you put in your phone number, they recognize you, they text you a code to confirm it’s you, and you’re in. No hunting for usernames and passwords across a dozen banks.

I’m hearing directly from lenders that conversion rates are up as a result. That’s the whole ballgame for a funnel that used to scare customers at the login step.

3. Education: this isn’t an education play anymore

I used to think we’d need to teach consumers why sharing cash flow data was valuable and safe. I don’t think that’s the work anymore.

The LLMs are making it abundantly obvious on their own. The more you share, the more context you give, the better the answers you get back. Consumers are learning the value proposition by using the product, not by reading a brochure about it.

The open question

So where does this land?

The thing I’m genuinely unsure about is who owns the consumer relationship. Does ChatGPT own it? Does the bank build its own LLM layer that does this natively? Does a marketplace with an existing brand in consumer finance lean in? Or does someone go AI-native, build the whole thing from scratch, and earn the consumer’s trust as a newcomer?

Jury’s out. Could be OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, or a finance-native brand we haven’t met yet. I don’t know who plays that role.

But I’m now convinced the role gets played.

So what?

If you read what I wrote a year and a half ago and concluded “as a cash-flow-based underwriter, I’m going to struggle to get distribution from the affiliate marketplaces,” you were right. You’re still right today.

What I no longer believe is that it stays that way.

If you’re a lender who isn’t all-in on cash flow underwriting, now is the time to start watching the board:

Where is this data starting to live?
Which surfaces have it?
How many consumers have plugged in?
And how good is the conversion path from “I’m asking my LLM about my groceries” to “I’m taking out a new personal loan”?

That last one is the real open question. It’s possible consumers just do budgeting and personal finance chats that never turn into a new product. But I’d bet a lot of them do convert, because the natural next move after understanding your money is optimizing it. Better rewards. Lower rates on your loans. Consolidating debt. Those are exactly the products a lender brings to the table.

I won’t put a tight timeline on it. But I’d bet that in about three years, this is a materially different market.

I’m going to be watching it closely, and I’ll report out here as it develops.

If you’re working on getting a cash flow product working in affiliate channels, I’d love to compare notes.

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

News Pod #20 - What Would It Take To Scale Cash Flow Based Lending?

Carlos Caro — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:24:33 GMT

In an October 2024 article in The Free Toaster, Carlos laid out 3 things that would unlock distribution for Cash Flow Based Lenders. In today's episode, he shares the progress we've made on all 3 fronts over the last 18 months.

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/where-is-the-demand-for-cash-flow-underwriting

*****

The Free Toaster is hosting the Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders on September 23rd & 24th in San Francisco.

Learn more: https://events.thefreetoaster.com/

*****

The Free Toaster Newsletter ships every Wednesday at www.thefreetoaster.com, curating the biggest stories at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology.

******

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Robinhood thinks your AI agent deserves a credit card

Thu, 28 May 2026 17:08:49 GMT

Hey Toaster Readers,

This week is sponsored by our friends at Fintel Connect.

Are AI agents about to take over our wallets? It certainly looks like it. Robinhood just dropped the first mass-market consumer credit card built explicitly for AI agents, while Catena Labs snagged $30M and filed for a national trust bank charter to act as a regulated fiduciary for bots. If your product roadmap didn’t account for non-human spenders yet, it definitely does now.

But it’s not just the bots making big moves. Fintechs and regulators are shaking things up, too. SoFi just scooped up Peach Finance to supercharge its lending technology stack alongside Galileo and Technisys, while a new executive order from President Trump could completely rewrite the embedded finance playbook by exploring direct Fed payment access for non-banks.

Plus, we’re diving into a slick new co-branded card from Fanatics and American Express and breaking down Q1 direct mail trends that show credit card marketers are still flooding mailboxes, while somehow largely ignoring 20-somethings.

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

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Robinhood Launches an Agentic Credit Card and Agentic Trading

Robinhood launched an agentic credit card and agentic trading this week (May 27). Users instruct AI agents to make purchases using the Robinhood Gold card. Each agent gets a separate virtual card number, not the consumer’s actual card, which can be deleted at any time. Optional monthly spending caps and per-transaction notification thresholds. Agent purchases earn 3% cash back. Robinhood is the first major consumer brand to offer an agentic credit card natively. Stripe and Ramp offered virtual cards for agents, but those are B2B. This is the first mass-market consumer credit product explicitly built for AI agents. For card product managers: rewards programs, fraud logic, and co-brand economics are all built around human transactors. AI agents disrupt every assumption in that stack. Robinhood just made this everyone’s near-term roadmap problem. [Fortune] [CNBC] [American Banker]

Fanatics + American Express Launch First Co-Brand Credit Card (Issued by First Electronic Bank, Managed by Imprint)

American Express and Fanatics announced the Fanatics American Express® Card, launching later in 2026, issued by First Electronic Bank and managed by Imprint. The card earns FanCash (Fanatics’ loyalty currency) redeemable for merchandise, tickets, collectibles, and experiences. AmEx Membership Rewards cardmembers can transfer AmEx points into FanCash. AmEx becomes the Official Payments Partner across Fanatics online/retail locations and is the presenting sponsor at Fanatics Fest NYC (July 16–19). The three-party card structure (AmEx network + First Electronic Bank as issuer + Imprint as card manager) is becoming the template for specialty co-brand plays. Imprint is worth watching as a fintech stack-in-a-box for co-brand card programs. The FanCash-to-Membership Rewards bridge is an easy-to-use rewards exchange that pulls existing AmEx cardholders into the Fanatics ecosystem. [CNBC] [Bloomberg] [BusinessWire] [AmEx]

Trump Signs Executive Order on Fintech Innovation — Fed Must Review Non-Bank Payment Access

President Trump signed “Integrating Financial Technology Innovation into Regulatory Frameworks” on May 19. Key provisions: (1) Federal regulators must complete a review of their fintech regulations and application processes within 90 days (~August 17) and take pro-innovation steps within 180 days; (2) The Federal Reserve is directed to evaluate access to Fed payment accounts and services for non-bank financial companies, including fintechs and digital asset firms. This is the policy backdrop for the wave of bank charter applications (Upstart, Mercury, Catena Labs, Mission Lane). If non-banks can access Fed payment rails directly, the sponsor/partner bank model underpinning embedded finance changes structurally. For BaaS operators and embedded finance platforms: the 90-day regulatory review clock is now running. Watch for OCC, FDIC, and Fed guidance by August. [White House] [Consumer Finance Monitor] [Sullivan & Cromwell]

(Webinar) From Budget Guesswork to Provable ROI: What Bank and Credit Union Marketing Leaders Need to Change in 2026

Ron Shevlin, Chief Research Officer at Cornerstone Advisors and Senior Contributor at Forbes, is sitting down with Nicky Senyard, Chief Executive Officer of Fintel Connect, for a quick but impactful 30-minute conversation on how banks and credit unions can move from budget guesswork to provable marketing ROI.

Join us on June 4 at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST, as they uncover real-world examples of how leading financial institutions are reducing the ROI gap and implementing more effective, trackable strategies to connect marketing spend to real growth outcomes.

You’ll learn:

Why many financial institutions still struggle to measure true marketing impact
Where banks and credit unions may be overspending or underinvesting
How affiliate marketing is becoming a scalable, trackable acquisition channel
What leaders need to change to better defend budgets and connect spend to growth outcomes

If you’re responsible for growth, acquisition, or marketing accountability, you won’t want to miss this session.

Save your spot now

SoFi Buys Peach Finance to Boost Enterprise FinTech Platform

SoFi just acquired Peach Finance to beef up its enterprise technology stack. Peach Finance provides software-as-a-service for loan servicing and processing, making it a natural fit for SoFi's growing backend ecosystem. SoFi will integrate the startup into its Technology Solutions segment alongside existing fintech infrastructure players Galileo and Technisys. Before the deal, Peach Finance raised around $27.5 million from venture capital firms and grew to a team of about 54 employees. This move represents an expansion for SoFi as it creates a vertically integrated system for other financial institutions looking to modernize. The acquisition supports SoFi's broader expansion strategy, which already helped the company reach 14.7 million members in early 2026. Beyond managing loans, the platform is also scaling its capital markets and blockchain capabilities to let enterprises handle both fiat and cryptocurrency. [PYMNTS]

Catena Labs Raises $30M, Files for National Trust Bank Charter for AI Agents

Circle co-founder Sean Neville’s Catena Labs raised $30M (a16z Crypto, Acrew Capital) and filed for a national trust bank charter from the OCC. Catena would be a regulated fiduciary for AI agents. A bank account where the account holder is an AI agent, not a person. Operators can set spending limits, define approved recipients, and cap holdings before handing off financial execution to agents. This is the infrastructure layer that resolves the liability, fraud, and compliance gaps blocking broad agentic commerce deployment. [Fortune] [PYMNTS]

Direct Mail Volume & Trends Report: Q1 2026

Direct mail hit 7B+ pieces in Q1 2026, and credit card brands led the charge with 1.35B pieces, more than any other category. Mortgage and loan marketers held steady at 1B+, while financial services posted modest gains after the holiday season pullback. Key creative trends: 2/3 of all mail was personalized, and 70%+ went out in envelope formats — a sign that marketers are doubling down on scalable, cost-efficient executions. One audience gap worth noting: ages 20–29 made up just ~1% of total mail volume, while 40–69-year-olds captured 2/3 of all pieces. If you're targeting younger borrowers, the mailbox is wide open. [Franklin Madison Direct]

News Pod 19 - With The New Plaid Integration, ChatGPT is Now a Distribution Channel for Personal Finance

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

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.

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.

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

Catch you next week,

The Free Toaster Team

News Pod #19 - With the New Plaid Integration, ChatGPT is Now a Distribution Channel for Personal Finance

Carlos Caro — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:05:55 GMT

ChatGPT just integrated Plaid, giving 200 million monthly users a personalized finance experience built on real account data.

Carlos and Nick break down what that means for affiliate marketing. Credit Karma's approval odds models (and Experian's) become foundational infrastructure. Intuit's $100M OpenAI deal puts TurboTax and Credit Karma inside the chat. Generic content sites ranking for "best travel credit cards" lose ground to recommendations that know you spent $8,000 on United last year.

They cover which channels survive (direct mail, social, podcasts) and the question every lender and publisher needs to ask right now.

Today's Pod expands on our Newsletter coverage:
https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/with-plaid-integration-chatgpt-is

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The Free Toaster is hosting the Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders on September 23rd & 24th in San Francisco.

Learn more: https://events.thefreetoaster.com/

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The Free Toaster Newsletter ships every Wednesday at www.thefreetoaster.com, curating the biggest stories at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology.

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Spinwheel:

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Fintel Connect

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E050 - Jeff Keltner on AI for Business Development, NerdWallet's Drop, and the Future of Affiliate Channels

Carlos Caro — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:09:42 GMT

Jeff Keltner was the first non-founder employee at Upstart. He spent over a decade there running consumer acquisition, building the bank partnership business from zero to ten banks, and managing both sides of the affiliate marketplace. Today he hosts What the AI, a weekly podcast covering the top stories in AI with co-host Annie Delgado.

This conversation goes two places. First, how a Business Development Professional can actually use AI day to day.

Second, what AI does to the affiliate marketing world over the next few years.

What we covered

AI for the non-engineer. Jeff uses Claude, Cowork, and Claude Code as his stack. Research is the unlock. Reading 10-Ks, 10-Qs, earnings call transcripts, and conference coverage used to take days. Now it takes an hour and gives you a strong first draft.

Context is everything. Generic prompts get generic output. Jeff sets up Cowork with 15 or so files about who he is, his brand voice, his audience, and his projects. When he asks for research, Claude knows it's for the podcast and can pull from past episode transcripts. Same idea works for BD. Give the model your prior meeting notes, your past correspondence, and your strategic priorities before you ask it for anything.

Fathom plus Gmail as a memory system. Jeff uses Fathom for meeting notes because it emails the recap. Gmail becomes the single source of truth that any LLM can plug into. Ask Claude about a prospect and it pulls every meeting note, every email thread, every update.

The Gong unlock. A sales leader fed every customer and prospect call transcript into an LLM and asked for the top five reasons deals don't close. The model aggregated across hundreds of reps in seconds. It even quantified the answers. That kind of work would have taken a quarter to do manually.

Practice for high-stakes meetings. One PhD candidate fed her review committee's published writing into an LLM and asked it to simulate the defense. The model predicted 80% of the questions she actually got asked. Same approach works for board meetings, vendor pitches, and partner reviews.

Plan mode for analytics dashboards. If you want to build something with Claude Code, do not start with the build. Start in plan mode. Define the four quadrants, the specific graphs, the exact conversion math you care about. The coding part is trivial. The thinking part is the work.

Mac mini as the always-on AI computer. Jeff keeps a Mac mini under his desk running Claude jobs so he can shut his laptop and leave. He controls it from his phone using Claude's remote control. He warns that running four sessions at once is mentally exhausting. Each session comes back with a week's worth of work every ten minutes.

On the future of affiliate channels

NerdWallet's card business is down 50% from seven quarters ago. Search behavior is changing. Blue link traffic is dropping. The question every lender is asking is whether the next front door is agentic, an LLM, or something else.

Trust is the most valuable position in financial services. Banks have always overpaid for the first product because they make money on products two, three, and four. That model breaks if you're paying acquisition costs on every product. Lenders that build direct trust with consumers win.

Will an LLM become the new front door? ChatGPT just shipped Plaid integration. They could surface credit card recommendations from your transaction data. But the consumer adoption question is open. Jeff and Carlos disagreed on whether people will want a single super-AI that knows their finances, health, and everything else, or whether they will keep these worlds separate.

Why direct mail and affiliates still dominate. Credit bureau pre-screen data. Both channels use soft pulls to target high-intent customers who can actually qualify. No LLM has cracked that yet. Jeff doubts anyone does in the next three years. If anyone does it, his bet is Meta. Carlos took the under.

Crash course for new lenders entering affiliate channels

Jeff's advice for any lender getting ready to approach a Karma, an Experian, or a NerdWallet:

Know your conversion rate, offer rate, and completion rate cold. The big affiliates measure all of it. If you don't know your numbers, you will underwhelm.
Match your credit spectrum to the placement. A 720+ approval model does not belong in a renters marketplace.
Get your product mature before you scale. These channels are better-oiled machines than most lenders appreciate.
Watch credit performance like a hawk. Same credit variables can perform differently through a new channel. Don't triple down just because the deal got bigger.
Grow slowly. Dave Girouard's line: it's easy to lend money. It's hard to get it back.

Resources:

What the AI podcast with Jeff Keltner and Annie Delgado
Jeff Keltner on LinkedIn

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Spinwheel:

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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

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

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

Carlos Caro — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:43:04 GMT

Carlos and Nick break down NerdWallet's Q1 2026 earnings, the first full read on the company since the stock dropped 32% post-print. Headline numbers look fine on the surface. $222M in revenue, 6% YoY growth, $34M in non-GAAP operating income at a 15% margin. Look one layer down and the story turns. A major insurance carrier pulled back. Small business was down 15% YoY and got zero analyst questions. And the cards business, which NerdWallet said it would stop reporting at the segment level, showed up on the investor relations site anyway. It was down 33% YoY from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026.

Today's Pod expands on our Newsletter coverage:

https://www.thefreetoaster.com/p/nerdwallets-q1-26-earnings-why-is

*****

The Free Toaster is hosting the Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders on September 23rd & 24th in San Francisco. Save the date! More details coming soon.

*****

The Free Toaster Newsletter ships every Wednesday at www.thefreetoaster.com, curating the biggest stories at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology.

******

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

New Market Growth:

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

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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.

News Pod #17 - SoFi's Q1 2026 Earnings Report - With Special Guest Rachel Lauren, Co-Founder and COO at Debbie

Carlos Caro — Fri, 08 May 2026 20:47:57 GMT

Wall St. sold off what seemed to us like a killer performance from SoFi in Q1 2026. Carlos, Nick, and special guests Rachel Lauren react to the earnings report.

This news Pod expands on our reporting from this week's Newsletter.

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

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The Free Toaster Newsletter ships every Wednesday at www.thefreetoaster.com, curating the biggest stories at the intersection of consumer lending, marketing, and technology.

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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

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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.

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.

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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

E049 - Deep Dive With Zak Ali, General Manager of Finder's US Business

Carlos Caro — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:15:53 GMT

Zak Ali runs the US business at Finder, the financial comparison site that started in Australia in 2006 and launched stateside in 2015. Lending now drives roughly 40–50% of Finder US revenue across personal loans, business loans, and earned wage access. In this conversation, Zak pulls back the curtain on how a major comparison publisher actually thinks — about Google's SEO meltdown, the reality of CPA negotiations, why YouTube has become Finder's secret weapon, and what separates the lenders who scale into category leaders from the ones who fizzle out.

We also get into the part most operator conversations skip: building a personal brand while running a P&L. Zak shares his routine, his stack (he's a Claude Code power user), and how he measures whether any of it is actually working.

*****

If the B2B founder-led marketing event we talked about is up your alley, register here. It's happening next week on Tuesday May 12th! https://luma.com/aic-ny-5-12

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The Free Toaster

Happen Bank Is Running Chime in Reverse Playbook — Here's the Bet

Hey Toaster Readers,

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders and Publishers

LendingClub Became Happen. The Real Story Is Who It’s Chasing.

First, what Happened to Lending Club?

Happen focusing on the “Motivated Middle”

The sequencing question (Chime in reverse)

But first, a quick note from our sponsor:

New Market Growth

The flywheel: rewards that pay for behaviors, not balances

TOASTER’S TAKE

Looking for a new role?

What happens when consumers delegate financial decisions to agents?

Hey Toaster Readers,

Mark Your Calendars For September 23rd!

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders

What happens when consumers delegate financial decisions to agents?

Sponsored by Fintel Connect

Home equity credit card startup Trovy closes $25m raise

SoFi Launches AI Tools to Coach Your Finances and Automate Your Investments

What’s up with banking’s marketing ROI gap?

News Pod #23 - Pagaya Sues Klarna for (Allegedly) Stealing Its Underwriting Model

Looking for a new role?

How Lenders Win When AI Calls the Shots

Your funnel survives. Your audience changes.

Changing dynamics in distribution channels

Application page optimization is fading out. The friction tradeoff will replace it.

The new top of funnel job is to plant the branded prompt.

Feed the super app. Do not try to become it.

A key assumption

The one move to make this quarter

Closing thoughts

News Pod #23 - Pagaya Sues Klarna for (Allegedly) Stealing Its Underwriting Model

Pagaya Sues Klarna for (Allegedly) Stealing Its Underwriting Model

Hey Toaster Readers,

Mark Your Calendars For September 23rd!

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders

Pagaya Sues Klarna Over Alleged Trade Secret Misappropriation

Sponsored by Spinwheel

Visa Partners with OpenAI to Power the Next Generation of AI Commerce

Klarna Launches High-Yield Savings Account, Turning Everyday Spend Into Everyday Savings

Visa, Mastercard $38B Swipe Fee Settlement Wins US Judge’s Approval

News Pod #22 – JD Power Sues Chime, Plus the Big Questions Facing Affiliate Marketing

Why Visa And Mastercard Are Building The Stablecoin That Could Sink Circle

Looking for a new role?

News Pod #22 - JD Power Sues Chime + A Preview of Our Sept 23rd Event In SF

J.D. Power Sues Chime Over Marketing

Hey Toaster Readers,

A Free Toaster Event You Can’t Miss

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders

J.D. Power Sues Chime Over Marketing Campaign

Sponsored by Bulldog Media Group

Reach the Borrowers Others Miss.

Experian Brings Personal Loan Shopping to ChatGPT with New AI-Powered Experience

Pagaya Builds on Multi-Year Partnership with Upgrade to Expand Point-of-Sale Loans

Citi Surprises Cardholders by Halting Custom Cash Credit Card

In Case You Missed It (Weekly News Pod)

The CFPB Works To Ensure Bilt Consumers Are Made Whole

Looking for a new role?

News Pod #21 - Cash Flow Underwriting Distribution - Carlos and Nick Continue The Convo...

Did ChatGPT Just Fix The Cash Flow Underwriting Distribution Problem?

Hey Toaster Readers,

But First, An Event You Can’t Miss

Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders

Will LLMs Solve Distribution For The Cash Flow Lenders?

Marqeta’s State of Credit: Credit Is Now a Portfolio Consumers Assemble Themselves — and Most Issuers Aren’t Built For It

Sponsored by New Market Growth

Sezzle Expands the Super App: New Rewards Currency, Pay-in-5, and AI Across the Stack

Fintech Resurgence. The Next Cycle Belongs to Operators Who Own Distribution and the Balance Sheet

Looking for a new role?

Will LLMs Solve Distribution For The Cash Flow Lenders?

First, two things I should have hit harder

1. Second look

2. Customer management

The three things I said had to change

1. Distribution: enter the LLM

2. Friction: Plaid is starting to remember you

3. Education: this isn’t an education play anymore

The open question

A Must-Attend Event
for Lenders + Publishers