Hey Toaster Readers,
Hey Toaster Readers,
A quick heads-up: this edition is lighter and a few days late.
Nick’s kids were out of daycare for two weeks and started Transitional Kindergarten this week, and the rest of our hours went into Summit planning. We started announcing speakers (more to come!) and keep adding logos of the companies that will be there.
So we’re trying something different. Below are the stories that caught our eye this week, listed out rather than written up. We’ll expand on the ones worth it in future editions.
Back in full force next week.
Stories That Caught Our Eye
NASCAR and Avant announce multiyear partnership to launch new co-branded credit card for fans [nascar.com]
Citi Expands Customer Engagement and Commerce Media Capabilities with Addition of Kard [Citi]
The Klarna Card reached 6.5 million active users across 16 countries, up from 1.3 million a year ago [Klarna]
Sezzle pivots to national bank charter [Banking Dive]
Bunq‘s national bank charter application DENIED by the OCC [OCC]
Checkr Acquires Truv to Expand Its Verification Platform [PR Newswire]
Bilt and Equinox Partner and Launch ‘Bilt for the Committed’ to Make High-Performance Living Part of Where You Live [Businesswire]
‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Lenders Pitch Loans for Needs Like Electricity and Rent [WSJ]
Airwallex adds Affirm’s flexible pay-over-time options for US shoppers [Airwallex]
Stripe will reportedly acquire AI gateway startup OpenRouter for $7B+ [TechCrunch]
Speakers at The Affiliate Marketing Summit
We started to announce speakers at our Affiliate Marketing Summit for Lenders & Publishers.
We’ll continue to announce speakers throughout the next two weeks!
We have less than 49 tickets available.
Who You Can Expect To Be There
Catch you next week,
The Free Toaster Team
Carlos Caro, Founder at NMG, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster
Nick Madrid, Co-Founder of The Free Toaster and Uncovered Media
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. Reply to this email or write us at info@thefreetoaster.com.