Simon Taylor

With 20+ years in banking, finance, and Fintech, I've done a little bit of everything. Some of the things I saw made me get a little Ranty, hence this newsletter.

Oct 15, 2026

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9 min read

🧠 Finance is entering its mod era

Your customers still want your product. They just want it inside their agent.

Simon Taylor

🧠 When everyone can build a bank. Who runs it?

Oct 8, 2026

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11 min read

🧠 When everyone can build a bank. Who runs it?

Stablecoins make the launch easier. Someone still has to answer for the money.

Simon Taylor

🎧 Exclusive Interview: Nubank’s Founder and CEO on taking Nu global

Oct 6, 2026

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1 min read

🎧 Exclusive Interview: Nubank’s Founder and CEO on taking Nu global

Live at Nu Stadium, the day after the US launch. David Vélez on US banking, stablecoins, and building an AI-powered bank.

Simon Taylor

Oct 5, 2026

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2 min read

🧠 Fintech Brainfood is now Brainfood

It felt dishonest to make that argument and keep the word in the masthead. Here's what it means.

Simon Taylor

Oct 1, 2026

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7 min read

🧠 Fintech is Dead

Cloud and mobile are no longer the driving forces of disruption in financial services. Intelligence tokens and value tokens are.

Simon Taylor

Sep 29, 2026

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11 min read

🧠 Agent Wars: The agentic bank run?

Your deposits can stay put while your customer's next financial decision goes somewhere else.

Simon Taylor

Sep 27, 2026

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12 min read

🧠 Nubank in talks to acquire Monzo

Kalshi's alleged "wash trading," three new conditional bank charters. Plus SoFi’s $25bn stablecoin move.

Simon Taylor

Sep 20, 2026

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11 min read

🧠 Mercury wants to replace QuickBooks

Plus the SEC’s five-year tokenized-stock exemption, Ramp’s UK launch, Monzo Aura and reusable bank ID.

Simon Taylor

Aug 27, 2026

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9 min read

🧠 AI Created New Customer Problems

Solving them is where the next generation of finance products are forming. Token spend, agent identity, and model routing barely existed before AI.

Simon Taylor

Aug 23, 2026

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9 min read

🧠 Stripe is buying the AI economy

The 7bn OpenRouter deal puts Stripe on both sides of the AI P&L.

Simon Taylor

Jul 2, 2026

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11 min read

🧠 The Coin Nobody Owns

140 companies just agreed to share a stablecoin. OpenUSD is a play for the trillions of dollars that never came onchain.

Simon Taylor

🧠 Prediction Markets: A Messy Path to Mainstream

Jun 28, 2026

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9 min read

🧠 Prediction Markets: A Messy Path to Mainstream

Meta enters prediction markets; Polymarket's ad scandal; and Anthropic puts Claude in your Slack.

Simon Taylor

Jun 24, 2026

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9 min read

🤖 Who holds AI’s off switch?

One Friday night in June, Anthropic locked its own engineers out of its best model.

Simon Taylor

Jun 21, 2026

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8 min read

🧠 Stablecoin Issuer KYC Rules Proposed

Plus: Coinbase's SEC-registered AI investment advisor, and Karta raises $15m for an international travelers' credit card (but don't stay stablecoins)

Simon Taylor

🧠 Why Zelle wants to launch a stablecoin

Jun 18, 2026

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9 min read

🧠 Why Zelle wants to launch a stablecoin

The Clearing House reached for tokenized deposits, Zelle went stablecoin, and why stablecoins are the rail above the rails.

Simon Taylor

Jun 14, 2026

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14 min read

🧠 The Benchmark Will Eat Finance

AI will transform whatever we can measure first. And the first measures are here. Plus; Visa & Mastercard finally settle swipe fees lawsuit & Kalshi requires job disclosures.

Simon Taylor

REPORT: The Enterprise AI Operating Model Playbook.

Jun 11, 2026

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3 min read

REPORT: The Enterprise AI Operating Model Playbook.

Why 99% AI adoption still produces almost no productivity, and what Anthropic, Ramp, and the 1% do differently.

Simon Taylor

🧠 AI’s cost explosion needs a Fintech solution.

Jun 7, 2026

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15 min read

🧠 AI’s cost explosion needs a Fintech solution.

Uber burned their AI budget in 4 months. Fintech may have the answer. Plus; Ramp's $44bn valuation & mastercard settlement goes 7-days per week.

Simon Taylor

May 31, 2026

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13 min read

🧠 The stablecoin 24x7 money loop.

The business case for banks to embrace, not fear, stablecoins. Plus; Robinhood lets agents trade for you, SoFi stablecoin goes live & Cash App stablecoins are live with USDC

Simon Taylor

🧠 How Commerce is Being Reinvented for Agentic AI

May 24, 2026

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20 min read

🧠 How Commerce is Being Reinvented for Agentic AI

Discovery, referral, policy, cart building, authorization, and fulfillment, are all being reimagined and reinvented. Plus; Google's Universal Cart, The Fintech Executive Order and Mercury's $500m Series D.

Simon Taylor

🧠 The Token Economy pt2: The Intelligence Company Gets Built

May 17, 2026

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16 min read

🧠 The Token Economy pt2: The Intelligence Company Gets Built

Some companies are rebuilding themselves around AI. Everyone else is waiting for a lab, vendor, owner, or competitor to do it to them.

Simon Taylor

🧠 The Token Economy: Tokenmaxxing Is Stupid Until It Isn’t

May 10, 2026

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18 min read

🧠 The Token Economy: Tokenmaxxing Is Stupid Until It Isn’t

Meta engineers burned 60 trillion AI tokens in 30 days. Anthropic has compressed product cycles from months to days. Meanwhile, nearly 90% of firms say AI has had no impact on productivity or employment.

Simon Taylor