Birkins and Banksys and bottles, oh my! Alternative investing platforms tap niche markets.

“Finfluencers” use platforms like TikTok and Instagram to make finance topics digestible to younger audiences, and can make $500k+ per year.

Square agreed to purchase Australian fintech giant Afterpay for $29B, adding another big player to the “buy now, pay later” space.

Apple wants to squeeze more revenue out of its 1B+ iPhone users by offering a BNPL product.

Robinhood is on pace for $2B+ in sales in 2021 and is eyeing a $40B+ valuation.

There are digital banks that serve the LGBTQ+ community (Daylight), Latinos (Greenwood), Black Americans (First Boulevard) and the underbanked (CapWay).

Stripe -- the $95B fintech startup -- is edging into another high-value business: identity management.

Shopify’s payment solution (Shop Pay) will be available for Facebook and Google starting this summer.

Klarna -- a leader in “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) -- has become Europe’s biggest startup, valued at $45B+. But its business model raises questions.

ConsenSys works on 2 Ethereum-based blockchains you may have heard of: NFTs and DeFi.

TurboTax and H&R Block have spent decades cementing their position as America’s tax tools. Are fintech apps an alternative?

After personal tragedies, MIT professor Andrew Lo created a new financing framework for biotech. One of his students launched a startup based on it.

Square’s acquisition of Tidal would supercharge its Cash App, among other benefits.

Business banking still lives in the past, so Stripe created a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) solution that moves at the speed of the internet.

Visa Credit Card

By acquiring Paystack -- one of Africa’s top fintech firms -- Stripe is getting a toehold on the continent, which will have half the world’s population by 2050.

Fraud rates on payments apps are 3x to 4x more than on debit or credit cards.

A banking startup called Zelf operates wholly out of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

The pandemic has forced CEOs to give up on brevity.

Financial world domination may no longer be in Libra’s horoscope.

They’re rolling out the red carpet for people who want their money faster, but some people have questions.

Apple will start testing its first credit card in partnership with Goldman Sachs, linked directly to the Apple Wallet.

Billd, a startup that offers short-term construction loans, raised $60m as it aims to expand its reach of streamlining the financial relationship between building suppliers and contractors.

Fiserv and First Data merged in a $22B deal, and now they’re poised to compete with payment companies like Square, Paypal, and Ant Financial.

Flutterwave extends its latest Series A, bringing the payment solutions startup to $20m in funds raised, but it comes with the news of its famous CEO’s departure.

The company is offering parents cash-free control.