The real winner of the BNPL Wars is…Mastercard? 🤔; Plaid & Wise partnership shows what the future of banking looks like 📲; EU's crypto agenda could be the biggest change to crypto in a long time 👀

Good Morning FinTech, 16 August

Good day Everyone,

And happy Tuesday! Today’s issue is for sure one of the most interesting and probably impactful ones in the last couple of weeks. We’re going to look at why Mastercard could be the winner of BNPL wars (+ why it’s a war worth fighting for), Plaid & Wise partnership that could disrupt banking as we know it (& shows what the future of the industry looks like), and EU’s crypto agenda that’s going to make waves (& change the crypto game in EU forever). Without further ado, let’s jump straight into the interesting stuff:

The real winner of the BNPL Wars is…Mastercard? 🤔

The news 🗞 Payments behemoth Mastercard MA 0.00%↑ is reportedly automatically enrolling merchants in its fresh Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) program dubbed Mastercard Installments. Yet, according to Bloomberg, merchants have the option to opt-out.

But the rollout is nothing if you can’t get traction. And this is exactly where Mastercard is crushing it.

More on this 👉 For the context, we can remember that the card network giant unveiled Mastercard Installments last September and since then it has been quickly building it out with some big-name partners. Leveraging open banking platforms Aiia & Finicity (both of which were acquired by MC in 2021 & 2020 respectively), Mastercard Installements lets MC’s merchants offer installments to their customers through direct integrations into their platforms. Companies like Walgreens, i2c, SoFi, HSBC, and NatWest, among others, have all signed up for the new program.

But there’s one more thing…

Bringing BNPL to another level 🍎 Few people remember that Mastercard has brought Apple on board too. The tech titan has chosen MC and its Installments offering for their Apple Pay Later pivot, while Goldman Sachs will be the technical issuer of the loans and is the official BIN sponsor. A wholly owned subsidiary of Apple will be responsible for credit underwriting and extending loans to users of Apple Pay Later.

Bonus: Goodbye, bank. Welcome, Apple Bank 🏦🤯

Leveraging Mastercard’s BNPL technology, but using their own underwriting algorithms and balance sheet, Apple has not only created a truly innovative model that frankly, sets the standard of how established businesses (and banks) should have been working with FinTech all along.

More importantly, Apple has indirectly crowned Mastercard as the leader in the BNPL field. But there’s much more to that, so here’s the takeaway: