Big news today from the Alloy team - we're thrilled to announce that we have raised $40 million in Series B funding!

Tommy Nicholas
Recent posts by Tommy Nicholas
1 min read
Immigration Status
By Tommy Nicholas on Mar 18, 2019 11:45:00 AM
Alloy is making an important update to our Terms Of Service: financial institutions may not use Alloy’s product to deny a customer access to a financial services product because of their immigration or citizenship status alone.
Topics: Fintech
14 min read
Fintech Needs Business Model Innovation
By Tommy Nicholas on Feb 18, 2017 11:45:00 AM
I love fintech, but fintech got problems. Financial technology has plenty of hype, with many going as far as to say banks are going to have an "Uber Moment" where they are fully disrupted by technology driven companies. This sounds great, but there's an obvious problem: nobody is actually allowed to compete with banks. There are over 6,000 FDIC insured banks in the US, but only 3 new charters have been issued since 2010. The option to compete with banks directly has been removed by the federal government, and with it the opportunity to build a "Full Stack Startup" like Uber.
But it gets worse!
Topics: Fintech Banking
7 min read
Odd bedfellows: what a Bitcoin company can learn from the strange history of VISA
By Tommy Nicholas on Dec 23, 2016 11:45:00 AM
Topics: Fintech Bitcoin Payments
4 min read
What’s stopping users from loving fintech?
By Tommy Nicholas on Dec 23, 2016 11:45:00 AM
Average people do not love fintech. In fact, in many cases they hate it. I’ve seen this first hand since I took the (currently on pause) dive into fintech a little over two years ago, but two posts by Pascal Bouvier of Route 66 Ventures got me thinking about how deep this problem really is. Pascal’s example of the relative lack of progress in modernizing remittances (sending money home from, for example, the US to Mexico) is a great one: remittances SHOULD be done electronically, they ARE incredibly horrible/expensive/broken, there are MANY players trying to disrupt the market; yet, the incumbent (Western Union) is still cleaning up. Why? Because nobody is winning their users’ hearts. Nobody loves their bank, but nobody LOVES fintech startups either.