Page 79 - INC Magazine-November 2018

p More Loans to Go Around Ten years ago, the financial crisis choked off credit for almost everyone–
uP especially lower-income Americans and business owners deemed too risky by banks and traditional
NExT/ lenders. But it also ignited efforts to provide more access to credit, and to replace payday loans with
better products—like those created by FS Card, which Marla Blow (below) founded in 2014 after
MONEY stints at Capital One and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The company’s Build card
charges an APR of about 30 percent—higher than credit cards; far lower than payday loans—
THERE’S and comes with a chatbot that nudges customers to pay bills early. The company has extended
$50 million of credit to over 100,000 Americans, and is seeing big banks tiptoe back into the arena.
MORE TO Blow isn’t worried. “This is a space that’s still intensely underserved,” she says. —MARIA ASPAN
ITS FuTuRE
THAN
CRYPTO

t There’s an awful lot of froth, fraud, and sheer inanity $161 BILLION161 BILLION161 BILLION
$
Digital CurrenCy grows upigital CurrenCy grows up
D
T
There’s an awful lot of froth, fraud, and sheer inanity here’s an awful lot of froth, fraud, and sheer inanity
surrounding bitcoins, blockchain, and everything crypto-
c
currency. But there’s also an awful lot of funding and urrency. But there’s also an awful lot of funding and What Americans are expected to pay each year,
talent working on new kinds of digital money: In June, via point-and-tap smartphone payments, by 2022.
Andreessen Horowitz launched a $300 million crypto-
currency-focused fund, and hired its first-ever female sourCe: eMarketer
p
partner, Kathryn Haun, as its co-lead. Joseph Lubin, who artner, Kathryn Haun, as its co-lead. Joseph Lubin, who
co-founded the Ethereum platform and founded related
software developer ConsenSys, is now trying to bring oftware developer ConsenSys, is now trying to bring
s The Dream of Your Phone turned sending money into a
blockchain to industries including journalism and film Serving as Your Credit Card social activity. These wildly popu-
p p
production; and in Washington, D.C., high-profile crypto roduction; and in Washington, D.C., high-profile crypto roduction; and in Washington, D.C., high-profile crypto t Here’s the thing about mobile lar apps are backed, respectively,
startups Coinbase and Circle have helped launch a lob- wallets: Americans don’t really by tech giants Tencent and Ali-
bying group to teach lawmakers all about the industry. need them. Plastic cards still baba. WeChat, with a billion
Circle, valued at $3 billion and led by co-founder and work, after all; they’re universally users, and Alipay, with 500 mil-
CEO Jeremy Allaire, is a platform that allows users to accepted and almost as easy to lion, are runaway success stories
buy, trade, and send one another all sorts of money, use as your phone. That may be and pure catnip for Apple, Face-
f
from traditional dollars and euros to the newer-minted rom traditional dollars and euros to the newer-minted why, four years after Apple Pay book, Square, PayPal, and all the
bitcoins, ethereum, and U.S. dollar “stablecoins” (don’t debuted to great fanfare, only big banks and smaller startups
a about 7 percent of Americans use plumbing American payments.
ask). “Money should work the way the rest of the internet sk). “Money should work the way the rest of the internet
it, according to eMarketer—and
works, for data and content and communications,” says only about 25 percent of smart- Experts, though, urge patience—
a lot of it. As Reetika Grewal,
Allaire, a serial entrepreneur who’s raised $246 million for phone users use mobile pay- head of payments strategy and
his company. “We have open global networks where we ments to buy anything. Compare solutions at Silicon Valley Bank,
can connect our devices and share information freely and that with China: 78 percent of puts it: “The thing about finan-
instantly all around the world, and we want the same smartphone users pay by phone, cial services is, a lot of things
t thing for money and economic relationships.” —M.A.hing for money and economic relationships.” —M.A. and WeChat and Alipay have slow-brew.” —M.A.
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