Welcome to our new series - FinTech Week in 15 mins - where we'll cover major FinTech and Financial Innovation headlines from the week. This week we talk about:

• Phones as POS - Square launched Tap to Pay on Android, Fiserv integrates Clover with Apple Tap to Pay

• Shopify expanding its financial products suite with the launch of "Bill Pay" Tool

• DeFi gaining access to the mainstream financial services world with TransUnion now offering credit scoring to DeFi Apps.

• Friction between regulators and crypto platforms continues due to lack of clear regulations - Coinbase sues SEC, and some crypto platforms exit Canada

• RBC partnered with Conquest Planning, SEI Canada partners with CapIntel

• Executive changes at Wealthsimple - new CMO and CTO

• AI - Klarna announced new AI-powered features, Fairly AI raises $2.2M, KPMG partners with MindBridge for AI-powered smart audit platform "KPMG Clara"

• and more.....enjoy listening!

At the end of May, Tracey and I recorded this podcast to talk about payments modernization and Canada's progress towards real-time payments, among other things. We also talked about open banking, the Retail Payments Activities Act that the Bank of Canada is underway with, and payments innovation in general. Tracey is deeply experienced in payments in Canada and while we still dont have a date for the launch of the RTR, you might hear Tracey talk about a few things you didnt know before in this episode. One of those things might be that RTR API's are available to test in a sandbox. The developer portal where the RTR API's live can be found here: https://developer.payments.ca/

On this edition of the FinTech Disrupticons, Sue catches up with Fabio Marrama, entrepreneur and full-time Director of Innovation at Meridian Credit Union, one of Canada's largest credit unions, and also a Schedule 1 bank in Canada with their digital bank - Motusbank. Fabio has a passion for credit unions, the community and cooperative movement, and for B2B marketing strategies that leverage Linkedin and other social and content strategies. Enjoy!

On this podcast Sue catches up with Andrew Lo, CEO of Embark. Andrew Lo joined Embark in Jan 2023, bringing with him his 30 years of experience in the digital and financial services space. You may know him from some of the FinTechs such as Financeit, Wahi, Kanetix, Filogix where he was one of the key C-leaders. Embark is a fabulous new brand for an established company, Knowledge First Financial - Canada's education savings and planning company. Andrew explains how they are blazing new trails with digital everything and a killer strategy!

More than 15 years since founding the company, Financeit has north of 250 employees and is an amazing Canadian success story. Michael's take on BNPL's future, open banking in Canada, the impact of generative AI, and overall business viability is so on-point and relevant. And, his wit and humour make for a very entertaining chat with this OG FinTech founder.

There is no denying Miro Pavletic is one of a small group of Canada's most accomplished challenger banking product creators. With the sale of Stack, a consumer product in Canada, to Credit Sesame, and the expansion of Stack's tech across North America as a result, Miro has honed the "white label" offering and is in expansion mode.