The Week in Review

Here are the new and noteworthy stories we have been following this week.

Chime files to go public

Chime has filed paperwork to go public on the Nasdaq and intends to file under the ticker symbol “CHYM.”   Based on its prospectus, Chime generated $518.7MM in revenue for Q1 2025 and net income of $12.9MM. Chime has 8.6MM active members and its business continues to be driven by debit card interchange.

Industry sentiment is cautious on Chime given its twin critical dependencies – interchange income and sponsor banks.

Coinbase to join S&P 500

Coinbase Global Inc. is joining the S&P 500 index on Monday May 19th replacing Discover Financial. This is a key milestone for the cryptocurrency industry signaling the importance of crypto companies to the US economy.  The market has responded positively and Coinbase stock is up almost 28% for the week.

Crypto is rapidly going mainstream, in part enabled by a ‘friendly’ regulatory environment.

Lithic to support cards on the Amex network

Lithic, a new card issuing platform provider has completed work to support card issuance on the American Express network. This provides fintech companies another network option (beyond Visa / Mastercard) to issue cards.  According to an Amex spokesperson, Lithic will be joining the American Express Agile Partnership Program.

Lithic is part of a new breed of card technology providers that have considerable market opportunity if they can successfully transition to serving banks.

Open Table / Resy

Visa is actively marketing its partnership with Open Table by providing high end ‘cool’ restaurants incentives to switch from Resy to Open Table and hold some reservation slots for select Visa cardholders. Resy is owned by American Express – which recently acquired Tock as well.  According to industry news, restaurants are being offered $40,000 to $95,000 to move from Resy to Open Table.

Both Visa and American Express are using high-end restaurants to target high income, high spending credit cardholders.

Fed Diary of Consumer Payment Choice

According to the recently released 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, US consumers made 48 payments per month (up from 46 in 2024). In terms of share of payment instruments, credit cards accounted for 35% of payments, debit cards 30%, digital/mobile 18%, cash 14%, and checks 3%.  Cash use remains prevalent within lower income and older consumers - but 80% of all consumers reported holding cash at least one day during their Diary reporting period, consistent since 2018.

Cards remain entrenched within consumer payments with both credit and debit continuing to grow.

eToro debuts on the Nasdaq

eToro raised almost $310MM in its Nasdaq listing - the stock opened at $69.69, or 34% above its IPO price and closed up nearly 29% at $67 a share, bringing its total market capitalization to more than $5.4B. The company sold nearly 6MM shares at $52 each, above the expected range of $46 to $50. Almost 6MM additional shares were sold by existing investors.  For the week the stock closed at $64.15, down 4%.

eToro’s IPO is being closely watched for signs of a market recovery as a number of companies wait in the wings to go public.

Standard Chartered expands in the US

Standard Chartered has created a dedicated team covering private equity firms, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds, as part of a wider drive in its investment bank to win more business from financial clients. The team will initially be comprised of around 25 bankers and will be based in New York with hubs in London and Dubai.

Standard Chartered’s US investment banking push and focus on financial clients is in stark contrast to HSBC which has retrenched from US and Europe to focus on Asia.

Global Payments launches Genius

Global Payments has announced the launch of Genius, a new POS platform billed as “an all-in-one, intuitive and highly configurable new POS platform”.  The company is launching Genius for Restaurants on Saturday May 17th for the US and Canadian markets, followed by Genius for Retail in June, and Genius for Enterprise later in the year.

Will Genius enable Global to compete more effectively or just provide parity with other POS platforms?

Mastercard and MoonPay

Mastercard and MoonPay have announced a new global partnership to support stablecoin payments across Mastercard’s network. The arrangement will enable financial firms and fintech companies to issue Mastercard branded cards that will connect to users’ stablecoin wallets allowing them to spend stablecoins. The cards will be accepted at all Mastercard merchants where the stablecoins will be automatically converted to local currency and paid out to merchants.

Stablecoin backed cards are steadily coming to market creating a real world utility for stablecoins.

Nuvei in Europe

Nuvei has announced its membership in the European Payments Initiative (EPI), becoming one of the first payment services providers to enable e-commerce businesses to accept Wero, EPI's digital wallet, in their online checkouts. Nuvei's merchants will gain early access to Wero through their existing single integration with Nuvei's core payments platform with pilot programs expected to begin shortly and general rollout later in September.

Kudos to Nuvei for its continued innovation in payments and for bringing Wero to its merchant network.