After Eugene Shkolnikov arrived in New York from Kharkiv, Ukraine at age 17 in 1992, one of his first jobs was handing out flyers for $3 an hour outside the Empire State Building. He had immigrated with his mother and grandfather, no money, and only a couple years of high school English (on top of his fluent Russian and Ukrainian). But standing in Midtown Manhattan, he knew he wanted to wear a suit and be like the businessmen walking briskly past him. “That was my dream job,” he says. Talk about motivation. He improved his English while studying in college…

The big new fees JPMorgan Chase is planning to charge some financial technology companies may well trickle down to consumers, several fintech CEOs tell Forbes. Two months ago, Chase sent messages to fintech data aggregators like Plaid, whose software connects fintech apps to consumers’ bank accounts. The bank said it would be introducing new fees for the aggregators to access to consumers’ bank data, which had previously been free. The fees are set to take effect very soon, since Chase told aggregators they’d start charging them in 60 days. Chase spokesperson Drew Pusateri says the bank is still in active…

When it comes to selling coconut water to the health obsessed, New York’s Vita Coco has served up a master class, schooling even giant rivals like Coke and Pepsi. Its next test will be withstanding Trump’s tariff shocks. What do you do when 96% of your revenue comes from coconut water and 100% of your supply comes from tropical countries targeted by Donald Trump with high tariffs? This is exactly the situation confronting one of the nation’s hottest small cap companies today, $516 million (revs) Vita-Coco of New York City, the leading maker of coconut water. Its biggest source of…

Three years ago, Facebook parent company Meta agreed to pay a whopping $725 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing it of making users’ data available without their consent (Meta denied wrongdoing). Payments were finally scheduled to start hitting consumers’ wallets this month, but court filings from last week show that the portion of the funds slated to be sent through digital prepaid cards are now under intense legal scrutiny. Forbes estimates those digital payments would total $150 million. The controversy stems from secret rebates that Blackhawk Network, the fintech that issues the digital cards, agreed to make to…

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is asking stakeholders for their input before it reworks an open banking rule governing access to consumer financial data. The battle between fintechs and banking incumbents intensified last month as the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan, announced it would impose hefty fees for data access, with other banks contemplating similar moves to stave off rising competition by the fintech industry. Just yesterday, the CFPB raised a total of 36 questions in the solicitation document it submitted to the Federal Register’s public inspection division. Under consideration, are questions as to who should have the authority to make…

From Anchorage Digital to BitGo and Morgan Stanley, a growing cast of financial firms are reaping big fees riding the tidal wave of corporate bitcoin buying. A record number of public companies are shoveling crypto onto their balance sheets—ostensibly to diversify their holdings, hedge against inflation and attract new investors. The unstated reason, of course, is management’s desire to boost their stock price. In recent months, just announcing a so-called “crypto treasury” strategy has been enough to add premiums to trading prices. The real bonanza however, is flowing to the picks-and-shovels merchants of this latest gold rush: custodians, brokers, asset…

The Trump administration is teeing up what could be the biggest shakeup in U.S. housing finance since the 2008 crisis—a pair of IPOs that might value Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a combined $500 billion. The plan, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and is still being finalized by the administration, would see the federal government sell between 5% and 15% of each company, potentially raising about $30 billion in what would be one of the largest stock offerings in American history. Yet behind the fanfare lies a precarious gamble on institutions still tethered to taxpayer…

A federal judge on Tuesday granted a last minute motion by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to stay the court battle over the legality of the agency’s “open banking” rule, while it rewrites it in a way that “aligns with the policy preferences of the new leadership.” The regulations, designed to give consumers greater control over their own financial data, were finalized last October under the Biden Administration, and scheduled to take effect on a staggered basis next year. The Biden-era rule allows customers to access and share financial information connected to their bank accounts, credit cards, payment apps…

Americans have more debt than they’ve ever had, making them vulnerable to defaulting on their loans if the economy turns south. New financial results from credit card issuer Synchrony show that U.S. borrowers are holding up fine, but if inflation rises sharply again, all bets are off. Synchrony is a Stamford, Connecticut-based bank that offers co-branded credit cards and point-of-sale loans for customers like Sam’s Club, Lowe’s and PayPal. One in every four American adults has a Synchrony card, the company says, so its financial performance gives us an inside look into consumers’ financial health. The bank manages a book…

JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in America, has been angry for years about being forced to hand over customer data to fintech companies for free. Now its billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon seems to be capitalizing on a moment of deregulation to slap fintechs with new fees, and the coming negotiations will determine how much damage the behemoth inflicts on their businesses. The bank’s aggressive move is a big escalation in the ongoing battle between financial services incumbents and challenger fintechs. Since the start of the fintech industry, upstarts have needed access to consumers’ bank data to perform basic functions like…