Marcel van Oost

Hey FinTech Fanatic! Still in the US 🇺🇸, and this one crossed my radar today while catching up on the usual conversations, meetings, and inbox updates... Sokin just secured $100M in growth financing from Oxford Finance. It’s long-term debt, not equity, and it’s being used to accelerate global expansion,

Hey FinTech Fanatic! Mesh just raised a $75M Series C, pushing its valuation to $1B. Mesh is building the connective tissue that lets consumers pay with any crypto asset, while merchants settle instantly in the stablecoin or fiat they choose. As crypto moves from experimentation to real-world payments, capital is

Hey FinTech Fanatic! Apple is facing a major legal challenge in the UK. A £1.5bn class action has been launched against Apple, targeting Apple Pay and what campaigners call hidden fees and blocked competition. The claim argues Apple Pay has been the only contactless payment option for iPhone users

Hey FinTech Fanatic! Greetings from Santa Monica ☀️ A snowstorm rerouted my NYC flight, so I accidentally extended my stay in California. Tragic, I know. There are definitely worse places to be “stuck” than the LA sunshine 😉 Unexpected bonus: Los Angeles is buzzing with FinTech right now. Big shoutout to Seth

Hey FinTech Fanatic! PayPal is acquiring Cymbio to accelerate its agentic commerce strategy. Cymbio helps merchants make their product catalogs discoverable across AI-powered surfaces like Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity. Checkout stays with PayPal. Merchants remain the merchant of record. Customer relationships stay intact. This is a distribution play for the

Hi FinTech Fanatic, Greetings from LA! Los Angeles is the next stop on my US trip, connecting with some great people from the FinTech industry. I really enjoyed San Francisco this week. Without taking anything away from all the great people I met there, I do want to highlight Shack