Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. — Mary Ann

First off, I have to say that this past week was one of the busiest fintech news weeks I have experienced in a long while. Whoa. So.much.going.on. While I couldn’t obviously cover it all, I attempted to fit as much of it as I could into this newsletter.

Before we get into the various news items from the past week, let’s talk about bank charters.

For the unacquainted, according to Investopedia: “A chartered bank is a financial institution (FI) whose primary roles are to accept and safeguard monetary deposits from individuals and organizations, as well as to lend money out. Chartered bank specifics vary from country to country. However, in general, a chartered bank in operation has obtained a form of government permission to do business in the financial services industry. A chartered bank is often associated with a commercial bank.”

In 2020, digital bank Varo became the first-ever all-digital nationally chartered U.S. consumer bank — meaning it received approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become an actual bank, as opposed to partnering with one as most digital banks do.

It was a bold, and risky, move. So I talked to Varo CEO and founder Colin Walsh to find out if it was worth it. His answer? 100%.

To read my full interview with Walsh on just how things have been going since, head here.

The corporate cards just keep on coming

Mercury announced last week that it launched a new corporate credit card. Via email, a spokesperson told me that the IO Mastercard is designed to help startups scale their business. “It’s straightforward 1.5% cashback on everything, no personal credit check and the first step to qualifying for the card is having just $50,000 in a Mercury account."