Tango with Mango

Given that I’m the only person who reads this blog, I considered it a compliment that Roy and Bertrand Sosa asked me not to write about their new yogurt shop — erggg, I mean, their new financial services flagship for the underbanked — until it was official.  I read about…

Doral, Dorsey and Deposits

For what it’s worth, today is the last day to get early-bird discount to CFSI’s annual shin-dig, the 5th Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum. Who cares?  Anyone remotely interested in the underbanked marketplace should think twice about not attending.  The conference attracts an incredibly broad range of people, from hedge…

Strategic Ventures

At a time when venture capital, as an asset class, is not generating the returns it promises over the long haul (who wants fixed income returns for venture level risk?), it’s important to reconsider its structure and forms of value. Our friend David Dove makes some excellent points in his…

Alternatives in Alternative Credit

My colleagues and I have long believed in the power of alternative credit data and analytics.  These are the alternatives to the “traditional” credit data and analytics, purveyed by FICO, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, which are the most basic tools mainstream lenders use to assess whether you or I are…

How the red dot became a Green Dot

Green Dot, the leading general purpose reloadable (GPR) prepaid card program manager, is making the logical step in narrowing its supply chain.  Especially with big retail clients like Wal-Mart, Green Dot must experience relatively thin margins.  For the relatively uninitiated, GPR suffers from many hands at the trough: an issuing…

Just-in-time learning

When I explain my day-job, quite a few people believe that the way to solve the underbanked “problem” is through financial education.  Many banks think the same way.   They are right, of course.  But it’s not so simple as just teaching “these people” how basic financial services work (never…