Background

Questions

1. What’s your take on banking-as-a-service in 2022? How have you seen it evolve over the last few years, and where do you think it's headed?
2. Can you talk about how you see a breakdown of how you see the BaaS space, the different types of players, and where you see Cross River positioning itself?
3. Can you talk a little bit about Stripe in the context of what you guys do? I find that when I chat with folks, they're often confused as to this “frenemy” dynamic where Cross River might be a partner with Stripe on some things, and they might be competitive on others.
4. Can you talk about how one can be both a one-stop shop but also partner with best-in-breed versus the approach of one or the other?
5. When I talk to folks about Cross River, they know it for its lending and for early partnerships with Affirm and companies like that. Can you talk about the cards business and where you're seeing growth, the opportunity, and what excited you about joining Cross River to lead cards?
6. I know you came from ADP. Where do you slot in these vertical SaaS or vertical finance products like Gusto Wallet? Do those slot into what you were talking about with neobanks, or is it something different?
7. Can you position Cross River on cards with respect to the Marqetas of the world? Also, I’m interested in some of these up-and-coming ones like Lithic and Cardless, particularly with this developer-centric mantra that seems to be very popular in the fintech space.
8. Could you talk about the trend toward a lot of fintechs getting bank charters? Do you think that the end state is that every fintech does become a bank, and that is just going to happen?
9. I'm curious to learn more about the culture at Cross River because bringing together top-notch technology and top-notch services is a huge challenge that many who come from the technology world maybe don't appreciate. Can you talk about the culture of Cross River with respect to this old-school-meets-new-school profitable business in the fintech world, which is a lot of fast-growing but unprofitable companies and technology-centric folks?
10. Switching gears a bit to crypto, I'd love to hear about how the early partnership with Coinbase was really big for Cross River, and now a lot of people know Cross River is an important infrastructure for crypto companies. Can you talk about some of the crypto use cases today that are seeing a lot of traction or getting you particularly excited, especially as they might intersect with cards?
11. How do you think about partnering with the next generation of DeFi-backed companies, and how do you mitigate the risk of contagion from what we're seeing in crypto over to traditional finance?
12. Cross River is one of the leading, if not the leading vertically-integrated fintechs. Can you talk about how you think about your moat internally, how you think about your competitive advantage?