Just got back from the east coast on a red-eye flight, so keeping the column a short this week. One thing that caught my attention last week: it seems as though startups issuing cards as a pseudo-bank account (or connected to an actual bank account) has become in vogue again. It might have been timing due to Money 2020, but there were a lot of funding announcements for said cards, ranging from Petal Card, Jiko, Deserve, Zero, Current, etc. In the US, it looks like VC's are starting to consolidate their bets on various card-issuing companies, although each company does have their own focus and target demographics. The typical value proposition seems to be: target younger generation that doesn't have credit (or trust credit), build machine learning to effectively underwrite outside of traditional FICO, and profit from spread with interchange. Speaking of cards though, on to my first feature article of last week's top 5 recap...