
Things We Got Wrong in Fintech - rumayor
https://www.regalii.com/blog/5-things-we-got-wrong-in-fintech
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brunooo
Always good to have an opportunity to point to [https://medium.com/bull-
market/a-cynic-s-guide-to-fintech-3c...](https://medium.com/bull-
market/a-cynic-s-guide-to-fintech-3cd0995e0da3)

 _" Fintech business model #1. Reinventing past mistakes of the banking
industry because you don’t know about adverse selection"_

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jackgavigan
I read each of the five "lessons learnt" in this article and thought to
myself: "No shit, Sherlock!"

After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, I ended up working in FinTech. It was
an eye-opening experience and, ever since, I have been constantly amazed by
the irrational optimism/arrogance/hubris of people who have zero experience in
the sector but believe that they know better than people who have been working
here for decades.

It's actually embarrassing at this point. To quote Lucky Green, God forbid
"there might be something to be learned from several millenniums of financial
services best practices."

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7Figures2Commas
What's worse is that investors are actually funding companies run by people
who don't recognize that fraud is really bad, compliance is a pain, customer
acquisition costs are high, trust is a challenge and remittances are primarily
used by the unbanked.

It goes to show how much the investors know these days.

~~~
saryant
I know of a fintech startup that hired a guy who had been convicted of
embezzlement at a previous company.

If I could short that company...

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MCRed
Sorry if this is OT, but didn't regalii go thru YC? IT doesn't have the flag.

At any rate, Regalii was one of the best companies in my round of Startup
Chile. I saw their pitch and I really wanted to invest.

Of course they have these challenges, and with the current regulatory climate
in the USA this is only going to get worse and worse over time-- imagine what
will happen when they have to verify and report the identity of every
recipient of their funds? I think thats not too far off.

IT will be hard to report he identity of Chileans or Argentinians or
Uruguayans to the IRS because it will be hard to collect it in a way the IRS
understands.

And then how many argentinians are going to want to give a US company enough
info that the remittances (in US Dollars equivalents) can be reported to the
argentinian government at some point down the line?

Moving money across borders is the number one business governments seem to
want to destroy (Because of course all this money could be "Terrorism" or
"drug" related.)

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ak217
Related: what do people think of Yodlee?

