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How thousands of Americans got caught in fintech's false promise and lost access to bank accounts
CNBC (Business News) ^ | 02 July 2024 | Hugh Son

Posted on 07/02/2024 1:41:54 PM PDT by zeestephen

For customers, fintech promised the best of both worlds: The innovation, ease of use and fun of the newest apps combined with the safety of government-backed accounts held at real banks...The collapse of middleman Synapse has revealed fintech’s promise of safety as a mirage. More than 100,000 Americans with $265 million in deposits have been locked out of their accounts.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: fdic
PayPal and Block Cash are two of the best known fintechs in the USA.

PayPal (PYPL) Stock Price - down 81% in last three years.

Block (SQ) Stock Price - down 76% in last three years.

1 posted on 07/02/2024 1:41:54 PM PDT by zeestephen
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To: zeestephen

I had two PayPal accounts. When PayPal made major changes to its terms, I closed them. What a hassle.

I am fine with them closing down.


2 posted on 07/02/2024 1:47:37 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
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To: ConservativeMind

This incident broke my remaining trust in them:

“PayPal Pulls Back, Says It Won’t Fine Customers $2,500 for ‘Misinformation’ after Backlash”
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-paypal-policy-permits-company-to-fine-users-2500-for-misinformation/


3 posted on 07/02/2024 1:50:01 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
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To: zeestephen
Block Cash is probably best known as "Cash App Square" in the USA.

Sorry for the confusion.

I do not use fin tech, so almost all of this information I am seeing for the first time.

4 posted on 07/02/2024 1:52:07 PM PDT by zeestephen (Trump "Lost" By 43,000 Votes - Spread Across Three States - GA, WI, AZ)
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To: zeestephen

Remember the old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true it probably IS too good to be true!”


5 posted on 07/02/2024 1:55:59 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar ( Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force!--G. Washington)
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To: zeestephen

The two words Finance and App in the same sentence give me the creeps.

The FDIC logo on the web sites looks a lot like consumer fraud to me.

Some folks belong in prison for this.


6 posted on 07/02/2024 1:57:21 PM PDT by cgbg ("Our democracy" = Their Kleptocracy)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Yup!

If someone sells you a diamond ring for tem cents, you just bought a ring that isn’t worth a dime.


7 posted on 07/02/2024 2:27:21 PM PDT by TheWriterTX (🇺🇸✝️🙏🇮🇱)
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To: cgbg
Re: "Some folks belong in prison for this."

Fin Tech has been aggressively marketed as "Banking for the Un-Banked."

Both China and India are up to their elbows in Fin Tech.

I will guess that the USA and European Political Left are powerful supporters.

This might resemble the 1990 Home Mortgage fantasy world melt down that made GHWBush a one term president.

Fin Tech - welcome to the 21st Century and Magic Banking!

8 posted on 07/02/2024 2:37:27 PM PDT by zeestephen (Trump "Lost" By 43,000 Votes - Spread Across Three States - GA, WI, AZ)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

👍👍👍👍👍


9 posted on 07/02/2024 2:54:24 PM PDT by Mark17 (Retired USAF air traffic controller. Father of Air Force pilot. Both bitten by the aviation bug)
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To: zeestephen

Well I still use PayPal, CashApp, and Venmo, but only sparingly. Sometimes people haven’t got cash on them and these are simple ways to get me the cash and vice versa.

I don’t do and will never accept large payouts or leave large amounts in them.


10 posted on 07/02/2024 2:54:35 PM PDT by packrat35 (Pureblood! No clot shot for me!)
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To: packrat35

bttt


11 posted on 07/02/2024 6:27:26 PM PDT by CFW
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To: zeestephen

fintech fake “bank accounts” appealed mostly to the ignorant, the stupid, and/or the greedy ... one of their big appeals is you could play stupid games and win stupid prizes, and i’m not joking ... other than that, fintechs offered little of value over conventional FDIC-insured banks, but instead heaped massive unregulated liabilities on their customers ...

fintech “bank accounts” are constructed exactly like the customer accounts at sam bankman-fried’s FTX crypto exchange: customer money is not segregated into individual accounts, but is instead aggregated into common pools and displayed on the fintech website as if the money was in separate accounts ... fintechs actually deposit their aggregated pools into accounts in REAL banks, where said accounts are beneficially owned by the fintech itself and not owned by their customers ...

in some cases, the bank accounts were in banks that were FDIC insured, but the payees of said accounts were the fintechs and NOT their customers, and it was up to the fintechs to keep track of how much of the pooled money belonged to which of their customers, and if the fintech lost track of their customer accounts and/or themselves went bankrupt, their customers were SOOL ... and there would be NO regulatory agency for the customers to turn to to be made whole ......

a bankruptcy would make no difference one way or the other to the fintech’s FDIC bank account ...only the bankruptcy of the FDIC bank itself would affect the fintech’s account ...

and none of these shenanigans are regulated or disclosed to the fintech customers ...


12 posted on 07/02/2024 7:50:03 PM PDT by catnipman ((A Vote For The Lesser Of Two Evils Still Counts As A Vote For Evil))
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