Firms such as Visa, Mastercard, PNC and Fiserv say employers can address the labor crunch by making it easier for employees to access and move their money through services such as earned wage access, crypto bonuses and digitized expense management.

Consumer advocates and fintechs say the traditional credit score and lending systems that use it are murky and perpetuate bias. FICO’s leader points out that new FICO scores use expanded data sets, just as fintechs do.

The company provides incentives through the online statements of many large card issuers — but it faces more competition than ever from fintechs and "super apps." To stay in the game, Cardlytics is scooping up more data to sharpen its pitches.

It began as an app for teens, but Current had its eye on cryptocurrency-related services from the start. The goal is to improve on the products it offers customers, such as above-market interest rates.

The renewal of the e-commerce giant's cobranded card cements an alliance between two giants of their industries — just as both companies are pushing ahead with products such as buy now/pay later loans that put pressure on traditional credit cards.

SoFi Technologies and MoneyLion offer a slew of banking services. Will this enable them to grab significant market share from traditional institutions?

Though it's one of the largest U.S. credit unions at $15 billion of assets, the organization still works with a number of fintechs to live up to its name.

Ramp, a startup that offers corporate cards and other finance tools to businesses, raised $750 million in a funding round that valued the fintech at $8.1 billion.

A growing chorus of voices seems to share the view of former New York banking regulator Maria Vullo, who once said, “Toddlers play in sandboxes. Adults play by the rules.” But any movement away from the collaborative development of regulations for new financial services products would be a setback for consumer choice.