Under the Hood of Fintech Products

Alex Johnson (0:00)

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Hello, and welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. Today, we have an episode that I've been trying to produce for a while. We had to persist through some technical difficulties, some little snafus, but it was worth it. Today's guest is Jas Shah. Jas is a Fintech product consultant, and more importantly, from my perspective, the author of one of my absolute favorite newsletters, Fintech Under the Hood.

He as that name might suggest, gets under the hood and looks at how Fintech products actually work. He has a lot of experience actually building in the space. He's built a number of different types of Fintech products. He's worked as a consultant with Fintech companies, with banks. He really knows his stuff at a level of detail that sometimes, honestly, we don't quite get into here at Fintech Takes. So I was very excited to have him come on and take us into the trenches of what's happening in Fintech. We spent some time talking about digital onboarding, which is something, as he points out, that we kind of take for granted here in 2026, but we've actually made a tremendous amount of progress on. I talk about that progress and what work we still have to do on digital onboarding, areas for potential improvement, the shift that we're starting to see towards reliance on third parties for KYC and digital identity, lots of exciting stuff. Then we switch gears and we talk about one of my absolute favorite topics in Fintech, personal financial management, which is the siren of Fintech that just lures builders onto the rocks. It's a really, really hard problem to solve, but it also, justifiably, is a problem lots of people are attracted to and want to solve. So, Joss and I talk about how that problem might be solvable now that we have AI, and where AI changes things, where AI maybe doesn't change things, the inherent incentive problems that exist in personal financial management when you're trying to give unbiased advice to consumers about how to improve their finances that they can trust while also still getting paid for the work that you're doing. We cite some of the recent examples from ChatGPT and others who are building in this space, and we end with, I think, the most important conversation that's possible to have in Fintech, how to name your Fintech company after JRR. Tolkien's books, which is, if you've read my newsletter or been paying attention to what Peter Thiel has been doing over the last couple of decades, a very, very important subject and one that Joss and I share a deal of passion on. So we end there. Fantastic conversation overall. Like I said, this is one I've been wanting to do for a while, and we finally got it done. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Joss Shah.

This is Fintech Takes, the podcast keeping you in the loop on all the latest Fintech trends, news and ideas. I'm Alex Johnson, creator of the Fintech Takes newsletter, your host, and self-confessed Fintech nerd. Let's go.

Okay, Joss Shah, the Fintech prince who was promised. It's taken a while to get him on the podcast. We've fought through lots of technical issues, but we made it. Joss, thank you so much for coming on.

Jas Shah (3:40)

Oh, no, so cool to be here. Alex, thank you so much.

Alex Johnson (3:43)

No, I'm thrilled. Prince who was promised. Yeah.

Jas Shah (3:47)

A bit much, but yeah, all good. I appreciate it.

Alex Johnson (3:50)

Well, I like to build you up. I like to build you up. I like to pump you up before we get on the podcast.

Jas Shah (3:55)

No, I mean, I'm too old to be a prince. I'm too old to be a prince.

Alex Johnson (3:58)

Well, if you're too old, I'm much too old.

I will say to start with, I'm very excited about this conversation because you write a wonderful newsletter called Fintech Under the Hood, which if folks have not subscribed to it, immediately stop listening to this, go subscribe to it, come back to the podcast. It's awesome. It's one of my favorite newsletters. You get into a lot of detail from the perspective of someone building in this space, building products and really trying to pull apart what's happening in Fintech. So you are the perfect person for me to bounce around lots of different Fintech products, builder-oriented topics for the next hour. You game to do that with me.